Convivencia between Christians: The Greek and Latin communities of Byzantine South (IXth-XIth centuries) Annick Peters-Custot

To cite this version:

Annick Peters-Custot. Convivencia between Christians: The Greek and Latin communities of Byzan- tine (IXth-XIth centuries). Negotiating Co-Existence: Communities, Cultures and ’Con- vivencia’ in Byzantine Society, 2010, Dublin, Ireland. p. 203-220. ￿halshs-03326342￿

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HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Convivencia between Christians: the Greek and Latin Communities of Byzantine South Italy (9th–11th cent.)

Annick Peters-Custot University of Lyon / University of Saint-Etienne

Introduction Adapting notions inherited from other scientific fields (sociology, anthropology) and in particular the use of the notion of “religious tolerance” to medieval history arouses careful reservations.1 In this context, offers a peaceful ground to apply the notion of convivencia since the two main communities which were present there, the Greeks and the , were Christian, and since neither of them considered the other as heretical, atheist or barbarian.2 The notion of “religious tolerance” is thus confined to a more subtle aspect, one that relates to the coexistence of rites, liturgies and ecclesiastical organization. That is why I have intentionally chosen to exclude from this discussion the Jewish and Moslem minorities of Byzantine Italy,3 and to deal only with the way Lombard and Italian-Greek communities lived together within the two main provinces of the in the : the theme of and the theme of which, at the end of the tenth century, became the Catepanate of Italy. In this regard, the unity of religion is real, in spite of the old erudite and theological debates, that did not affect the strong sense of religious community.4 In other words, the alleged schism of 1054 had no real impact on the religious convivencia in Byzantine . Southern Italy appears as a “contact place” (even if the detailed analysis of the situation I will present here does not seem to confirm this general appreciation. One of the interests of this area lies precisely in the proximity of both communities, which were united by their common incorporation within the Empire and by their faith. We may immediately observe that the question of public authority is unavoidable: in the Byzantine political and ideological framework, it was the emperor who organized his world according to an order (taxis) supposed to protect it from chaos, and from the threat of the éthnè, strangers both to the Byzantine State and to the Byzantine people.5 And the evident religious proximity between the Greeks and the Lombards allowed both of them to consider themselves as actual subjects of the . Besides sharing the Christian religion, it is their belonging to the , and therefore their identity as “Roman”, which served as the foundation for convivencia in Byzantine Italy. The public authority of the Empire embodied in its emperor,

1 as well as the notion of a “Roman” identity are essential to understanding the question of identity, its perception, and the frame within which convivencia takes place. I hope that an investigation of this particular case will also throw light upon the general dynamics of the Byzantine Empire.

We also understand that it is impossible to deal with the subject of convivencia without raising the issue of how to define the identity of both communities, in particular their cultural identity, which largely determines their models of cohabitation. The definition of cultural identity must be comprehended on two levels: that of the material and daily reality of the community’s cultural life and of its own practices (for example, its language, legal customs, onomastic realities, and religious life) and that of the self-representation of identity, a very important topic for this subject, since one’s self-perception influences the perception of others.

I am not going to discuss the issues of personal and territorial rights, which are particularly complex in southern Italy. But it is undeniable that the common identity goes through the law of the gens. Communities live under the law of the gens Romanorum, of the gens Longobardorum, etc., all the better as the authorities in Southern Italy, whether Byzantine or not, seem to have shown a great neutrality in front of the variety of legal customs.6 However, the region here considered was, as we shall see, a territory where people settled together in geographical spaces that were coherent enough to quickly impose a territorialisation of law. Cultural identity was therefore expressed through channels other than law: for example, through language and onomastic choices. Besides, the unity of faith cannot mask the variety of religious practices, even in their smallest, but no less visible, details, such as Greek monks’ wearing a beard in marked contrast to Latin ones. During the period examined (from the ninth to the eleventh century) and even beyond, the cultural identity of these communities displayed a high degree of homogeneity. That is to say that the members of the Greek community had legal certificates written in Greek, lived under , practised their faith according to Byzantine liturgical, ritual and ecclesiastical norms and institutions, and bore traditional oriental names. The situation is identical for the Lombards: they all lived under Lombard law, had administrative documents written in Latin, and practised Christianity in its Latin form. The dissociation of these elements of cultural identity within the Greek minorities originated at the end of the twelfth century at the earliest, when certain minority members of the Greek or Lombard community

