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Ephemeral Performances Under the Komnenoi Margaret Mullett

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Ephemeral Performances Under the Komnenoi Margaret Mullett CHAPTER EIGHTEEN TENTED CEREMONY: EPHEMERAL PERFORMANCES UNDER THE KOMNENOI Margaret Mullett Studies of Byzantine ceremony focus almost exclusively on the court in Constantinople. Yet campaigning emperors spent as much or more time away from Constantinople than in it, and some of that time was spent under canvas. Can anything be said about the ceremony of the court on campaign? This chapter will concentrate largely on the eleventh and twelfth centuries, with tenth-century prescriptive texts, and insights from outside the empire as well as from within. Tents in the Texts The Comnenian emperors were no strangers to this idea of a mobile court. As Emperor John II says in Niketas Choniates, “I remained but little in the palace. Nearly my whole life was lived out of a tent, and I have always dili- gently sought the open air.”1 We think of him as a soldier-emperor, trav- elling with his army. But what we might forget is that with the emperor went his household; he travelled panoiki.2 The Anonymous On Tactics has it all laid out: The imperial tent should be pitched in the middle with a courtyard around it. Let an empty space be marked off large enough to allow the men remaining on duty at night to move about and to allow people to enter the courtyard during the day. Outside this space off to the left the tent of the protovestiarios would be pitched and to the right of it the epi tes trapezes. Behind the tent of the protovestiarios should be that of the guard and then 1 Niketas Choniates, Historia, ed. J. L. van Dieten, 2 vols., Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae 11 (Berlin and New York, 1975), p. 43; O City of Byzantium, Annals of Niketas Choniates, trans. H. Magoulias (Detroit, 1984), p. 25. 2 Nicholas Kataskepenos, Βίος καὶ πολιτεία καὶ μερικὴ θαυμάτων διήγησις τοῦ ὁσίου πατρὸς ἡμῶν Κυρίλλου τοῦ Φιλεώτου 47.1 (hereafter Kataskepenos, VCyrilPhil), ed. E. Sargologos, La vie de saint Cyrille le Philéote, moine byzantine (+1110), Subsidia Hagiographica 39, (Brussels, 1964), p. 225. 488 margaret mullett in order the chamberlains, the hebdomaries and the rest of those engaged in the personal service of the emperor. In this way the three sections, the right, the left and the west will be filled up. Then on the side to the east, in front of the courtyard, erect the archontareion. In front of this the officers in charge of the stable should be stationed, along with the imperial horses. The manglavitai, in turn should be placed to the left, in front of the tent of the protovestiarios. Farther east off to the right are the pantheotai of the epi tes trapezes. The proximos and the count of the trumpets would be stationed with the manglavitai. The doukatores should be located with the proximos or with someone else in who the holy emperor has full confidence. After the officers of the stable and the constables are situated, then the great het- aireia should encamp to the east. To the north the logothete of the great hetaireia, the protasekretis and their subordinates should encamp. To their south should be the officers of the Imperial Men.3 Constantine Porphyrogennetos tells us what had to be brought on cam- paign by the minsourator. For a start, two pavilions4 and double the num- ber of tents, so that, within the empire at least, an advance party can get ahead and set up. The minsourator must also have folding benches, long enough for three men to sit on each; likewise folding tables of the same length, utensils and napkins sufficient for the imperial table; also thick tufted rugs for reclining upon; thick and thin double-bordered cushions for reclining on [. .] other flax-blue cushions with their pile combed up, each of 30 pounds, for invited guests, and goats’ hair mats in accordance with the numbers of invited guests. When the emperor marches into Syria [. .] the minsourator also brings a Turkish bath called in Scythian tzerga with a hide cistern of red leather, 12 3-measure pitchers. 12 grates for the bath, bricks for the hearth, folding couches, an imperial chapel with sacred furniture—note that the primikerios of the vestiarion should transport the latter.5 This does not include food, vessels encased in purple leather, robes, gift- robes, or books (liturgy, military manuals, siegecraft, histories, an onei- rokritikon, a book of chances and occurrences, weather-lore, treatise on thunder, treatise on earthquakes). There were to be eight silver coolers for scented wine, rose-water and water, copper pails, sacred vessels for the chapel, a medicine chest of theriac, serapium juice, antidotes against 3 Three Byzantine Military Treatises: Text, Translation and Notes, ed. and trans. G. T. Dennis, Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae 25, Dumbarton Oaks Texts 9 (Washington, D.C., 1985), pp. 250–52. 4 The word is “κόρτη”. “Tent” renders “τέντα”, usually synonymous with “σκηνή”. 5 Constantine Porphyrogenitus, Three Treatises on Imperial Military Expeditions, Text C, ed. and trans. J. F. Haldon, Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae 28 (Vienna, 1990), pp. 104–6..
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