Emergent Elites and Byzantium in the Balkans and East-Central Europe

Jonathan Shepard

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2024
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781040244685
• Subtopic: European Medieval History
• Index: History

According to Byzantium's leaders, their imperial order anchored in Constantinople was the centre of excellence - spiritual, moral, material and aesthetic. They rewarded individuals willing to join, and favoured outside groupings prepared to cooperate militarily or politically. Interactions with outsiders varied over place and time, complicated by the sometimes differing priorities of Byzantine churchmen and monks on or beyond Byzantium's borders. These studies consider the dynamics of such interactions, notably the interrelationship between the Bulgarians and their Byzantine neighbour. The Bulgarians' reaction to Byzantium ranged from 'contrarianism' to the systematic adaptation of Byzantine religious orthodoxy, ideals of rulership and normative values after Khan Boris' acceptance of eastern Christianity. For their part, Byzantine rulers were readier to do business with their Bulgarian counterparts than official pronouncements let on, occasionally even adopting aspects of Bulgarian political culture. Byzantium's interrelationship with other ruling elites was less intensive, but the process of Christianisation and the need to format this in readily comprehensible terms could make even distant potentates look to the template of effective Christian sole rulership which Byzantium's rulers embodied. Hungarian and Rus leaders were of abiding geopolitical interest to imperial statecraft, and the studies here show how during the generations around 1000 Byzantine political imagery resonated throughout the region.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Map 1: The Balkans and southern Italy
• Map 2: East-Central Europe and south-west Rus
• Map 3: North, south and east from Byzantium
• Introduction: Centres old and new: the uses of Byzantium to emerging elites
• I Spreading the word: Byzantine missions
• II Slavs and Bulgars
• III Symeon of Bulgaria – peacemaker
• IV The ruler as instructor, pastor and wise: Leo VI of Byzantium and Symeon of Bulgaria
• V A marriage too far? Maria Lekapena and Peter of Bulgaria
• VI Tzetzes’ letters to Leo at Dristra
• VII Byzantine writers on the Hungarians in the ninth and tenth centuries
• VIII Byzantium and the steppe-nomads: the Hungarian dimension
• IX Crowns from the basileus, crowns from heaven
• X Otto III, Boleslaw Chrobry and the ‘happening’ at Gniezno, A.D. 1000: some possible implications of Professor Poppe's thesis concerning the offspring of Anna Porphyrogenita
• XI Conversions and regimes compared: the Rus’ and the Poles, ca. 1000
• XII Manners maketh Romans? Young barbarians at the emperor's court
• Addenda and corrigenda
• Bibliography (for the Introduction; Studies I, II and VII; and Addenda and corrigenda)
• Index