2 adopted Norman names, and proceeded into the middle of the thirteenth century, when the State reform under Frederick II established a legal standardization that did not leave any more space or opportunity for Byzantine law to perpetuate itself.7 Cultural practices, which determine the modalities of convivencia, therefore constitute a relatively uniformed and coherent set of values in Byzantine Southern Italy, which allows us to easily identify the different communities and their members. For the entire question of cultural identity, the hagiographical literature, that developed between the tenth and the twelfth century, particularly in Greek, is of great importance, because it gives direct access not only to the religious practices and the self perceptions that underlie this convivencia between Greek and Latin people, but also to the written constructions of these identities and their development, into a sort of secondary layer of identity. The Isaurian, Macedonian, Justinian and Lombard legislative code and, in our case, their reception in Southern Italy are also excellent sources, for a period in which cultural identity was largely derived from legal status. From the tenth century, the analysis of daily life can be executed especially through private notarial deeds, the acts of daily legal and social life. I’ll only touch on the essential aspects of the question, and provide the outline of further scientific developments. I shall begin with the geographical distribution of both communities in Byzantine Italy, and the administrative management of this cultural plurality by the Byzantine authorities; I shall then refer to some known phenomena of cultural exchanges and to the permeability between communities, by insisting on some aspects of law and monasticism. Finally, my conclusion will lead me briefly beyond the borders of Byzantine Italy.]

Mapping out the communities and dealing with their plurality We may note the existence of two major areas of Greek presence, Southern Calabria, which had been widely hellenized by the emigration of Sicilian Greeks fleeing the Moslem conquest, and the Southern part of the Apulian peninsula or “Salento”, hellenized by the flow of Greek populations coming from Calabria. For the Salento, this immigration resulted in an almost exclusively Greek demographic enclave (see map 1).8 In these regions, documentary records of non-Greek elements were extremely rare, a proof that the settlement of non-Greek people was a singular and isolated phenomenon. The same goes for the Lombard cultural geography of Byzantine Italy, which concerns the rest of , except for the Salento. An exception to this fairly rigid pattern was to the Byzantine administrative presence in , the

3 capital of the theme of Longobardia, then of the Italian Catepanate. Here the population was substantially marked with Greek elements on account of the presence of imperial, military and ecclesiastical agents who were essential to the running of a Byzantine province.9 On the other hand, the important, although minority, Greek population of Taranto, was not tied to the Byzantine administration, but rather was connected with the role of the harbour of Taranto in the exchanges between Byzantium and the West, including the fight against the Arab-Moslem progress.10 Finally, the last aspect of this geographical distribution of communities concerns the case of an intermediate area, where the population seems to have changed: Southern , or the /Mercourion region. This slightly populated Lombard and Latin region experienced a Greek immigration during the ninth and the tenth centuries. The hagiographical documentation, the establishment of Greek monasteries, and the production of Greek deeds, show that Greek immigration created concentrated enclaves inserted in a Latin environment. The group formed by the migrants tended to reproduce on a small scale the cultural cohesion of its original, Sicilian and Calabrian environment.11

