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Power, infirmity and ‘disability’: five case stories on Byzantine emperors and their impairments

Reference: Laes Christian.- Pow er, infirmity and ‘disability’: five case stories on Byzantine emperors and their impairments Byzantinoslavica: revue internationale des études byzantines - ISSN 0007-7712 - 77(2019), p. 211-229 To cite this reference: https://hdl.handle.net/10067/1675340151162165141

Institutional repository IRUA Power, Infirmity and ‘Disability’. Five Case Stories on Byzantine Emperors and Their Impairments*

Christian LAES (Manchester–Antwerpen)

Based on five case stories, this article deals with the relation between power and infirmity in the . It appears that to deal with imperial imperfection practical solutions were often preferred. The idea that a healthy state needed a strong emperor was thus to a certain degree negotiable. At the same time, this study explores the subject of disability and Byzantine emperors. Accusations of impairment often were fluid and rhetorical. Though the anecdotal character of the evidence presents us with real-life evidence on living with a disability, it is primarily the rhetorical and metaphorical aspect that needs to be taken into account.

Introduction: Emperors, popular media, retrospective diagnosis and history of disabilities

Biographical accounts on the physical and mental health of Roman emperors trigger the attention of both popular media and a wide audience. Compared to their Roman predecessors, the Byzantine emperors do less well. For this, one may think of various reasons. On the popular level, there is distrust or disdain, which often go together with the admiration for the exquisitely lavish and refined Byzantine culture, viewed as ‘eastern’ and ‘exotic’ – that is somewhat out of the West-European focus of attention. The less accessible source material, which most ancient historians and mediaevalists are not very familiar with, also plays its role. Finally, Byzantinists themselves have acknowledged that, although physiognomy was a flourishing science up to the high Byzantine , physical portraits of emperors as they appear in the historiographical records are often sober, and lacking the richness of detail that Roman historiographers with their interest in physiognomy and reading the rulers’ bodies often reveal.1 However, Byzantine emperors have recently been part of statistical research on the frequency of violent death and regicide across Europe between 600 and 1800, and some popular surveys now include Byzantine material.2 Also, exceptional features as heterophthalmia or the lack of kneecaps that have been interpreted by Byzantine writers as eschatological signs announcing the end of the world were the subject of scholarly attention.3

In this paper, I study the relationship between imperial power and infirmity. Rather than embarking on a lexicographical study, I define infirmity as a ‘practical’ criterion: the possible and foreseeable difficulties for an emperor to guarantee an efficient exertion of his power, be it by his own diminished capacities or by the way he was viewed by his subjects. The case studies range from the early Byzantine period in the sixth century up to the twelfth century – with one brief mention of the Palaiologan dynasty in the fifteenth century in footnotes 37 and 44. I deal with infirmities as mental abalienation, facial mutilation, disabled imperial off spring, severe war wounds, and blindness. Though this article is not the first to study such infirmities in Byzantine emperors, the rich source material has not yet been exploited to its full extent.4

Despite the growing interest in the themes of health and infirmity in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, history of disabilities of the Byzantine period has been very much underexploited.5 An attentive reading of the sources in our five case studies will not only reveal information that has not been acknowledged before, it will also – and more importantly – show how disability functions at different layers, from the factual to the metaphorical.6

Before embarking upon this research, at least three caveats need to be made. First, retrospective diagnosis based on ancient texts has long since been considered outdated, naïve, and at best most speculative. In other words, historians no longer glance through imperial biographies to find out ‘what was wrong’ with a particular emperor.7 Obviously, this does not mean that such sources may be of great value for the socio-cultural history of the period concerned, as I hope to make clear in this study. Second, any attempt at disability history before the beginning of the nineteenth century and the rise of industrialisation and nation states in the West of Europe should bear in mind that there was not any such category as ‘handicap’ or ‘disability’ – let alone any overarching medically-based terminology which ranked ‘unhealthy citizens’ in a special category to be provided for by state support. Surely, people realized that things could go wrong with physical and mental health, and that in certain cases such condition was permanent and/or incurable. In all, disability was much more used ad hoc, as a fluid and not well-delineated category to evoke pity, to blame a political opponent, to express godly revenge, to indicate holiness, to mark miracles, or simply as an incentive for making fun. Third, one has to bear in mind the specific character of Byzantine emperorship. The imperial title became inextricably connected to absolute power (autokrator), based on religious grounds. What legitimised the emperor was his election by God – a connection between the secular and the divine that was obviously contested in the case of struggles about succession. At the same time, only popular consent could authorise the allocation of power (this is what Kaldellis has called the Roman dimension of , as it refers to the ideals and institutions of the ). The Byzantine empire became famous for its long-established dynasties, but this dynastical principle became established slowly, and 31 usurpers over a period of thousand years prove that imperial power could never be taken for granted. The splendor and luxury of the Byzantine court was viewed with awe and admiration by contemporary writers. This ‘imperial liturgy’ had much in common with the late Roman , which began with the reign of and which already had many elements of authoritarianism and worshiping of the emperor in it.8

The madness of Justin II (565–578): a case of mental abalienation?

The case of Justin II (565–578) reads like an intriguing account on mental alienation, at least showing the same richness of details as the famous madness of King George III (1760–1820), who needed his son to act as Prince Regent in the last ten years of his life. The common Byzantine historiographer’s point of view, as reflected in ’s Chronicle, held that after the loss of the fortress city of Daras in the year 573, the greatness of the disaster plunged the emperor into a deranged state of mind. In the same year, during a lucid spell, he adopted Tiberios as his son and proclaimed him . Already a year before, the emperor had fallen ill, which was9 apparent from his insulting behavior against his brother Badouarios, of which he repented.9 The ‘mad’ emperor lived for another five years, and remarkable accounts survive recording his paranoid-schizophrenic behaviour.10

A remarkable description of the emperor’s mental illness is found in the third book of the third part of the Syriac-written Ecclesiastical History by . It is indispensable to take into account John of Ephesus’ background, which strongly coloured his views on Emperor Justin II.11 As the Monophysite bishop of , John of Ephesus had won the favour of Emperor (527–565), and he was actively involved in missions converting pagans in Asia Minor, building monasteries in these regions, as well as thoroughly rooting out paganism and idolatry in Constantinople and its surroundings. John’s fortune changed, however, when Justin II came to the throne. As a persecutor, he now found himself persecuted by the orthodox Chalcedonian patriarch, who following imperial orders began an intense persecution of the Monophysites. In the third part of his Ecclesiastical History, John of Ephesus is keen on describing his own misery, distress and suffering during these days. But he survived, surely up to 588. His description of Justin’s madness should thus be understood as his looking back on the disease and the unhappy end of an emperor to whom he ascribed his own suffering and unhappy days in prison. Clearly, the mental abalienation is viewed as a kind of revenge or punishment for the injustice John himself had experienced under Justin’s reign.

John of Ephesus is straightforwardly clear about his views on Justin’s illness. For five years, the emperor had behaved well and justly towards all his Christian subjects.12 Troubles began when he started the severe and pitiless persecution of what John calls “the orthodox”, meaning the Monophysites. Note that, contrary to the other historiographers, John has Justin’s insanity beginning earlier, thus before the disaster of Daras in 573 – a clear indication that the mentioning of the emperor’s madness fits in his own program of denouncing the persecution of the Monophysite faction. To John, the imperial affliction was a divine chastisement – the punishment and John’s account of what happened were meant to be a terrifying example for those who in future times will be girt with high power (Hist. Eccl. 3.3.1–2). The symptoms of the illness are depicted in a most detailed way, as both the emperor’s bodily and mental suffering are mentioned. John describes how an evil angel had entered into him, destroyed his mind, and gave his body over to cruel agonies. In a vivid instance of animalization, we get to know that the emperor barked like a dog, bleated like a goat, mewed like a cat, and crowed like a cock (Hist. Eccl. 3.3.2). This account is followed by examples of the emperor’s outrageous demeanor. During attacks of panic, he hid himself under the bed. Because of his suicidal rages, the windows of the palace needed to be closed or fixated with bars. His chamberlains had to seize and even tie him up, but the emperor did not shy away from severely attacking them with his teeth.13 In the true tradition of hagiography and miracle stories, John of Ephesus is keen on stressing the veracity of his account. Though he himself was not near during the events, the whole senate and city, natives and foreigners, bear witness to the truth of the details. His remark that many other things found too unseemly to record in writing is a typical example of a praeteritio, leaving much to the readers’ imagination (Hist. Eccl. 3.3.2). Various attempts were made to restore the emperor to the use of reason. A throne was set on a little wagon, and the chamberlains drew it about, while he was sitting on it and taking delight in the speed. The sound of the organ was another means of calming him down,14 and more conventionally the patriarch came to make the sign of the cross over him. One may easily imagine John of Ephesus’ delight in narrating how the emperor severely struck the patriarch on the head. Other imperial conduct made the ruler the talk of the town: his taking off the patriarch’s pallium, putting it on his head and suggesting it could be a beautiful head kerchief as women have it on their head or his selling imaginative jars to merchants from the window of the imperial palace (Hist. Eccl. 3.3.3). Empress , who was a niece of Theodora, wife of Emperor Justinian I, claimed that the kingdom had come to Justin through her, and now came back to her, since he did not sufficiently honor her. John of Ephesus adds that such was not the common opinion: most presumed, though they did not openly say so, that God had inflicted the punishment on Justin for three reasons: his spilling of innocent blood, his persecution of Christians, and the plundering and spoiling of men’s goods (Hist. Eccl. 3.3.4).

