Constantinople: Capital of Byzantium This page intentionally left blank Constantinople: Capital of Byzantium JONATHAN HARRIS Continuum UK Continuum US The Tower Building 80 Maiden Lane 11 York Road Suite 704 London SE1 7NX New York, NY 10038 www.continuumbooks.com Copyright © Jonathan Harris 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechani- cal, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission from the publishers. First published 2007 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 9780826430861 Typeset by codeMantra, India Printed by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall For E.L.F. This page intentionally left blank Contents List of Illustrations viii List of Abbreviations i x Maps x i Acknowledgements xvi I n t r o d u c t i o n 1 1 The City of Wonders 4 2 Founding Fathers 18 3 Defence 40 4 Palaces and Power 59 5 Churches and Monasteries 84 6 ‘Two Thirds of the Wealth of this World’ 108 7 Democracy 128 8 The Beginning of the End 149 9 The Ruin of Byzantine Constantinople 169 10 Epilogue: Byzantine Constantinople Today 193 Notes 206 Bibliography 255 Index 276 Illustrations 1 Mosaic of Constantine and Justinian, Hagia Sophia 2 Remains of the Arch of Theodosius on the site of the Forum of Theodosius 3 The Aqueduct of Valens 4 The Basilika cistern 5 The Hippodrome 6 Mosaic of Constantine IX and the Empress Zoe, Hagia Sophia 7 Marble roundel of a Byzantine Emperor, Campello de Ca’angaran, Venice 8 Gold Hyperpyron of Alexios III Angelos 9 Porphyry sculpture of the Tetrarchs, Venice 10 Mosaic of Theodore Metochites, Church of St Saviour in Chora Abbreviations B = Byzantion BMGS = Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies BZ = Byzantinische Zeitschrift DOP = Dumbarton Oaks Papers JHS = Journal of Hellenic Studies REB = Revue des Études Byzantines This page intentionally left blank M a p s 1 The city of Constantinople 2 The Byzantine empire in 1200 3 The Byzantine empire in 1265 This page intentionally left blank 0.5 Oiplokionion 0.5 Holy Saviour in Chora BOSPORUS Droungarios Gate Monastery of St George of Mangana Stoudios Monastery 1 The city of Constantinople 0 100 300 Miles 0 100 400 Kms Caucasu s Mts R. Danube R. Sinope Araxes Zara Trebizond Serdica Adrianople Philippopolis Chalcedon Dyrrachion Constantinople Nikomedia Ancyra R Thessalonica Nicaea . H s aly R. Tig ris Abydos Mosul Lemnos Pergamon Edessa Larissa Lesbos Smyrna Arta Thebes Chios Ephesus R Athens Aleppo . Antioch Eu Corinth phrates Cyprus Crete Beirut Damascus Caesarea Jerusalem 2 The Byzantine empire in 1200 Develton Dorylaion Ioannina AEGEAN Konya 3 The Byzantine empire in 1265 Acknowledgements I am well aware that the title of this book might cause some eyebrows to be raised. After all, Constantinople and Byzantium are but two names for the same city. The fact is that nowadays the word ‘Byzan- tium’ has come to have a dual meaning. It can be used to denote the city of Constantinople before its transformation by Constantine but it can also be a way of referring to the Byzantine empire and civilization as a whole. In a book like this, such double usage could lead to end- less misunderstandings. I have therefore used the spelling ‘Byzantion’ when referring to the ancient, pre-Constantine city and reserved ‘Byz- antium’ for the wider empire. So this is a book about Constantinople’s thousand-year reign as the capital of the Byzantine empire. It is a very wide-ranging theme that also touches on aspects of Constantinople’s history both before and after its Byzantine phase, from its first foundation in about 800 bce to the present day. In treat- ing it I inevitably strayed into all kinds of territory in which I have no expertise whatsoever and was reliant on the scholarly basis laid by others, particularly Gilbert Dagron, Ken Dark, Paul Magdalino and Cyril Mango. I hope that I have done adequate justice to them in the footnotes, but it is worth recording the debt here as well. That said, the same very broad theme inevitably required selectivity, so I hope that other academic colleagues will forgive me if they find their work omitted from the bibliography. Considerations of space meant that not everything could be included. For the same reason, wherever pos- sible I have cited contemporary sources in English translation only, xvi Acknowledgements even when these are not necessarily the most accurate or up-to-date editions. In the course of writing, I received much valued encouragement from many friends and colleagues, especially Judith Herrin, Tony Morris, Nigel Saul, Jonathan Shepard and Martin Sheppard, and I benefited from information passed to me by Robert Hughes, Ian Wadsley and others. Eugenia Russell and Andrew Sargent kindly read an early draft and saved me from many