Introduction xxiii

The author, title, manuscripts, editions and translations The author Constantine VII (905-959) was the grandson of Basil I, the founder of the of Byzantine emperors. He appears today as an attractive figure, a porphyro­ gennetos, bom to the purple, a scholar emperor who was crowned co-emperor as a child by bis father Leo VI (d. 912), hut who carne to power only in 945 with the overthrow and exile of the ruling Lekapenoi family. Subject at first toa regency, Constantine was married at 14 to Helena Lekapene, daughter of the commander of the fleet, Romanos Lekapenos, who the next year was crowned emperor as Romanos 1. Three of Helena's brothers were made co­ emperors like Constantine and a fourth, Theophylaktos, became patriarch (933-956). Constantine and Helena's son Romanos (Il) was bom in 939 and crowned co-emperor in 945, succeeding at age 20 to bis father's throne, hut dying in 963 in bis mid-twenties. He left bis two sons, Basil II and Constantine VIII, as minors, soon subject to the usurper emperor Nikephoros II Phokas. When Nikephoros was murdered in 969, the throne was taken by John I Tzirniskes who then married one of Constantine and Helena's daughters, Theodora, aunt of the legitimate emperors who even then were still minors. However, on Tzimiskes' death in 976, Constantine and Helena's grandsons, now in their late teens, became joint miers, guided initially by their eunuch great-uncle, Basil Lekapenos, Basil the Nothos (ca 925 to after 985), who had received the new title of president of the senate from Nikephoros Phokas. The Book of Ceremonies consists of two "hooks". Each bas a preface composed by Constantine. Ostensibly Constantine was the author of the Book of Ceremonies. There is little doubt that it was compiled, as he said, at bis initiative and that he had some part in collecting the material and in its actual composition. In the prefaces to each book he explains in the first person bis aims and methods. His purpose, as with the other works which he instigated and supported, was to "save from oblivion" knowledge that had become faded and fragmented through a period of neglect and was in danger of disappearing altogether. He was concemed that the imperial ceremonial should be well ordered so that it would bring renown to the emperor and the senate, 1 among both bis own people and foreigners, reflecting "the harmonious movement of the creator in relation to the whole." To this end it was necessary to collect the records ofancestral customs and current practices from many sources and to arrange these in an accessible form in simple language both for bis own use and for future generations (R4-5 & R516- l 7). The title and manuscripts The title today refers to the contents of the tenth-century manuscript in the University Library in Leipzig, Lipsiensis Univ., Rep. 1, 17, which was copied by the one hand in the generation following the emperor's death in 959, during the reign of Nikephoros II Phokas (963-969).2 lt is the only surviving clearly legible manuscript. A copy of the work also made in the tenth century which survives as two palimpsest manuscripts, Cod. Chalcensis S. Trinitatis (125)133 now in Istanbul, and Vatopedi 1003 in the Vatopedi Monastery on Mt

1 'The term "senate" could have a restricted meaning hut was used most often of the members of the court in feneral. Leich was responsible for the Latin title: De Cerimoniis Aulae Byzantinae, cf. the heading in the manuscript: I:uvtayµá n Kai ~acrw:iou cmouöl'jçövtroç lil;iov itoil]µa (A compilation and work truly worthy of imperia) zeal). Fora colour photograph of the Leipzig ms. fol. 21v, the beginning of the Book of Ceremonies, see Schreiner, "Die byzantinische Geisteswelt vom 9. bis zum 11. Jahrhundert," in Kaiserin Theophanu" ed. von Euw & Schreiner, vol. 2, Köln, 1991, plate 2, p. 15. xxiv Introduction

Athos, have to date been only partially legible. 1 They, too, are in the one hand and appear to be now separated parts of one tenth-century manuscript, both parts overwritten in the thirteenth century, the Chalcensis with the lines of text overwritten, the Vatopedi ms. with the upper text written at right angles to the underlying text. The title given the work in the Leipzig manuscript, however, is simply A compilation and work truly worthy of imperia/ zeal. The modern description as a book of ceremonies derives from the Latin title De cerimoniis aulae Byzantinae given it in the mid-eighteenth century by its first editor, J.H. Leich, who died in 1750 in the process of editing Book I for publication. This title conforms to the contents of Book I hut is unsatisfactory when applied to much of the material in Book Il. Editions and translations The first edition with accompanying Latin translation was begun by Leich. At the time of bis death hls text had been typeset to page 216 of the Leipzig edition (Bonn ed., Book I, Chapter 75; Vogt ed., Chapter 86).2 The rest was revised and completed by J.J. Reiske and published in Leipzig in two handsome folio volumes (1751-1754). This was reprinted in Bonn in 1829 with some minor editing by Reinhold Niebuhr, as part of the Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae. In 1831 Reiske's commentary, hitherto partially unpublished, was also published in this series. For the text in its entirety it is this Bonn edition (here designated R) which bas been cited in modern scholarship and which is reprinted here below the English translation, with the pagination of the Bonn edition maintained across the two volumes. This is the first modern language translation of the complete text as it survives now in the Leipzig manuscript. Other partial editions and translations are listed in the Bibliography. The most substantial of these bas been the edition, with French translation and commentary, of Book I, Chapters 1 to 83 [V92] by Albert Vogt, 1935-1940. He preserved the numbering of the chapters given in the manuscript, acknowledging the loss of three bifolia after folio 41v. The lacuna begins in Chapter 9 and the text resumes within the manuscript's Chapter 18. The original numbering in the manuscript now prevails. Reiske himself was aware of the lacuna and discussed it in bis commentary, hut the Leipzig edition, for which those early chapters were the work of Leich, had the chapters numbered sequentially without regard for the lacuna (at R61.5). This numbering was perpetuated in the Bonn edition. As the present translation is printed with the Bonn text, the numbering of the chapters of the old editions is retained, with Vogt's edition and chapter numbers indicated with the siglum [V] and, for the remaining chapters of Book I, with the numbering in the manuscript represented with the siglum [cod.]. Another anomaly bas its origins in the eighteenth-century edition. The first 21 folios of the Leipzig manuscript present three short texts before the text of the Book of Ceremonies proper. Leich did not edit them, hut Reiske thought they should not go unpublished so added them as an Appendix to Book I, where they also appear in the Bonn edition. They have since been edited with an English translation and commentary by J. Haldon (1990). Like some chapters of Book Il, these treatises are concemed with the organizing of military expeditions involving the emperor.

For the manuscripts see, most recently, Featherstone, "Preliminary remarks on the Leipzig manuscript of the De Cerimoniis," BZ, 95.2 (2002), 457-79 with a photograph of the Index to Book 2, folios 173v to 175r; Featherstone, "Further remarks on the De Cerimoniis," BZ, 97.1 (2004), 113-121 with 5 photographs of pages of the Leipzig and palimpsest mss. For the palimpsest mss.: Mango & Sevtenko, "A new manuscript," DOP, 14 (1960), 247-49; Featherstone, Grusková & Kresten, "Studien zu den Palimpsestfragmenten des sogenannten 'Zeremonienbuches'," BZ, 98.2 (2005), 423-30. 2 In the Bonn edition Chapter 77 ed. Reiske [hereafter R], revised by Niebuhr (1829); in Vogt's edition (1939, rp 1967) [hereafter VJ, Chapter 86.