About the year 575, both the senate and Empress Sophia felt that matters of state were in great confusion due to the emperor’s bad health. The decision to appoint Tiberios as a Caesar was taken in consultation with the emperor, who, as John of Ephesus acknowledged, had intervals when he recovered the use of his senses and could converse and reason in a proper way. His abdication speech was famous for its rhetorical strength and clarity, and it was as if an angel stood near him when proclaiming the words (Hist. Eccl. 3.3.5).15 Justin II lived for another four years:

(…) and hopes were long entertained of his recovery, chiefly because of the recurrence of lucid intervals, during which he could be propped up in his chair, and shown to the people, and even taken to the entertainments of the Hippodrome in the morning: and sometimes he was sufficiently well to give audience, and receive the salutations of the senate. Sometimes also he distributed largess to the people, for which purpose they put money into his hand, which he scattered, with the help of his attendants, who guided his arms: but then he would again relapse into his former imbecility, to which were added other trials, especially the painful disease of strangury: so that upon the whole his health constantly declined.16

In the end, his suffering became unbearable, and he would even bid to throw open the gates of the palace so that everyone might come in and see their emperor begging for death to arrive. After a severe and particularly painful urological operation with a deep incision in the groins, the unfortunate emperor only lived for several days (Hist. Eccl. 3.3.6). A progressively deteriorating condition due to a venereal disease or urological problems seems a reasonable diagnosis to explain the events which took place in his final years.17

Herakleios (610–641): Disability and sin

Ever since Edward Gibbon, the long reign of Emperor Herakleios has generally been viewed as a successful one. The defeat of the Persians and the recapture of some eastern provinces of the empire, the recovery of the True Cross, the changing of the official language from to Greek, and the establishing of diplomatic contacts with Serbs and Croats are viewed as the main accomplishments of his reign, which at the same time did not lack political, military, religious or private troubles.18 According to a long standing tradition, again initiated by Gibbon, Herakleios’ second marriage to his niece Martina led to the deformity of his off spring. The great historian of the Roman Empire is quite straightforward in his judgment and prejudice: “the superstition of the Greeks beheld the judgement of heaven in the diseases of the father and his children”.19 Since Herakleios had at least nine children with Martina, this would be a striking instance of Kaiserkritik connecting disability to sin – but as I will make clear, the often repeated assertion about Herakleios’ deformed off spring may stem more from a present-day fascination than from the Byzantine sources themselves. In fact, the documentation on Herakleios and Martina’s children is extremely garbled. The ancient sources severely contradict each other as to the point of making the information hardly comprehensible, and the modern historians who have discussed the matter seem to limit themselves to repeating the view about the couple’s degenerate off spring, without adducing any decisive evidence.20

Surely, Herakleios and his family were often confronted with the sorrows of bad health and disability. His first marriage was to “the delicate Eudokia” whom he married on the day of this coronation (October 7, 610). In less than two years, the empress gave birth to a daughter Epiphania, also called Eudokia, and a son Herakleios Konstantinos.21 The boy was born on May 3, 612, and the mother died on August 14 of the same year. From Nikephoros, we know that Empress Eudokia suffered from epilepsy and died of this disease. When the body was conveyed in a solemn funeral procession, a servant girl, presumably from a balcony, stooped over and spat carelessly into the air. As the spittle fell on the empress’s garment, the angry crowd grabbed her and sentenced her to death by fi re, as a means of purifying the funeral of the empress. The servant’s mistress fled and was thus able to escape the punishment the people would inflict on her also. In his account, the chronicler Nikephoros leaves many things unsaid. Was the servant’s spitting meant as a superstitious act – an apotropaic gesture, in order to hold back the evil which was perceived in the illness of epilepsy? Or was it indeed meant as a sign of disdain and contempt for the afflicted empress, as the crowd seems to have understood it? Physical reactions of common people of the past towards physical deformity are often difficult to understand from the sources, but occasional references about throwing of stones suggest their negative perception of the impaired person.22 Herakleios would not be a widower for a long time. His mother pressed his niece by his sister Maria on him as new wife. Martina was 23 years younger than Herakleios, who was himself about forty when he contracted the second marriage. The marriage took place somewhere in 614, during troublesome times for the Empire and its emperor. In 613, the city of had been captured by the Sasanians under general Sharbaraz, which gave the Persians naval access to the Mediterranean Sea. Things would only get worse. After the fall of Alexandria in 619, deep famine and a great plague fell on the Empire, and in 617 or 619 a promised treaty with the Avars turned out to be an insidious trap. Herakleios barely escaped death, and the countryside around Constantinople was thoroughly plundered and slaughtered by the Avars. Several tributes had to be paid to the barbarians. It is most likely that the tense atmosphere in the city contributed to the disapproval of a marriage that was considered incestuous. It was not unanimously disapproved of though: the Blue party at the Hippodrome in fact supported the emperor, while the Greens tried to prevent it. Sergios, the patriarch of Constantinople, tried to persuade the emperor with letters, but the emperor replied that, though the patriarch was in fact right and had fulfilled his duties as a friend, he himself would take full responsibility for the union.23

In the same sphere of despair and crisis the health problems of the first children were probably linked to the unnatural character of the union.24 That the first off spring of the marriage did not do well is particularly emphasized by Nikephoros. According to him, the first son was born in 614. Named Flavios, he was born with a “neck that would not turn.” Nothing else is said about him, so we may surmise that he died a few years later. The second son, Theodosios was born deaf-mute.25 However, for the year 614 Theophanes Confessor only mentions the birth and baptism of “a second Konstantinos” (to be distinguished from Herakleios Konstantinos, born in 612). Note that Theophanes26 does not mention a disability of Konstantinos, and that he does not even record the name and birth of a second son named Theodosios. Combining the pieces of information by Nikephoros and Theophanes Confessor, it has been suggested that the boy with “the neck that would not turn” was actually called Flavios Konstantinos, while the deaf-mute Theodosios is identical with the Theodosios mentioned later on by Nikephoros. Historians of disability would surely be delighted to know more about his life and the way a deaf-mute dealt with his condition at the imperial court. Theodosios seems to have been married to Nika, daughter of the Persian king Sarbarus. Apparently, his disability was not an impediment to the betrothal. In fact, Nikephoros (Brev. 21) does not even mention the disability when he discusses the union between Theodosios and Nika. Roman law indeed granted the congenitally deaf-mute the right to contract a marriage. However, examples of couples with one or two partners being deaf-mute are hard to find in literary records.27 The only further information we get about Theodosios is that he was still alive when Herakleios died in 641. In fact, his life seems to have been spared, as explained by the Coptic bishop John of Nikiu: “And the second of her sons was a deaf-mute, and so was unfit for the throne. For this reason they did him no injury.”28 Note that John does not mention a name here, so that it is far from certain that he identifies the deaf-mute with Theodosios married to Nika – in all, also the marriage between deaf- mute Theodosios and Nika is uncertain, since it rests on the assumption that the deaf-mute Theodosios would be identical with the Theodosios mentioned later on.29 There are in any case other diffi culties with Nikephoros’ chronology. In Brev. 22 he states that while Herakleios was away in Persia, between 627 and 630, “two of his sons, and two of his daughters had died.” Not only is it completely unclear which daughters are meant. If we accept that “Flavios with the neck that could not turn” died in infancy, it is still unclear who was the second son who had died. It could indeed have been deaf-mute Theodosios. In any case, all the deaths must have occurred in childhood years.30

