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Postprint : Author's Final Peer-Reviewed Version This item is the archived peer-reviewed author-version of: 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 Byzantine empire. 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 Middle Ages, 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 Byzantium, as it refers to the ideals and institutions of the Roman Republic). 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 Dominate, which began with the reign of Diocletian 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 Theophanes the Confessor’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 Caesar. 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 John of Ephesus. 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 Constantinople, John of Ephesus had won the favour of Emperor Justinian I (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.
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