Let us mention some essential facts. First, demographic and cultural movements are spontaneous. No mode of pressure or coercion has ever been noted. Sicilian Greeks fled their island, then the Calabrian coast affected by the Arab raids: some went in the Salento, or the Basilicata, some left Byzantine Italy to take refuge in the Lombard principalities (Salerno, Capua), or even in . There again, they established monastic and secular groups and communities.12 The imperial authorities did not practise forced hellenization either: on the contrary, administrative geography shows a respect for the cultural geography, and even adheres to its realities: this is highly visible in the map of the themes (where we notice a correspondence between the majority groups and the administrative partition) and in the map of the episcopal sees, whether they had been brought under Constantinopolitan jurisdiction since Leo III’sreign or not (see map 2). The attempts at forced episcopal hellenization were very rare. Only one such case is known, at Taranto, where Byzantine power finally abandoned the idea of installing a Greek prelate.13 When the Katepan Basile Boioannès founded cities in the Lombard-Latin Capitanata, the bishoprics that were created were automatically Latin, like the population. On the other hand, the Empire backed the demographic movements and sanctioned their outcome by a posteriori administrative measures that aimed at establishing a framework

4 for Greek populations once they had constituted their enclave in a Lombard environment. This is the reason why the Calabrian bishoprics were brought under the patriarchate of in the eighth century. At the beginning of the eleventh century at least, the setting up of a Greek chôrepiskopos in the region of Taranto, as well as a “judge of the Greeks”, was also part of a similar logic of “frameworking” the Greek populations that had arrived in great numbers in an area that had remained Latin.14 The spontaneous hellenization of Lucania produced, for its part, two administrative effects: first, the foundation, in 968, by Nicephoros Phokas, of several Greek bishoprics (Tursi, Matera, Acerenza, Tricarico and Gravina), as attested by Liutprand of Cremona;15 then, the foundation, albeit very short-lived, of the small theme of Lucania, whose existence in 1042 was attested in a unique document, but which had disappeared already before 1054.16 The absence of a policy of forced hellenization should not mask the existence of a strategy that aimed at integrating these peripheral populations by a process of byzantinisation: the administrative measures show that the authorities were aware of these demographic movements and wished to back them and, at the same time, to integrate the Lombard populations into the Byzantine system. Byzantine Apulia shows most clearly the application of the Byzantine administrative and military principles: the tax system, the tagmata organization and a strateia early converted into a monetary tax, and the Apulian currency’s being completely dependent on Constantinople (while that of Calabria was connected to Arab-Moslem Sicilian currency).17 Lastly, and above all, the integration of the Lombard population depended on the award of Byzantine dignities and offices, which appeared in Lombard deeds from the last quarter of the tenth century, and which coincided with the creation of the Italian Catepanate.18 At the same time, we should emphasize that Lombard law was freely practised in Byzantine Apulia, that the Byzantine administrative districts adapted themselves to the previous Lombard structures by merely changing names (tourmarkoi succeeded gastalds but were often the same individuals)19, that ecclesiastical circles were linked to Rome, and that the Latin language remained widely used, etc. All these continuities demonstrate that Lombard culture was respected. The way in which Byzantine administrative organization copies the approximate distribution of the two main cultural communities and even adapts to spontaneous demographic evolutions is on the peculiarities of imperial administration in the Italian periphery. Imperial policy concerning the cultural plurality in its far-western is thus twofold: on the one hand, it provides a framework for the Greek population originating from the immigration into a Latin