There were at least five other children of the marriage, but they did not suffer from bad health at all. Flavios Herakleios, also called Heraklonas, was also born in the troublesome period 615–620, lived on to 641 to be emperor very briefly together with his mother Martina. Two other sons, and Marinos, were born around 630, but despite their young age they were appointed Caesars by Herakleios in 641, when he sensed that his end was near.31 At the same time, two daughters named Augoustina and Martina were nominated as Augustae, so again, nothing seems to have been wrong with their health.32

Disabilities turn up again in the tragic last days of Herakleios’ reign. There was his sudden and outspoken fear of water, which made it even impossible for him to cross the Bosporus on a normal boat.33 The attacks of dropsy had become so severe that when the sixty-six-year-old emperor wanted to urinate, a plank had to be put on his abdomen to prevent the penis from turning around and sending urine into his face. Again, Nikephoros remarks that this gruesome condition was a penalty for his moral transgressions and the final judgement for marrying his niece (Brev. 27).34 The emperor’s testament stipulated that his wife Martina would be honored as mother and empress, while Herakleios Konstantios, the son from his first marriage, together with Heraklonas, the oldest surviving son of the second marriage, would reign together as respectively Konstantinos III and Herakleios II. This state of affairs would not last long. Konstantinos III died of tuberculosis after mere four months, but it was rumored that Martina had poisoned him in order to secure the position of her own son, leaving Herakleios II as the sole emperor. Barely eleven years of age, Konstantinos’s son was imposed as co-emperor with the name Konstans II. Soon after, the senate and the parties favoring the dynastic line of Konstantinos III imposed a gruesome punishment on Martina and her sons. Heraklonas’ nose was cut off and he was exiled to Rhodes, while Martina had her tongue amputated. Both were exiled.35 The oriental practice of mutilation was practiced by the Byzantines to signify that the mutilated person was no longer able to hold political power. According to John of Nikiu, both mother and son had their nose amputated. He also mentions how the young princes David and Marinos underwent the same cruel punishment – after which the whole family was exiled to Rhodes.36 It is only John of Nikiu who narrates that Martina’s youngest son was castrated in order to secure that he would not continue the dynasty. The boy did not survive the operation. Again, it is unsure to which son John refers. If it were David or Marinus, the historian could have mentioned the cruel punishment together with the amputation of the nose. But if it was none of them, is he mentioning another son, whose name will remain unknown?37 As mentioned above, John of Nikiu also tells the story of the deaf-mute son who was left in peace, since he was considered unfit to rule.

In all, the amount of approximately ten children made the union between Herakleios and Martina exceptionally fertile, when we compare with the list of Roman emperors and their children – with only and Faustina possibly doing better (twelve to fourteen children).38 Probably four of their children (the boy with the neck that could not turn, the deaf-mute, and two daughters who are never named) died in their infancy. When we consider the harsh demographic regime of the ‘Grim Reaper’ as Scheidel called it, four or five deaths in early childhood were not unusual. As for the disabilities of the children, the tradition only goes back to Nikephoros, who lived about 150 years after the events he described, and to John of Nikiu who, as an Egyptian Monophysite, had always been hostile towards Herakleios. Byzantine writers might as well have perceived the surviving children as proof of the prosperity and fertility of the marriage. That some preferred to emphasize the dark side of the matter, is a clear evidence that disabilities and bad health were used ad hoc, to denote suspicion of an emperor’s acts and deeds in troublesome times. Historians of the modern period from Gibbon on eagerly took over the sensationalist approach, a good story for a wide audience through the ages.

Justinian II (685–695): the mutilated emperor strikes back

There is hardly a more striking example of disability and coping with it than the case of Emperor Justinian II (685–695), the last emperor of the Heraclian dynasty. He succeeded to the throne of his father when he was sixteen. Heavy taxation and disregard for the senate made him unpopular, which lead to a successful coup initiated by the Blues. At the age of 26, the young emperor was subjected to cutting off the nose and tongue (rhinokopia and glossotomia). He was publicly humiliated before the mobs in the Hippodrome and exiled to Cherson in the Crimea.39 There obviously was an autoregressive component to this punishment, since Justinian’s father Konstantinos IV (668–685) had removed his brothers from their positions and had their noses slit.40 From Cherson, Justinian continued to be a fearsome political opponent. When the authorities wanted to bring him to Constantinople, he escaped from Cherson and received help from the Khazars. He even married the sister of their khan and renamed her Theodora. The severe mutilation and disfigurement do not seem to have been an impediment to his second marriage. When he again got into trouble at his new home near the Sea of Azov, he strangled two Khazar officials, who had come to kill him, with his own hands. After his return to Constantinople and during his second reign from 705 to 711, he brutally persecuted his opponents, including Emperor (695–705) who had imposed the punishment of mutilation on him.41

The sources and, as a consequence, most of the scholarly literature are completely silent on almost every detail historians of disabilities would like to know about Justinian’s second reign. How did he manage to speak (in fact, he appears to have been very talkative)? How did the Byzantine people accept that a disfigured person became emperor? Were his cruelty and brutality caused by trauma and longing for revenge after having been subjected to torture himself ? In official portraits, there is no trace of any disfigurement or corrective surgery.42

Moreover, the often-repeated story about his golden nose only appears in the work of the rather unreliable Western chronicler Agnellus of , who mentions a golden nose (but then, he also supposes that Justinian’s nose and ears had been amputated) and cruel revenge.43

The almost complete silence of the Byzantine sources on the matter of Justinian II as the rhinotmetos (also in the modern biography of Justinian by Constance Head) inspired Harry Turtledove to write a novel offering a so-called faction version of Justinian’s life as retold by his likewise fictional lifelong companion, a soldier named Myakes. In the novel, Turtledove speculates that the exiled Justinian had reconstructive surgery performed by an itinerant Indian plastic surgeon to fi x his damaged nose. The Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546–1601) was known as “the man with the golden nose”, as he masked the loss of his nose in a duel with a prosthesis made of gold. While prosthesis and corrective surgery in the case of an amputated nose have been known throughout the centuries, instances of golden noses seem to be very rare.44 In the case of Justinian II, one wonders whether the story might be a resonance of a Hadith story about ‘Arafajah, one of the followers of the prophet Mohammed. When his nose had been cut off , he used a prosthesis of silver. However, since the silver oxidized, the Prophet ordered ‘Arfajah b. As’ad to use a nose of gold.45

Still, the question remains why only a writer from Ravenna, who wrote somewhere between 830 and 945, bothered to mention how Justinian reappeared as an emperor after his mutilation. On the practical level, we may imagine that indeed “words often prove harsher than action” and that the mutilations were never extensive enough to inflict permanent impairment. Perhaps, the disfigurement was so carefully hidden that it was no hindrance for the emperor to hold office.46 There are indeed other examples in Byzantine history of mutilated emperors coming back and regaining their position.47 The fact remains that in other ancient sources inflicted facial disfigurement is presented as the worst of possible cases.48 While the story and surely the behaviour of Justinian II seems to be a case for trauma studies and PTSD par excellence, the Byzantine writers did not have such a category.49 At best, we might speculate that the externally imposed mutilation seems to have been less fi t for personal political invective than deformed off spring or mental insanity, which originated from inside. Such might explain why the subject of Justinian’s mutilation is hardly dished up by the Byzantine writers.

