Violence and the State

The term ‘Byzantine empire' refers by convention to the eastern Roman empire from the fourth (or sixth, as some prefer) century to the fifteenth century, that is to say, from the time when a distinctively East Roman political formation began to evolve with the recognition of the cultural divisions between ‘Greek East' and ‘Latin West' in the empire's political structure, to the fall of Constantinople on 29 May 1453 at the hands of the Ottoman sultan Mehmet II.

The eastern Roman state is distinguished from its western medieval and - more obviously - its Islamic neighbours to the east through its maintenance of the traditions of Roman law through to the end of its existence in the fifteenth century. From the later sixth century onwards there took place an ever greater convergence of the secular and ecclesiastical realms in law and regulation.^{[961] [962]} The close association between secular and religious law in fact intensified the penetrative authority of the state, while at the same time strengthening the role of the imperial church as a key reinforcing and structuring element in Byzantine notions of empire and imperial rule at the humblest level of village society. While it is clear that local justice, ‘rough justice', popular justice certainly prevailed in some contexts away from the capital, it is nevertheless also the case that imperial governance reached down into Byzantine society and that Roman law in the provinces was applied through the courts of the various administrative officials who ran the empire.

Attitudes to violence in society more broadly can only be assessed through the literature that was produced, much of it by a small educated elite, so that it is difficult to generalise. There is evident in narrative histories, for example, a degree of voyeurism tinged by horror regarding brutality and violence. This is especially so in accounts of battles or of single combat,^[963] or of massacres of civilians or others in riots and other moments of unrest, as well as, and in particular, in accounts of the sufferings of the victims of persecution by the state. Such representations owed much to the traditions of the early Christian martyr literature, some of which, it has been argued, has a distinctly sexual-sadistic or sado-masochistic inflection, in which the most gruesome aspects of torture and the infliction of pain are presented in often uncomfortable detail.

While there has recently been some excellent discussion on these aspects of late Roman and Byzantine culture, many aspects remain unexamined and many questions on the cultural psychology of both interpersonal and mass violence remain unasked.^[964] There is a great deal of empirical evidence from sources such as hagiographies - Lives of saints - as well as from accounts in various types of chronicle literature, and in official and semi-official texts such as military handbooks, and there is also material cultural evidence, from archaeology or from pictorial representations. All this permits us to develop some ideas of how violence was experienced, how it was perceived and rationalised or justified, and how examples of violence were understood and dealt with by courts or treated in legal literature.

The punishment for an act of violence was, according to Roman law, determined by the social status of the accused and was reflected in the nature of the weapon or object used to harm the victim of the act. But justice, as it was defined and understood within the East Roman Christian world, also entailed violence of varying degrees, depending on the nature of the crime committed as well as the status of the individual found guilty. Corporal punishment was understood as a remedy for practices defined both as immoral and as crimes against person or property, and the redemptive and rehabilitating aspects of punishment were also part of cultural attitudes to transgressions of all kinds. Evidence for the ways in which acts of violence were dealt with by the courts at Constantinople and in the provinces is sparse and mostly from the later period - from the eleventh century onwards - but it is fair to assert that the rule of law as exercised through provincial and metropolitan administration was enforced to a surprisingly effective degree, even if it also clear that the socially and economically least privileged had least access to law, and when they did gain access their chances of winning a case against a social superior were not strong. Yet there is some evidence to show that even the poorest rural inhabitants of the provinces could pursue a court case through to the final court of appeal in Constantinople, and with success, so estimations of the efficacy or ‘fairness' of the system need to be balanced carefully against the available evidence.

The standard punishment for acts of violence resulting in death or serious injury, even if the victim did not die, was capital punishment, or social sanctions which were viewed as effectively equivalent (‘social death' such as banishment and confiscation of property).

The church traditionally had a right to grant asylum to any orthodox person seeking refuge from a threat of physical harm or imprisonment, and this was confirmed in imperial legislation from the fourth century. Some individuals were excluded, however - notably murderers, adulterers and rapists - on the grounds that refuge was to be granted to those fleeing injustice rather than those committing it. This seems to have remained the situation until the tenth century, when a compromise was reached whereby a wilful murderer could claim asylum provided he admitted his crime and surrendered himself (just as in the medieval West). Such persons were still to be punished according to the law, but this would consist of lifelong exile, loss of title and the right to hold office, and confiscation of property. A portion of any confiscated property now went to the victim's family, while the place of exile was stipulated to be far distant from the scene of the crime in order to avoid the possibility of future bloodfeud.

Societies generally have a range of means at their disposal for mitigating the impact of violence at different levels, and in the Byzantine case this rested to a large extent on public and private charitable institutions founded on the principle of philanthropia, de fined variously according to context but relating primarily to concepts of respect for one's fellows (also, of course, defined socially and thus by no means an inclusive category). The imperial court as well as the church, monastic communities and private individuals supported or endowed institutions such as hospitals, poorhouses or similar institutions whose existence had the effect of compensating for the ‘structural violence' inherent in economic class distinctions, poverty and exclusion.^[968]

In general, it can be said that acts of violence, where the perpetrator(s) could be found, were treated by the authorities - subject to the social distinctions and prejudices already noted - with the aim of maintaining both social and political equilibrium on the one hand and of meeting contemporary perceptions of natural justice as understood within a Christian moral-ethical framework.^[969] Naturally, the social violence that occurred throughout this medieval society remained largely unseen by the political authorities - such affairs were, as in all societies, regulated through kinship relations, through communal ties of reciprocity, and by various forms of feud.