5 country through the establishment of traditional Byzantine structures; on the other hand, it tends to organize the integration of the non-Greek populations by inserting specific elements of Byzantine authority, and by encouraging loyalty by bestowing Byzantine honorary titles. This policy raises the issue of the Constantinopolitan vision of cultural diversity in Byzantine Italy.20 For Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos, in his De Thematibus, Byzantine Italy consists of a unique province, that of Calabria.21 This limitation matches a geopolitical datum (since only Southern Calabria remained Byzantine continuously) and a cultural one, since Calabria represented the only overwhelmingly Greek region (with the Salento) on the continent. Nevertheless, his narrow definition of Byzantine Italy reflects a paradox. Restricting Byzantine Southern Italy to Calabria enabled the basileus [Constantine?] to exclude Longobardia from the Byzantine sphere, at the very moment (the end of the tenth century) when this theme received special attention and efforts to integrate it into the Empire.22 However, even Calabria seems to have been somewhat of a terra incognita to the Byzantines, while remained, even after the Arab conquest, the geographical reference to situate Southern Italy.23 Generally speaking, Byzantine Italy was not a priority of imperial concerns, especially in the ninth and tenth centuries when the geostrategic public enemy of the Empire was Bulgaria. As a consequence, Byzantine Italy suffered from a lack of political interest. Greek Calabria, a region considered only as the point of departure for expeditions to recapture Sicily, and therefore as a source of tax revenues, was especially affected by this neglect.24 We can conclude that from the imperial point of view, otherness was not a problem: it was handled without aggressiveness or coercion, and, at least in this instance, with a degree of indifference. I shall end by highlighting identical modalities of the living together of Greeks and Lombards, outside the borders of the Empire. In Salerno, the capital of a Lombard principality, from the tenth century, members of a Greek community, probably of Sicilian origin, can be identified through oriental onomastics, through the great coherence of geographical settlement in connection with a strong endogamy and a particular link with the main Greek monastery of Salerno, S. Nicola di Gallocanta.25 We thus find again the logic of the enclave, which acts as a structuring principle and has no doubt something to do with recurring sociological logic in the phenomena of immigration. The Greek community of Salerno had a chôrepiskopos and a “judge of the Greeks”, that corresponds exactly to the same institutional structures established for the Greek community of Taranto in the Byzantine Empire. These structures may have been introduced by the Byzantine power in Salerno with

6 the approval of the Lombard prince, which provides evidence for the expansion of the imperial model of convivencia outside the borders of Byzantine Italy.

Convivencia in everyday life. We may be tempted to think that the enclave layout of these communities would prevent cultural contacts between them. This is only partially true: individual comings and goings are attested during the entire period, especially in the hagiographies, which reflect the model of the solitary monk roaming all the territory of Byzantine Italy to flee from the , and from his own excessive fame. Nilos of Rossano is the most perfect embodiment of this model, but it should be noted that the Italo-Greek saints who go to Rome to perform their devotions are much more numerous than those who try to reach Constantinople (and often fail to do so).26 There are thus individual movements, of which the deeds also give evidence: a Greek woman from Calabria who, in Bari, wrote her will according to Byzantine law;27 Amalfitan people present in Salerno and, during the Norman period and after, in Calabria.28 Cultural differencies are not a problem, even outside Byzantine Italy: the Greek monastery of S. Nicola di Gallocanta at Salerno benefits from the Lombard prince’s generosities.29 As he was given a warm welcome at Montecassino, Nilos of Rossano received a monastery for himself and his disciples, at Valleluce. Let us note that, in the Vita of saint Adalbert of Prague, Nilos expresses his bitterness to be in a foreign land, and dependent upon the abbot of Montecassino.30 However, Elias the Younger feels similarly when he stays in the Byzantine Empire, but outside Italy: the saint feels a stranger, a xenos.31 Obviously, the main emotional tie the Greeks of Southern Italy may feel is local, and around the notion of “patria”;32 but these few signs of strangeness do not mean a difficult coexistence between the communities. Can we speak about a dynamics of cultural exchanges? The cases of mutual influence are rare in the Byzantine period, and only concern details. In the eleventh century, the presence of Latin names (never Frankish or Norman) for Greeks living in the borders between Greek-speaking and Lombard Latin-speaking areas, like Basilicata, is attested; and conversely, the name Byzantius appears, at the end of the tenth century, in Latin deeds, as a name given only to Lombards. The latter case, however, represents an opportunistic, political acculturation, which is similar to the demand for Byzantine dignities, or to the subscriptions in Latin, but in the Greek alphabet, by the Lombards from Bari. We may conclude that all these instances of influence are to be understood as superficial; the majority of them is born of a political logic.