Staurakios (811–812) and the physical impossibility of reigning

It is an understatement to say that Emperor (802–811) does not get the best record in the historic tradition. For this, the contemporary chronicler Theophanes Confessor has been the main author responsible. When the emperor died after his army got trapped by the armies of the Bulgar Khan Krum, Theophanes remarks that Nikephoros’ slaying was in fact a consolation to many persons. However, Theophanes’ nasty observations that this emperor was unsurpassed in his greed, licentiousness and barbaric cruelty (with the innuendo that he used to go to bed with his effeminate servants) must be understood in the context of his disapproval of Nikephoros’ mild politics towards the iconoclasts and the emperor’s financial politics that aimed to make the church subordinate to the state again.50

On Christmas Day of the year 803, Nikephoros had his son , who was at that moment in his early teens, crowned co-emperor. The battle against the Bulgars in 811 did not end well for Staurakios either. Theophanes writes that he “received a fatal blow to the right of his spine and, barely escaping alive from the battle, reached Adrianople, sorely tormented by the wound.”51 Again for the practical side of disability history, many intriguing details are left unsaid by the chroniclers. At the instigation of Stephanos, the domestic of the Schools, Staurakios was proclaimed emperor at the end of July 811. The matter was apparently urgent, and therefore he became the fi rst emperor who was not installed in Constantinople. He spoke to what was left of the army, and in his oration he blamed his own father – a fact over which the soldiers greatly rejoiced. One wonders in what condition the new emperor appeared before the crowds and how he managed to deliver his virulent speech. The writers do not bother to tell more than “Staurakios suffered from a heavy hemorrhage through his urine; his thighs and limbs were paralysed and he was brought to Byzantium in a litter.”52 At his arrival, Patriarch Nikephoros urged the new emperor to propitiate God and to indemnify those who had suffered because of his father. Possibly, a link between Staurakios’ bad condition and his father’s sins was thus established. Theophanes further suggests that the evil character was inherited: with respect to repaying a sum, Staurakios showed himself dilatory, as he hoped to survive the wound anyway. Later on, the unfortunate emperor realized that his condition was incurable and sought to secure the empire for his wife Theophano (their marriage was childless at that point). Things would now move fast. On the first of October, the “implacable emperor” called in the domestic Stephanos and suggested him to blind his brother-in-law Michael, since such would rule him out as a concurrent for the throne. Stephanos replied that this was impossible; and the very same night he assembled the remaining contingents of the tagmata and their officers into the palace in order to proclaim Michael emperor. At dawn, the senate agreed, and so did the patriarch. The solemn proclamation and installation of Michael took place in the Hippodrome on the second of October. When Staurakios heard of the proclamation, he had his hair cut and put on the monastic garb. Both his sister Prokopia and brother-in-law Michael urged him not to be grieved by the situation: it was only because of his life being in utter despair that they had decided to take such measure. Again, Theophanes calls in “his father’s wickedness” to explain why Staurakios did not acquiesce with the events.53 Staurakios’ wife Theophano also became a nun. Her opulent mansion was made into a nunnery, and we may surmise that her husband lived in her surroundings. He was anyway buried in this monastery, after he had died on January 11, 812, having developed ulcers on his back on account of the fatal wound “so that no one could bear to approach him because of the foul stench.”54 His reign is said to have lasted, nominally (δοκεῖν), two months and six days. The use of the word ‘nominally’ by Theophanes is revealing and might suggest that even in the period from July 28 until November 2, 811, the emperor was considered a ruler despite his condition. It should be noted that this ruler was officially installed after his wounding, that he appeared and spoke in public, and that he took active measures to secure his succession and get rid of his opponents. At the same time, both he and his environment realized that this situation could not be prolonged.

The Blinding of Romanos IV Diogenes (1067–1071)

It would be hard to find a story in that is more replete with horror, disgust, cruelty and conspiracy than the narrative describing the blinding of Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes. Tragedy is already guaranteed by the setting and the dramatis personae. Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes lost the to the Turkish Sultan on August 26, 1071. The catastrophic defeat had been preceded by deep internal struggles at the Byzantine court. Romanos was married to Eudokia, who had previously been married to a member of the powerful family. From this first marriage, she had a son named Michael Doukas. Eudokia would always vacillate between faithfulness toward her second husband, and the fear for her sons from her fi rst marriage. In the background stood , one of the most prolifi c authors of Byzantine times, but at the same time perhaps “the most self-centred and self-serving of all contemporary commentators on the history of the empire in the eleventh century.”55 Soon after the disastrous battle of Manzikert, Romanos IV Diogenes was released from his captivity after a treaty with Alp Arslan. By then, Michael VII Doukas had taken the throne. Supported by Psellos, the Doukai did everything in their power to prevent Romanos from returning to his former power. To secure this, blinding was an obvious option, since hardly any Byzantine emperor has been known to continue reigning after this punishment.56

During the civil struggle between the Doukas family and Romanos, the latter and his troops were besieged in the Syrian fortress of . Three accounts of the dramatic episode at Adana survive.

The first, by Michael Psellos, stands out for its somewhat distanced and apologetic tone. When Michael Doukas’ troops had entered the fortress, Romanos presented himself to his enemies, clothed in black and offered his head to be shaved (Psellos points to Romanos’ intention to become a monk). As a captive, he was received by General Andronikos Doukas, who immediately released him from his chains and invited him to partake in a brilliant banquet. However, after this rather joyful beginning, Psellos could not omit the notorious deed which followed. He is eager to stress that the deed took place because “those around the Emperor Michael VII” feared that Diogenes might contrive something new, and possibly cause new troubles to the Doukas emperor. Psellos also stresses that the decision for the deed did not lie with Michael VII at all – on the contrary it was “those around the Emperor” who ordered Romanos’ wards to gouge out his eyes. When the emperor heard about the affair, he wept and strongly condemned the blinding. One is struck by the rather detached tone Psellos uses in the first part of his narrative. At the same time, he emphasizes that Michael VII had no knowledge of the atrocious blinding pointing out that he does not consider “the making of history an exercise in flattery, but rather a truth in every way.”57

The account by is scenic and resembles a movie script. He strongly elaborates on the rapid reversal of fate. After the besieging of Adana by general Andronikos Doukas, the former Emperor Romanos was sent along with the marching army, travelling on a poor donkey, in the monk’s garb and suffering from severe stomach problems, as his foes had tried to poison him. In this lamentable condition, he passed through villages which had previously recognized him as the divine emperor. The same counted for his former bodyguards, who had proudly marched with him and acclaimed him emperor. Romanos was then detained at Kotyaion, where further commands by Michael VII were expected. Finally, “the most evil and most unholy order” for blinding arrived (note that Attaleiates does not hesitate to point to the emperor himself as the one responsible for it). Human weakness, hypocrisy, and cowardice then come up. Rolling on the ground and begging to be spared, Romanos reminded three metropolitans present of a former agreement (perhaps, his vow to enter a monastery?). However, the clerics were unable to off er him any help “for cruel and savage men had snatched him and carried him away.”58

They, however, dispatched him to a small room, and turned him over to a Jew, who was unpracticed in these matters, to undertake the blinding of him. Having bound him by all four limbs, and setting many men to press down on the shield placed on his chest and belly, they brought in the Jew59, who greatly and cruelly vexed Romanos’ eyes with iron.60 He roared from underneath the shield and bellowed like an ox, having none to lament him.61 Nor was he let loose from the punishment after he had suffered this once, but the blinder (...) plunged the iron into his eyes three times, until he swore under oath an assurance, lying prostrate, that all the substance had poured out and away from his eyes. Having been raised and with the eyes drenched in blood, he was a pitiful and miserable sight, a spectacle which called forth from those who saw him in unconstrained lamentation.62

Horror continues in Attaleiates’ description. After the gruesome torture, Romanos was dragged away on a beast of burden. His body was rotten before he died, his head and face were swollen with worms falling from the empty eye-sockets.63 Eventually he was buried on the island of Proti, where he had built a monastery. His wife and former Empress Eudokia took care of the funeral, which was splendid. Attaleiates seasons his narrative with mythological and biblical references; Kronos, mutilated and expelled by his own children, is referred to, since Michael VII was Romanos Diogenes’ stepson, and therefore did not respect the maternal breast which he shared with Romanos’ children. The rotten body of the still living emperor reminds of Lazarus, while his trials and misfortune are compared to Job’s misery.64

Most remarkable to the modern reader’s eye is a rhetorical letter which Michael Psellos sent to Romanos after his blinding. It is of course unlikely that Psellos would ever have sent such a letter. Romanos Diogenes only lived a few days after his blinding during his transfer from Kotyaion to Proti. Moreover, the very bad condition in which he lived makes it very improbable that he would ever have cared about hearing the recitation of such an epistle.

Psellos’ rhetorical device is replete with topoi. Blindness and blinding are indeed described as a severe tribulation, and the writer concludes that he would have preferred to write the letter in his own blood or tears. But then, blindness will enable the martyr Romanos Diogenes to perceive the divine light; indeed, his suffrings will return him to a happier state.