errors, linguistic, factual and stylistic. Those that remain are entirely my fault, not theirs. Eva Osborne, Michael Green- wood, Slav Todorov and Anya Wilson of Continuum ably handled the editorial side. Special mention needs to be made of Michael Heslop and Helen Boss Heslop, under whose hospitable roof the last stages of the book were written, Jan Parkin, with whom I first explored the streets of Istanbul, Emmett Sullivan who advised on computer matters, and Marie-Christine Ockenden without whom I would have sunk without trace beneath my college administrative duties. I am enormously indebted to Karina Cabeza-Boedinghaus who drew the maps. Finally a note of apprecia- tion to the students who have taken my BA and MA options at Royal Holloway over the years. Their healthy scepticism and refreshing irrever- ence works wonders in getting matters into their true perspective. As regards the vexed question of the spelling of Byzantine names in the text and footnotes, I have used those versions which seem to me to be most natural and familiar. While, in general, I have tried to translit- erate them as closely as possible to the original Greek – Angelos rather than Angelus, and Doukas rather than Ducas – I cannot claim complete consistency. Where there is a recognized English equivalent of a Greek Christian name, I have used it. Hence I have preferred Isaac to Isaakios, Andronicus to Andronikos and Constantine to Konstantinos. Similarly, with surnames, where a Latinized version has become standard, it has been used, most notably Anna Comnena rather than Anna Komnene. When dealing with individuals who lived before 600 ce , I have tended to use the Latinized version: Procopius rather than Prokopios and Eusebius rather than Eusebios or even Evsevios. The reader will still find exceptions, though. For example, Heraclius (610–41) is not called ‘Herakleios’. xvii This page intentionally left blank Introduction It is worth saying at the outset what this book is not. It is not a survey of the surviving Byzantine buildings of Istanbul. That task has already been carried out superbly by John Freely and Ahmet Çakmak. Nor is it a chronological history of the Byzantine empire. Readers of Eng- lish who require such an overview will find it in the works of Michael Angold, Timothy Gregory, Donald M. Nicol, George Ostrogorsky, Warren Treadgold and others. Rather this is a book about power and about how those who have wielded it most successfully and enduringly have hidden its realities beneath a veil of grandeur and myth. Constantinople in Byzantine times was a perfect example. Its ruler, the Byzantine emperor, was sur- rounded by elaborate and colourful ceremonial and there was scarcely a major building or institution in the city whose origin was not traced back to some kind of divine command or intervention or to some fantastic legend. This preference for the miraculous and supernatural over the phys- ical and quantifiable presents the historian of Constantinople with a problem. On the one hand, the myths and legends could be seen simply as superstition that obscures the true picture. After all, Constantinople in its heyday was a centre of wealth and power every bit as influential as Washington DC, New York, Tokyo, Paris or London are today. To spend much time examining the tall tales, it could be argued, would perpetuate the idea of Byzantium as some exotic and mysterious won- derland, hovering uneasily on the border of dream and reality. Such a 1 Constantinople: Capital of Byzantium picture might be appropriate to the poems of W. B. Yeats but it hardly does justice to the important political, social and economic realities.1 Most histories of the Byzantine empire therefore pass over the myths and legends entirely and concentrate on more concrete matters. On the other hand, these elements cannot be abandoned altogether, since they were clearly extremely important in the minds not only of medieval visitors to Constantinople but also of the Byzantines them- selves. Indeed, the rulers of Constantinople assiduously cultivated them and went out of their way to promote a spiritual aura around their city. Thus in 917, the patriarch of Constantinople, who was acting as regent for an underage emperor, wrote to the khan of the Bulgars to warn him not to attack Constantinople. He did not threaten the khan with military force but with the Virgin Mary who, he insisted, was the ‘commander in chief’ of the city and would not take kindly to any presumptuous assault. 2 The fact is that far from being completely unrelated to Constanti- nople’s wealth and power, myths, legends and beliefs like this were one of the ways in which the Byzantine emperors bolstered their position, hiding stark everyday reality behind a claim to divine favour.