7 We can sharpen our impression of cultural exchanges by scrutinizing more closely two practical elements, concerning legal practices and monastic contacts. During the tenth century, the Byzantine Empire transferred onto the Italo-Greek populations the standards of private law and the legal collections determining their legal customs. Now, the great difference, in private law, between Byzantine and Lombard practices, concerned the rights of women. The Byzantine and thus Italo-Greek woman was, in conformity with the Roman tradition, sui iuris; legally she had her life in her own hands. On the contrary, the Lombard woman was never sui iuris, or selpmundia; rather, her ius (mund) always devolved to a man, a male guardian, the mundoald, the one who had her mund: namely, her father, husband, brother, even her son if the woman was a widow. The Italo-Greek and the Lombard deeds that deal with the rights of women remain firmly attached to their respective legal traditions. However, mutual contaminations are noticeable, as in the case of marital law. In Italo-Greek marriage contracts, if the terms used are Byzantine,33 and it is impossible to detect any Lombard lexical influence: above all, there is no mention of the Morgengabe - which is the Lombard endowment made to the woman, equivalent to one quarter of the man’s goods – nor of the mundoald - the man under whom each Lombard woman is submitted, and whose agreement is necessary for all female official acts.34 However, the contents are often contaminated by Lombard law: for example, the Byzantine gift made to the woman and called théorètron, being one quarter of the man’s goods, is in fact equivalent to the Lombard Morgengabe, although expressed in a Byzantine word.35 On the contrary, strong Byzantine influences mark matrimonial law as it is practised in Bari when the customs of the city were laid down in writing in the twelfth century. We can thus observe reciprocal though superficial influences between Lombards and Byzantines in legal practices. They are apparently the result of contacts between cultural communities, and not the result of a voluntary, made under pressure by the law, adaptation of legislation.36

Looking at the interplay of cultures in a monastic context, the analysis is rather intricate. Calabria does not seem to have known western Benedictine monasticism before the Norman conquest. There is no perceptible Latin influence on liturgical practices or the internal organization of Calabrian monasteries, which were all Greek in the Byzantine period. The vision of the ideal monk conveyed in hagiographies is so conservative that it almost corresponds to a proto-studite, pro-eremitical state: that is to say, that the ideal monk, in the Italo-Greek hagiographies, adopts the eremitical model of monasticism that dominated in the

8 Byzantine world before Theodoros Studites's reform that promoted the expansion of a cenobitical model of monasticism. This monastic and hagiographical model is not borne out reality as revealed by the various Calabrian deeds, and particularly the Italo-Greek typika, which, though written during the Norman period, show the integration of Studite principles in the internal organization of the Italian or Sicilian-Greek monasteries. 37 In the regions more exposed to cultural contacts (Southern Basilicata, Taranto or Bari, which had Greek urban monasteries in the Byzantine period), we do not find any Latin monastic influences before the end of the eleventh century. At this time, however, Benedictine influences appear, especially in the relationships between monks and laymen: for example, in the Greek donations written by laymen, we can see the emergence of a western fashion, that of the inscription of the donor’s name in the liber confraternitatis, though called here diptychs, an improper adaptation of the Greek vocabulary, which reveals the incapacity encountered by the Greek 38 notary to translate an unknown and recently introducted notion. There remains the possible influence imported by our holy men roaming around other Italian regions: Nilos of Rossano and Sabas of Collesano wander gladly out of Byzantine Italy, sometimes for a journey to Rome, sometimes to find more peace in the Lombard principalities or at the Germanic emperor’s court. But nothing justifies our thinking that these individual contacts left major traces in the organization of religious life, or in the vision of otherness. On the contrary, the differences are emphasized: when Adalbert of Prague visited Nilos of Rossano, the latter mentioned his beard to show that he is a Greek (and consequently, not to be associated with by a young aristocratic Westerner).39 Individual contacts do not seem to improve mutual knowledge. The way Nilos of Rossano was welcomed at Montecassino proves strong western commonplace about oriental monasticism: the Benedictine monks welcome a holy man renowned for his intellectual activities and for founding cenobitic monasteries, by assimilating him to his opposite, Antony, the model of the hermit.40 The meeting therefore neither modifies nor supersedes the western stereotype which defines oriental monasticism as the academy that aims at preserving the first traditions of antique monasticism, a stereotype already firmly present at the end of the tenth century, in this very place of intellectual convergence between the East and the West, Montecassino. There arises here the ambiguous issue of the “contact zones”, of the modalities of influence and exchange between traditions. In fact, any meeting, instead of generating true knowledge of the other, strengthens a stereotypical vision contradicted by the reality.