Give praise to God that He made of you, who are a man, an angel, and that having deprived you of your eyes, He adjudged you worthy of a greater light, and He ranked you among his noble athletes. Depriving you of your wordly diadem, He beautifi ed you with a crown he made in heaven. Call to mind the future judgement of God, as those who enjoyed much good fortune in this world shall be either driven off from glory in the next world, or shall be deemed worthy of some slight honour. You, however, shall stand, radiant, at the right side of the judge, brilliantly crowned with the martyr’s diadem. 65

Psellos is particularly eager to stress that Michael VII was highly grieved by the incident, and in no way responsible for it. As such, the letter was mainly intended to protect the emperor from any charge that he had violated the treaty he had concluded with Romanos while the latter was still protected in the fortress of Adana. Ultimately, Psellos also defends himself of any such accusation. In doing so, he aptly makes use of the different literary layers and discourses in which blindness could be used. One wonders how the audience must have received his message. They surely would have recognized the different layers – but it remains doubtful whether they regarded Psellos’ apology as convincing.

Conclusion In general, it is thought that a healthy state needs a strong emperor. The idea of emperor as a representative of God or Christ in earthly matters was not favourable of imperial weakness. Suffering from continuous bad health or infirmity could thus prove an overwhelming task for a Byzantine emperor. However, the above cases reveal that, as in the Latin West, theory and practice often did not overlap. Practical solutions were preferred or things were hidden to deal with imperial imperfection, as much as it was the case in the tradition of the West, in cases concerning impaired kings, aristocrats or priests coping with deformity.66 The mental condition of Justin II lasted for years but he only resigned by his own decision. Herakleios reportedly died in gruesome conditions, but he died as an emperor, despite the continuous rumours about his deformed off spring. Justinian II’s facial mutilation also did not prevent him from maintaining the imperial title and even in his incurable condition, Staurakios stuck to imperial power in order to secure his succession. Finally, the blinding of Romanos IV Diogenes occurred after his throne had been taken by his rival from the Doukas family.

Kaldellis has demonstrated how Byzantine emperors patiently had to bear a range of nicknames, most of which were not flattering, and referring to physical features or conditions. To him, this is proof of the Byzantines having “one of the most irreverent imperial cultures.” In this street’s answers to the splendors of the imperial palace, we see the existence of an unofficial culture, widely known, but not introduced into public discourse.67 We may suspect traces of this culture in the gossips about Herakleios’ deformed off spring, the salient anecdotes on Justin’s madness, or nicknames as rhinotmetos for Justinian II. These could be traces of popular discussions about whether such an emperor could still carry out his duties – although there was no category of impairments that excluded him from remaining in this office.68

When looking more closely at the different texts and contexts, some of the stories show how mental or bodily deficiency acquired a powerful metaphorical role in the Christian world.69 From the Monophysite perspective of John of Ephesus, a mad emperor like Justin II was both a symbol of a world turned upside down, and a divine punishment for unjust persecution of faithful Christians. Links between a bad condition and a sinful past were explicitly made in the case of Herakleios (both for his off spring and his own health), and even in the case of war wounds with Emperor Staurakios, who was also punished for his father’s misbehaviour. The story of Romanos Diogenes’ blinding was depicted either to put the awesome responsibility of his successor Michael VII into the light, or to deny and even smooth down the fact in an attempt to diminish one’s own culpability and the role the emperor had played.

This metaphorical role of disability with a special emphasis on sin – though surely not an exclusive feature in Christian thought70 – may have contributed to disability becoming more of an existential problem in the Christian world. In the global history of disabilities, the emphasis on sins distinguishes our case stories of Byzantine emperors from the Graeco-Roman tradition of imperial biography,71 while the prominent role of bodily mutilation – again not unknown to the Graeco-Roman practice – was another remarkable Byzantine feature, also meant as mark of clemency, since mutilation replaced capital punishment.72

Finally, one may ask how these stories about Byzantine emperors relate to the history of disabilities. As this article deals with human suffering, the reader is certainly familiar with some of the subjects. Indeed, mental abalienation of a ruler turned mad by the continuous pain caused by an urological condition, the despair of having disabled off spring when dynastic continuation was at stake, the lasting stigma of facial mutilation, the inability to perform his duties following a serious wounding or blinding are conditions which are more or less recognizable, given the fact that human beings throughout different cultures and times share bodily experiences. By offering parallels with texts from and studies related to Graeco-Roman Antiquity, I hope to have added to the picture of what it meant to live with a permanent infirmity for a Byzantine emperor. The mere fact that the Byzantine stories, often more vivid and detailed than the sources from Antiquity, hardly turn up in surveys on the history of disabilities leads one to suspect that a thorough investigation of the Byzantine material will reveal much more of the multiple facets of being considered as ‘disabled’ or living with a disability in the Byzantine world. At the same time, careful and close reading of the sources shows that they are much more than ‘just good stories.’ Whether living with a permanent impairment also meant being a ‘disabled emperor’ depended very much on the eye of the beholder – that is the interplay between interpretation of conditions of everyday life, public opinion, and the interpretation of the historians.73

Christian Laes

University of Manchester – University of Antwerp

Samuel Alexander Building (S 2.15)

Oxford Road, Manchester, M 13 9 PL

University of Manchester [email protected]

Notes

* This article owes a lot to the most useful suggestions of two anonymous referees. I am most grateful to them. Any mistakes remain of course my own.

1 C. HEAD, Physical Descriptions of the Emperors in Byzantine Historical Writing, Byz 50/ 1, 1980, 226 –240. This article mostly though not exclusively focuses on ‘positive’ descriptions of emperors’ physical beauty (cf. p. 230 on Justin II who will be treated in the present article: Unfortunate Justin II, insane through most of his reign, is still remembered in Leo Grammaticus’ chronicle as strikingly handsome). See E. C. EVANS, Physiognomics in the Ancient World, Philadelphia 1969, for a most valuable account of the Graeco-Roman physiognomic tradition, including reading of the emperor’s body. M. KOKOSZKO, Descriptions of Personal Appearance in ’ Chronicle, Łódź 1998, 20 on Byzantine physiognomics; 34–52 on physiognomics in historiographical literary descriptions; 102– 118 on imperial portraits of Byzantine emperors.

2 M. EISNER, Killing Kings. Patterns of Regicide in Europe, AD 600–1800, British Journal of Criminology 51/3, 2011, 556–577. In the wake of this study J. A. STUMPF, On the Mutilation and Blinding of Byzantine Emperors from the Reign of I until the Fall of Constantinople, Journal of Ancient History and Archaeology 4/3, 2017, 46–54 has calculated on p. 51 that a Byzantine emperor was slightly more likely to get killed than to get blinded or mutilated, and that there was an autoregressive component of the phenomenon, with emperors being treated in a similar way as their pre-predecessors, also in cases of mutilation. For examples of popularizing approaches, I only cite H. AL BUSTANI, To Spite a Face – Mutilation as Punishment in the Byzantine Empire, Ancient History Magazine 18, 2018, 22–25.

3 W. BRANDES, Anastasios ὁ ΔIκορος: Endzeitserwartung und Kaiserkritik in Byzanz um 500 n. Chr., BZ 90/1, 1997, 24–63 with p. 57–60 on Emperor Anastasios and heterophthalmia; p. 61–62 on Emperor Zenon and missing kneenaps. However, physiognomics and bodily infirmity never were part of the stock phrases of Kaiserkritik in Byzantine historiography: F. H. TINNEFELD, Kategorien der Kaiserkritik in der byzantinischen Historiographie. Von Prokop bis , München 1971.

4 L. GARLAND, Byzantine Empresses. Women and Power in Byzantium, AD 527–1204, London 1999, 136–157 on Eudokia, Zoe and Theodora, children to the Emperor Konstantinos VIII. C. JOUANNO, Le corps du prince dans la Chronographie de Michel Psellos, Kentron 19/ 1–2, 2003, 205–221, with p. 214–215 on Byzantine emperors trying to keep up appearances by hiding their infirmities when present in public ceremonies. See also two thorough studies by K.-H. LEVEN, Byzantinische Kaiser und ihre Leibärzte. Zur Darstellung der Medizin der Komnenenzeit durch Niketas Choniates, Würzburger medizinhistorische Mitteilungen 9, 1991, 73–104. K.-H. LEVEN, Die unheilige Krankheit – Epilepsia, Mondsucht und Besessenheit in Byzanz, Würzburger medizinhistorische Mitteilungen 13, 1995, 17– 57, with p. 47–50 on Michael IV. For a succinct overview of disabilities at the Byzantine court, see C. LAES, Disability at Court. Byzantine Emperors, in: Dis/ability History der Vormoderne. Ein Handbuch. Premodern Dis/ability History. A Companion, C. Nolte–B. Frohne–U. Halle–S. Kerth (eds.), Aff alterbach 2017, 222–226.

5 See recently S. EFTHYMIADIS, The Disabled in the Byzantine Empire, in: Disability in Antiquity, C. Laes (ed.), London–New York 2017, 388 –402. Blinding has received more scholarly attention by Byzantinists. See already O. LAMPSIDES, Η ποινὴ τῆς τυφλώσεως παρὰ Βυζαντινοῖς, Athens 1949. See p. 31–33 for a list of Byzantine emperors who underwent the punishment of blinding: Phokas, Konstantinos VI, Michael V, Romanos IV Diogenes, , Isaak II Angelos, Alexios V and Ioannes IV Laskaris. See also J. HERRIN, Blinding in Byzantium, in: Polypleuros nous: Miscellanea für Peter Schreiner zu seinem 60. Geburtstag, C. Scholz–G. Makris (eds.), München 2000, 56–68.

6 Both the factual and the metaphorical have been succesfully combined by D. WOODS, On the Health of the Emperor Heraclius c. 638 – 641, BSl 64, 2006, 99–110, who on p. 99–105 sees the construction of a pontoon bridge to cross the Bosphoros as a way of not frightening the horses that had to be transported or as the preservation of an oath he had sworn (rather than a symptom of the emperor’s sudden hydrophobia as a consequence of mental breakdown or post-traumatic stress disorder). Woods also deals with Herakleios’ difficulties to urinate and the use of a board, which he relates to an abdominal wound that made it painful to produce a bowel movement (p. 106–110). At the same time, he acknowledges that Byzantine writers viewed painful genital conditions as divine punishment (see esp. p. 106–107 on the metaphorical level).

7 On such approaches and the problems involved, see A. KARENBERG–F. P. MOOG, Next Emperor Please! No End to Retrospective Diagnostics, Journal of the History of Neurosciences 13, 2004, 143– 149. C. LAES, Disabilities and the Disabled in the Roman World. A Social and Cultural History, Cambridge 2018, 10–11. For the Byzantine context, we have a remarkable series of articles by John Lascaratos at our disposal. Published in medical journals, they focus very much on retrospective diagnosis. I only mention (inter multa alia!) the studies that involve Byzantine emperors or the Byzantine court: J. LASCARATOS–C. TSIAMIS, Two Cases of Smallpox in Byzantium, International Journal of Dermatology 41/11, 2002, 792–795 (mentioning Eudokia). J. LASCARATOS–A. KOSTAKOPOULOS–E. POULAKOU-REBELAKOU, Urolithiasis on the Byzantine Throne, Urology 58, 2001, 631–634 (kidney and bladder stone, combined with gout, with Emperors Justinian I, Justin II, Irene, Michael II, Leon VI, Zoe Karbonospina, Ioannes VI Kantakouzenos). J. LASCARATOS–D. VOROS, Fatal Wounding of the Byzantine Emperor the Apostate (361–363 A.D.): Approach to the Contribution of Ancient Surgery, World Journal of Surgery 24/ 5, 2000, 615–619. J. LASCARATOS, “Eyes” on the Thrones: Imperial Ophthalmologic Nicknames, Survey of Ophthalmology 44/1, 1999, 73–78 (Anastasios I Dikoros, Alexios V Doukas Mourtzouphlous, Andronikos I Komnenos Misophaes and Empress Zoe Karvounopsina). J. LASCARATOS–E. POULAKOU-REBELAKOU, Did Justinian the Great (527–565 CE) Suffer from Syphilis? International Journal of Dermatology 38/ 10, 1999, 787–791. J. LASCARATOS –V. MANDUVALOS, Cases of Stroke on the Throne of Byzantium, Journal of the History of the Neurosciences 7/1, 1998, 5–10 (Alexander, Michael IX Paleologos and Manuel II Paleologos). J. LASCARATOS–P. J. VIS, The Epilepsy of the Emperor Theodore II Lascaris (1254–1258), Journal of Epilepsy 11/ 6, 1998, 296–300. J. LASCARATOS, The “Anthrax” of Two Byzantine Emperors: Konstantinos V (741–775) and Leo IV (775–780), International Journal of Dermatology 36/ 9, 1997, 712–716. J. LASCARATOS–S. MARKETOS, The Fatal Disease of the Byzantine Emperor Andronikos III Palaeologus (1328–1341 A.D.), Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 90/2, 1997, 106–109 (on malaria as the emperor’s cause of death). J. LASCARATOS, ‘Arthritis’ in Byzantium (AD 324–1453): Unknown Information from Non-Medical Literary Sources, Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases 54/12, 1995, 951–957 (with a list of fourteen Byzantine emperors supposedly suffering from arthritis). J. LASCARATOS–S. MARKETOS, The Penalty of Blinding During Byzantine Times, Documenta Ophthalmologica 81/1, 1992, 133 –144. Much more refined by its careful contextualisation of medical terminology is a study on the prolonged and apparently incurable sufferings of Emperor and his inability to breathe, which was cured by a therapeutic method called aiora: M. KOKOSZKO, Medycyna bizantyńska na temat aiora (αἰώρα), czyli kilka słów o jednej z procedur terapeutycznych zastosowanych w kuracji cesarza Aleksego I Komnena (na podstawie pismmedycznych Galena, Orybazjusza, Aecjusza z Amidy i Pawła z Eginy, in: Cesarstwo bizantyńskie. Dzieje – religia– kultura. Studia ofi arowane Profesorowi Waldemarowi Ceranowi przez uczniów na 70-lecie jego urodzin, P. Krupczyński–M. J. Leszka (eds.), Łódź 2006, 87–111.

8 Important works on Byzantine imperial offi ce include G. DAGRON, Empereur et prêtre. Étude sur le « césaropapisme » byzantin, Paris 1996, or A. KALDELLIS, The Byzantine Republic. People and Power in New Rome, Cambridge Mass.–London 2015, completely ignore the matter of an emperor’s infi rmity, though impairment or illness could be crucial in order to invalidate an emperor’s status. The topic is e.g. not referred to in DAGRON, Empereur et prêtre, op. cit., 33–73 on “hérédité, légitimité, succession”. 9 Theophanes Confessor, Chron. A.M. 6065 –6067 (on Daras, and on the behaviour agains Badouarios); Evagrios, Eccl. Hist. 5.11; John of Epiphania, fr. 5 (on the adaption and proclamation of Tiberios). For editions and translations, see respectively The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor. Byzantine and Near Eastern History AD 284–813. Translated with Introduction and Commentary by Cyril Mango and Roger Scott with the Assistance of Geoffrey Greatrex, Oxford 1997 and Theophanis Chronographia. Recensuit Carolus De Boor, Leipzig 1883; The Ecclesiastical History of . Translated with an Introduction by Michael Whitby, Liverpool 2000 and The Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius with the Scholia. Edited with Introduction, Critical Notes, and Indices by Joseph Bidez and Léon Parmentier, London 1898; History of the submission of Chosroës the Younger to the . By John of Epiphania the Scholastic and the Expraefectus. Translated by Scott Kennedy, 2008 [http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/ john_of_epiphania.htm] and Fragmenta historicorum graecorum. Edidit Carl Müller. Vol. 4, Paris 1851, 272–276. For a comparison with the madness of king George, see P. HORDEN, Hospitals and Healing from Antiquity to the Later Middle Ages, Aldershot 2008, 192.

10 His disease has been viewed as a terminal urological disease by LASCARATOS–KOSTAKOPOULOS– POULAKOU- -REBELAKOU, Urolithiasis, op. cit. 631–634 and E. POULAKOU-REBELAKO–K. TSIAMES, Το θανατηφόρο νόσημα του αυτοκράτορα Ιουστίνου Β΄ (565–578 μ.Χ.), Ελληνική Ογκολογία 44/1, 2008, 17–21. Both articles rely very much on a reading of the sources that tends to neglect both the metaphorical layers of the testimonies on imperial madness and the theological background.

11 See J. J. VAN GINKEL, John of Ephesus. A Monophysite Historian in Sixth-Century Byzantium, Groningen 1995, for a thorough study on John of Ephesus. For this section, I have made use of the Latin translation by Brooks, which closely follows the Syriac word order of the original text. See E. W. Brooks (ed.), Iohannis Ephesini Historiae Ecclesiasticae: pars tertia, Leuven 1935; E. W. Brooks (ed.), Iohannis Ephesini Historiae Ecclesiasticae: pars tertia. Interpretatus est, Leuven 1936. (Trans.) R. Payne Smith, The Third Part of the Ecclesiastical History of John Bishop of Ephesus, Oxford 1860.