9 We have to go out of Byzantine Italy to find, at least in the monastic sphere, something that could be equated with a cultural confluence. In Naples, in the tenth century, so-called “Greek” monasteries appear in the documentation.41 However, there again, we are in the presence of a trompe-l’oeil, as the monks who live in those monasteries are presented as “Greek”, but are actually Latin monks. Their only Greek character comes from their submission to Saint Basil’s “rule”, that is the Greek text of Basil’s Asketikon, which was translated into Latin at the end of the fourth century by Rufinus of Aquilea who introduced it to Southern Italy.42 St Benedict of Nursia quotes this text in his own rule as the major example of monastic life43 at a moment when Basil was not confined to the eastern tradition, but belonged to the Fathers of a single Church. The story of St Basil’s rule is deeply connected to Southern Italy, and it is a western story.44 This Greek text, which is the only link between these monks and oriental monasticism has become a Latin heritage. What did it mean to call these monasteries “Greek”? We do not perceive such a phenomenon, for example, around the abbey of Cava, or at the Montecassino, both in contact with Greek monasticism: the explanation of this Neapolitan peculiarity lies in the duke of Naples’ policy. In the ninth and tenth centuries, the dukes’ policy, quite ambiguous towards Byzantine Empire in its Realpolitik side, but fascinated by Byzantine model of power, attempted to turn Naples into a Byzantine and Latin city: in this context, we can understand the function of such a Latin rule, able to maintain or to create "Greek" monasteries. Beside, imposing a uniform monastic rule was not common practice among the oriental tradition; the “rule of St Basil” was put into practice in Naples in the tenth century, at the very moment when the (which extended as far as the South of Rome) imposed the Benedictine rule on Latin monks. In other terms, these “Greek” monasteries were not the result of cultural influences between the Italo-Greek population or the Byzantine Empire and Naples, but the consequences of an internal western monastic reform. At the same time, in the Lombard principalities, real Greek monasteries were founded by Latin laymen, like S. Nicola di Gallocanta, at Salerno, and we shall not see that as a cultural influence, but as a proof that there were no frontier at this time between the two monastic models45; later on, in 1060, Osmundos, Lord of Ripalta, have a deed written in order to found a monastery where the monks ought to live under both St Benedict’s and St Basil’s rules46. The Neapolitan example induces to understand that all the monks were Latin: we can not conclude, again, that this deed reflect an oriental influence upon western monasticism in Southern Italy.