12 Witness also the imperial eulogy written in Latin by Corippus in 565: Éloge de l’empereur Justin II. Texte établi et traduit par S. Antès, Paris 1981.

13 On ancient shock therapy, which could consist of binding the alienated, see F. STOK, Follia e malattie mentali nella medicina dell‘età romana, Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II, 37/ 3, Berlin–New York 1996, 2282–2409, 2390–2391. LAES, Disabilities and the Disabled, op. cit., 73. Biting and grinding teeth is often considered a typical behavior of possessed lunatics, as in Mark 9:17–20. See LAES, Disabilities and the Disabled, op. cit., 77. Suicidal rages and consequently closing windows are also mentioned by ancient physicians. See LAES, Disabilities and the Disabled, op. cit., 74. See also A. SAMELLAS, Alienation: The Experience of the Eastern Mediterranean (50–600 A.D.), Bern 2010, 171–186 on demons, depression and suicide with early Christian writers.

14 On the Graeco-Roman tradition of music therapy, see P. LAIN ENTRALGO, La curación por la palabra en la antiguëdad clásica, Madrid 1958. LAES, Disabilities and the Disabled, op. cit., 74. SAMELLAS, Alienation, op. cit., 185 links ancient music therapy with the cure of Justin II.

15 A. CAMERON, An Emperor’s Abdication, BSl 37, 1976, 161–167. V. VALDENBERG, Le discours de Justin II à Tibère, Bulletin de l’Académie des sciences de Russie, 1928, 111–140 both point to the multiple versions and traditions that changed throughout times, resulting in the fact that the surviving fragments of this speech cannot be approached in order to reconstruct an ‘authentic’ version.

16 Hist. Eccl. 3.3.6, (transl.) Payne Smith. 17 See E. KISLINGER, Der kranke Justin II und die ärtzliche Haftung bei Operationen in Byzanz, JÖB 36, 1986, 39–44 for a richly documented study on painful discharge of urine, kidney stones and urological operations in the late ancient and the Byzantine period. Cf. supra note 10 for studies that, unlike Kislinger, merely focus on the medical-urological side of the matter.

18 See D. DIMITROV, Нова Ираклиада: Образът на един византийски император в историографията, литературата и изобразителното изкуство, in: I. Lasarov (ed.), България, земя на блажени... In memoriam Professoris Iordani Andreevi, Veliko Tarnovo 2009, 135–154 on the most positive image of Emperor Heraclius and his reign in the western mediaeval tradition, in European baroque, and in the modern academic tradition, starting with Edward Gibbon.

19 E. GIBBON, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Vol. 5 and 6, London 1788, 27. Note that Edward Gibbon himself was the only child of his parents to survive infancy, which may have impacted his later research.

20 A. N. STRATOS, Byzantium in the Seventh Century. Vol. 1: 602–634, Amsterdam 1968, 358 (list with assumed ten children). W. E. KAEGI, Herakleios. Emperor of Byzantium, Cambridge 2003, 107 (Many of their children were born with defects – the statement is made without any further reference).

21 STRATOS, Byzantium Seventh Century, op. cit., 94 (delicate Eudokia). Nikephoros, Brev. 7 and Theophanes Confessor, Chron., op. cit., A.M. 6102–6103 on Herakleios’ fi rst marriage. See Nicephori Archiepiscopi Constantinopolitani Opuscula Historica. Edidit Carolus De Boor. Accedit Diaconi Vita Nicephori, Leipzig 1880 for text edition of Nikephoros. A translation in An Eyewitness to History. The Short History of Nikephoros our Holy Father the Patriarch of Constantinople. Translation Norman Tobias and Anthony R. Santoro. Historical Commentary Norman Tobias, Brookline, MA 1989. See Nikephoros, Brev., op. cit., 16 and Theophanes Confessor, Chron., op. cit., A.M. 6102, 6104 (on Epiphania quae et Eudokia). Nikephoros, Brev., op. cit., 5 and Theophanes Confessor, Chron., op. cit., A.M. 6103 (birth of Herakleios Konstantinos). See J. R. Martindale (ed.), The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire. Volume Three: A.D. 527–641, Cambridge 1992, 586–587 for a list of all literary references to Herakleios’ off spring.

22 Nikephoros, Brev., op. cit., 8. See E. S. McCartney, On Spitting into the Hands as a Superstitious Act, The Classical World 27, 1934, 99–100 on spitting as an apotropaic gesture. C. LAES, Learning from Silence: Disabled Children in Roman Antiquity, Arctos 42, 2008, 85–122, 115–116 on throwing stones at people perceived as mad men.

23 KAEGI, Herakleios, op. cit., 106–107; 260–261; 313–315 on the marriage (but proposing the year 622 or 623 for its beginning). GARLAND, Byzantine Empresses, op. cit., 61–72, whose chronology I follow here.

24 See C. LAES, How Does One Do the History of Disability in Antiquity? One Thousand Years of Case Studies, Medicina nei Secoli 23/3, 2011, 915–946, 931–936 on Siamese twins who were viewed as a bad omen during the crisis of the year 944 in Constantinople, when Lekapinos was exiled.

25 Nikephoros, Brev., op. cit. 14.

26 Theophanes Confessor, Chron., op. cit., A.M. 6106.

27 Digesta 23.3.73pr. (Paulus). See C. LAES, Silent Witnesses. Deaf-mutes in Greco-Roman Antiquity, The Classical World 104, 4, 2011, 451–473, 467. Suggestions about deaf-mute people living together in Augustine De Magistro 3.5; theoretical possibility of two deaf-mutes being married by Augustine, De quantitate animae 18.32 (both quoted in LAES, Silent Witnesses, op. cit., 468). 28 Chronique de Jean, évêque de Nikiou. Texte éthiopien publié et traduit par H. Zotenberg, Paris 1883 and The Chronicle of John, Coptic Bishop of Nikiu. Translated by R. H. Charles, London 1916, 120.54.

29 See STRATOS, Byzantium Seventh Century. Vol. 1, op. cit., 358: Theodoros (Ducange) born deaf and dumb. Died young, who does not accept such identification.

30 See the reconstruction by STRATOS, Byzantium Seventh Century, op. cit., 358: 1. Flavios Constantinos born defective and died a few years later, 3. Theodoros (Ducange) born deaf and dumb. Died young. Also, but on grounds completely unclear to me, Stratos supposes another Flavios or Favios of whom we know nothing.

31 Nikephoros, Brev., op. cit., 27.

32 Nikephoros, Brev., op. cit., 27.

33 Cf. supra note 5.

34 WOOD, Health of the Emperor Heraclius, op. cit., 106–110. See also J. LASCAROS–E. POULAKOU- REMBELAKOU- –S. MARKETOS, The First Case of Epispadias: an Unknown Disease of the Emperor Heraclius (610–641 AD), British Journal of Urology 76, 1995, 380–383 have thought about the rare condition of epispadias, a swelling of the penis that leads to renal failure.

35 Theophanes Confessor, Chron., op. cit., A.M. 6133.

36 John of Nikiu, op. cit., 120.52.

37 John of Nikiu, op. cit., 120.54.

38 W. SCHEIDEL, Emperors, Aristocrats, and the Grim Reaper: Towards a Demographic Profi le of the Roman Elite, The Classical Quarterly 49/1, 1999, 254–281, see especially 221–222 (on Marcus Aurelius and Faustina).

39 Theophanes Confessor, Chron., op. cit., A.M. 6187.

40 STUMPF, Mutilation and Blinding, op. cit., 48–49.

41 On Justinian II, see particularly the monograph by C. HEAD, Justinian II of Byzantium, Madison– Milwaukee– London 1972. Before the publication of this monograph, two articles by C. Head namely, On the Date of Justinian II’s Restoration, Byz 39, 1969, 104–107 and Towards a Reinterpretation of the Second Reign of Justinian II, Byz 40, 1970, 14–32 have already reassessed the views on Justinian’s supposedly cruel and revengeful reign after his return. I. DUJČEV, Le triomphe de l’empereur Justinien II en 705, in: Βυζάντιον: αφιέρωμα στον Ανδρέα Ν. Στράτο, 2 vols., Athens 1986, 83–91 and A. N. STRATOS, Byzantium in the Seventh Century. Vol. 5: Justin II, Leontius and 685–711, Amsterdam 1980, 72 and 124–125 specifically deal with Justinian’s return and revenge after his disfigurement.

42 Mention should be made here of the Carmagnola head on a balustrade in the loggia of the Cathedral of San Marco in . This finely sculpted head represents a Byzantine emperor and shows a curiously deformed nose. It has been tentatively identified as a portrait of Justinian II, in which case one has to presuppose Byzantine knowledge of a technique from northern India, Indian rhinoplastic technique being well developed in the seventh century. See J. P. REMENSNYDER–M. E. BIGELOW–R. M. GOLDWYN, Justinian II and Carmagnola: A Byzantine Rhinoplasty? Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery 63/1, 1979, 19–25, who carefully take into consideration that missing, broken or reconstructed noses are in fact found with many statues. STUMPF, Mutilation and Blinding, op. cit., 47 mentions nasal reconstruction in India dating to 1000 BCE.

43 HEAD, Justinian II, op. cit., 112–113 (official portraits). Agnellus of Ravenna, Liber Pontificalis Ecclesiae Ravennatis, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Scriptores rerum Langobardicarum et Italicarum saec. VI-IX, G. Waitz (ed.), Berlin 1878, 367.

44 H. TURTLEDOVE, Justinian, New York 1998. G. SPERATI, Amputation of the Nose Throughout History, Acta Otorhinolaryngologica Italica 29, 2009, 44–50.

45 M. GHALY, Islam and Disability. Perspectives in Theology and Jurisprudence, London–New York 2010, 128–129.

46 Suggestion by Stratos, Byzantium Seventh Century. Vol. 5, op. cit., 72 and 124–125.

47 Both Andronikos IV and his young son John VI were blinded by pouring boiling vinegar in their eyes. The attempt to blind them completely failed (it was rumoured that Andronikos’ wife had healed him while she visited him in prison). Andronikos IV reigned again from 1376 to 1379. See Laonici Chalcocondylae Historiarum Libri Decem, I. Bekker (ed.), Bonn 1843, 60–62. For translations, see The Histories, Volume I: Books 1–5, A. Kaldellis (trans.), Harvard 2014 and The Histories, Volume II: Books 6–10, (trans.) A. Kaldellis, Harvard 2014. See also J. HARRIS, The End of Byzantium, New Haven–London 2010, 46–51.

48 See e.g. Curtius Rufus, Hist. 5.5.10–16 and Plutarch, Caes. 45.2–4, on which see C. F. SALAZAR, The Treatment of War Wounds in Graeco-Roman Antiquity, Leyden 2000, 35.

49 The literature on post-traumatic disorder in Antiquity is expanding. See, as a thought-provoking example, the blog by P. KRUSCHWITZ, War, Combat, Trauma, and Poetry: Evidence for PTSD in the Latin Verse Inscriptions [https://thepetrifi edmuse.wordpress.com/2015/11/13/war-combat-trauma- and-poetry- -evidence-for-ptsd-in-the-latin-verse-inscriptions/] (retrieved February 12, 2018)

50 Theophanes Confessor, Chron., op. cit., A.M. 6303. W. TREADGOLD, The Byzantine Revival 780– 842, Stanford 1988, 152–155 and 174–177 is the most thorough account on the story of Emperor Staurakios and the sad death of his predecessor Nikephoros I.

51 Theophanes Confessor, Chron., op. cit., A.M. 6303.

52 Theophanes Confessor, Chron., op. cit., A.M. 6303.

53 Theophanes Confessor, Chron., op. cit., A.M. 6303 narrates all these events of the year 811.

54 Theophanes Confessor, Chron., op. cit. A.M., 6304.

55 S. VRYONIS, Jr., Michael Psellos, Michael Attaleiates: the Blinding of Romanos IV at Kotyaion (29 June 1072) and His Death on Proti (4 August 1072), in: Porphyrogenita: Essays in Honour of Julian Chrysostomides, C. Dendrinos–J. Harris–E. Harvalia-Crook–J. Herrin (eds.), Burlington 2003, 3–14 has aptly summarised and commented upon the tragic event of Romanos’ blinding. See p. 5 for the quote. See also T. KOTALA, Sprawa upadku cesarza bizantyńskiego Romana IV Diogenesa (1071), in: Krupczyński–Leszka (eds.), Cesarstwo bizantyńskie. Dzieje – religia– kultura, op. cit., 139–156 for a favourable view of Emperor Romanos and a rather negative of Psellos. On Michael Psellos, see e.g. A. KALDELLIS, The Argument of Psellos’ Chronographia, Boston 1999. A. VRATIMOS, –Romanos IV Diogenes: Textual Parallels in the Chronographia of Michael Psellos, ZRVI 48, 2011, 51–60 has pointed to six parallels in the stories of the blinding of Emperors Michael IV and Romanos IV, showing how Psellos adapted and fabricated details in order to bring them into agreement with his political views and thoughts.

56 Isaak II Angelos, after being blinded, was raised from the dungeon to the purple for a short second reign in 1203–1204, but in fact it was his son Alexios IV Angelos who acted as the eff ective monarch, while Isaak had to be “lead by the hand” (χειραγωγούμενος). See Nicetae Choniatae Historia, I. A. Van Dieten, 2 vol., Berlin–New York 1975, 550. Note that neither Choniates bothers to give many details about the practicalities of this second reign of this blind emperor.

57 Psellos, Chronographia, op. cit., 7.145–164. See VRYONIS, Psellos, op. cit., 5–6. See Michaelis Pselli Chronographia, D. R. Reinsch, (ed.), Band I: Einleitung und Tekst, Berlin–Boston 2014.

58 Michael Attaleiates, Hist., 174. For text edition, see Michaelis Attaliotae Historia, I. Bekker (ed.), Bonn 1853. A recent translation in: The History. Michael Attaleiates, A. Kaldellis–D. Krallis (trans.), Harvard 2012.

59 Turks and Jews were known as people who carried out the punishment of blinding. See LAMPSIDES, Η ποινὴ τῆς τυφλώσεως, op. cit., 57–58.

60 LAMPSIDES, Η ποινὴ τῆς τυφλώσεως, op. cit., 46–53 for a list of methods of blinding and the vocabulary that relates to it. Lampsides distinguishes between pouring noxious liquid in the eyes, the use of a burning iron or fi re held close to the eyes, and piercing the eyes with a spear.

61 LAMPSIDES, Η ποινὴ τῆς τυφλώσεως, op. cit., 60–61 on the fact that there were often no witnesses to the torture.

62 Michael Attaleiates, Hist., op. cit., 174–179, (trans.) VRYONIS, Psellos, op. cit., 7–9.

63 LASCARATOS–MARKETOS, Penalty of Blinding, op. cit., 141–142 suspect infected wounds as the cause of death.

64 Michael Attaleiates, Hist., op. cit., 174–179.

65 Psellos, Epist., vol. 5, 316–318. See Michael Psellos. Historikoi Logoi, Epistolai kai alla anekdota, K. N. Sathas (ed.), Venice 1872 for the edition; VRYONIS, Psellos, op. cit., 9–11 (transl.).

66 LAES, Byzantine emperors, op. cit., 225–226 on theory and practice of ‘strong’ emperors not being in accordance. R. HIESTAND, Kranker König – kranker Bauer, in: Der kranke Mensch im Mittelalter und Renaissance, P. Wunderli (ed.), Düsseldorf 1986, 61–77 on examples from the Latin West concerning kings and aristocrats. I. METZLER, Then and Now. Canonical Law on Disabilities, in: Disability in Antiquity, C. Laes (ed.), London– New York 2017, 455–467 on (imperfect) priests and canonical law.

67 KALDELLIS, Byzantine Republic, op. cit., 146–147.

68 EFTHYMIADIS, Disabled, op. cit., 391–392 on nicknames and Byzantine emperors.

69 J. TONER, Roman Disasters, Cambridge 2013, 108–130.

70 D. OGDEN, The Crooked Kings of Ancient Greece, London 1997, has traced the theme for dynasties of Ancient Greece. For the Graeco-Roman tradition, see the indices in LAES, Disabilities and the Disabled, op. cit., sub verbo sin. 71 Recently F. SITTIG, Psychopathen in Purper. Julisch-claudischer Caesarenwahnsinn und die Konstruktion historischer Realität, Stuttgart 2018, has showed how Roman descriptions of emperors’ mental abalienation rather serve to construct ideas of ideal statemanship.

72 EFTHYMIADIS, Disabled, op. cit., 392.

73 R. GARLAND, The Eye of the Beholder. Deformity and Disability in the Graeco-Roman World, Bristol 2010² is a most readable initial foray of disability studies into the classical world (first edition 1995).