Conclusion

10 The historical perception of real and concrete exchanges between the two main linguistic and cultural communities of Byzantine Italy seems very thin, and the global vision of a place as “contact zone” must be refined by detailed analysis. What is more apparent is the peaceful character of convivencia due to a wise imperial policy that produced a real attachment of all the Byzantines, whether Lombards or Greeks, to the emperor - even if the Lombard population must have felt much more Lombard than Byzantine. Some Lombards firmly resisted their fellow-Latin , so that the latter conquered Apulia less easily than Calabria. Certainly, there were revolts: fiscal rebellions in Calabria, in Apulia; and urban revolts, among which only one, that of Mel of Bari, at the beginning of the eleventh century, can be equated with an anti-Byzantine rebellion. But Mel’s son, Argyros, educated in Constantinople, chose imperial loyalty: such conflicts, and their resolutions, are part of convivencia. The role of public authority seems to be the key-factor of a quite successful convivencia in this western province of the Byzantine empire, a role promoted by the fact that, actually, otherness was not a problem, at least before the 11th Century: at this time, the Armenian situation in the Byzantine Empire during the eleventh century reflects the fact that in some border Byzantine provinces, problems are coming from an unfinished byzantinization47 Generally speaking, this period shows a sort of breathlessness in the dynamic of political integration, and we could see in this phenomenon a rupture in the Byzantine perception of convivencia in the borders of the Empire, or, more exactly, in the perception of cultural and non-Greek otherness. Skylitzès says that the inhabitants of Gallipoli in the Salento, who are the descendants of Byzantine people, are living “like Romans”, an expression that implies that they are not or not any more Byzantine48. It seems to be a general phenomenon in the Byzantine margins in the eleventh century, which Hélène Ahrweiler identified as the “mixo-Barbarian” problem. The new Byzantine inability to integrate “Barbarians” and to keep the provincial Greeks in the culture of the “Romans” induces a new, but among the Constantinopolitan elite, widespread obsessive fear, that of the “mixo- Barbarian”. This problem is late. Before this date, and because it respected cultural otherness, the Empire effectively carried out an integration policy.

11

12

Scripsit [ II Phokas] itaque Polyeuctos Constantinopolitanus patriarcha privilegium Hydrontino episcopo, quattinus sua auctoritate habeat licentiam episcopos consecrandi in Acirentia, Turcico, Gravina, Maceria, Tricarico, qui ad consecrationem domini apostolici pertinere videntur.

Liutprand of Cremona, Relatio de legatione constantinopolitana, 62

13

1 Such are, for example, the attempts to strictly apply notions of ethnicity to medieval societies and sources, whereas the mythical reconstruction of the native identity remains predominant. The notion of convivencia itself underwent, in the past fifteen years, a very critical scrutiny and constant reappraisal, in particular in David Nirenberg’s studies, which brought mistrust to this concept, and to the idea of religious tolerance applied to medieval societies. 2 A. Peters-Custot, ‘Le barbare et l’étranger dans l’Italie méridionale pré-normande (IXe-Xe siècles): l’Empire à l’épreuve de l’altérité’, in Le barbare, l’étranger. Images de l’autre, Colloque du CERHI, Saint-Etienne, 14-15 mai 2004, D. Nourrisson and Y. Perrin, eds. (Saint-Étienne: Presses Universitaires de Saint-Étienne. Travaux du CERHI-2, 2005), pp. 147-63. 3 Y. Rotman, 'Christians, Jews and Muslims in Byzantine Italy: medieval conflicts and local perspective', in Stephenson, ed., The Byzantine World, Oxford/NY 2010, pp. 211-222; A. Feniello, Sotto il segno del leone. Storia dell'Italia musulmana (Roma, Laterza, 2011) ; C. Colafemmina, "Insediamenti e condizioni degli ebrei nell'Italia meridionale e insulare", in Gli Ebrei nell'Alto medioevo, XXVI Settimane di Studio del Centro iltaliano di studi sull'alto medioevo, Spoleto, 30 marzo-5 aprile 1978 (Spoleto, 1980), 2 vol., I., pp. 197-227. 4 A. Peters-Custot, Les Grecs de l’Italie méridionale post-byzantine. Une acculturation en douceur (IXe-XIVe siècles) (Rome: Collection de l’École française de Rome 420, 2009), p. 175. 5 H. Ahrweiler, ‘Byzantine Concept of the Foreigner: the Case of the Nomads’, in Studies on the Internal Diaspora of the Byzantine Empire, H. Ahrweiler and A. E. Laiou, eds. (Washington, 1997), pp. 1-15, at p. 2. 6 A. Peters-Custot, ‘L’identité d’une communauté minoritaire au Moyen Âge. La population grecque de la principauté lombarde de Salerne, IXe-XIIe siècles’, Mélanges de l'École française de Rome, Section Moyen Âge 121/1 (2009), pp. 83-97. 7 See Peters-Custot, Les Grecs de l’Italie méridionale, pp. 475-503. 8 As has been demonstrated by Jean-Marie Martin in: ‘Une origine calabraise pour la Grecia salentine?’, Rivista di Studi Bizantini e Neoellenici 22-23 (1985-1986), pp. 51-63. 9 See V. von Falkenhausen, ‘Bari bizantina: profilo di un capoluogo di provincia (sec. IX-XI)’, in Spazio, società, potere nell'Italia dei comuni, G. Rossetti, ed. (Naples, 1986), pp. 195-227. 10 V. von Falkenhausen, ‘Taranto in epoca bizantina’, Studi medioevali, Ser. III, 9 (1968-1), pp. 133-66; and J.- M. Martin, La Pouille du VIe au XIIe siècle (Rome: Collection de l'École française de Rome, 179, 1993), p. 512. 11 A. Peters-Custot, ‘Les communautés grecques de Basilicate à l’époque byzantine’, in Histoire et culture dans l’Italie byzantine. Acquis et nouvelles recherches, A. Jacob, J.-M. Martin and G. Noyé, eds. (Rome: Collection de l’École française de Rome, 363, 2006), pp. 559-87. 12 See, for Salerno, Peters-Custot, ‘L’identité d’une communauté minoritaire’. 13 The Byzantine authorities attempted to give a Greek prelate to Taranto, but the sharp complaints of Pope Stephen V forced them to give up. 14 J.-M. Martin, ‘Kinnamos episcopos - Cennamus episcopus. Aux avant-postes de l’hellénisme sud-italien vers l’an Mil’, Rivista di Studi Bizantini e Neoellenici 27 (1990-91), pp. 89-99. 15 Liutprand, bishop of Cremona, Relatio de legatione constantinopolitana, in Liutprandi Cremonensis Opera omnia, ed. P. Chiesa, CChrCM, 156 (Turnhout: 1998): ‘Scripsit itaque Polyeuctos Constantinopolitanus patriarcha privilegium Hydrontino episcopo, quattinus sua auctoritate habeat licentiam episcopos consecrandi in Acirentia, Turcico, Gravina, Maceria, Tricarico, qui ad consecrationem domini apostolici pertinere videntur’. 16 A. Guillou, ‘La Lucanie byzantine, étude de géographie historique’, Byzantion 35 (1965), pp. 119-49, repr. in Id., Studies on Byzantine Italy (London: Variorum Reprints, 1970). J.-M. Martin, ‘Les thèmes italiens: territoire, administration, population’, in Histoire et culture dans l’Italie byzantine, Jacob, Martin and Noyé, eds., pp. 517- 58. 17 Martin, La Pouille, pp. 447-53. 18 I studied this phenomenon in the third conference on the Byzantine inheritance in Italy (L’héritage byzantin en Italie, VIIe-XIIe siècle) directed by J.-M. Martin, V. Prigent and myself, on Public Institutions (Les institutions publiques), Rome, École française de Rome, 26-27 February 2010: ‘Les titulatures byzantines en Pouille et en soon to be published in the Collection de l’École française de Rome. 19 Martin, ‘Les thèmes italiens’, pp. 529-35. 20 Peters-Custot, Les Grecs de l’Italie méridionale pp. 136-39. 21 ‘Calabria is the only region on the other side of the sea, which is held by the Byzantines; there is Reggio, Gerace, Santa Severina and Crotone, and some other oppida, dominated by the of Calabria. There are also twenty-two cities in Sicily under the dux’: Costantino Porfirogenito, De Themaibus, A. Pertusi (éd.), Città del Vaticano, 1952 (Studi e testi, 160), ch. 10 p. 96 l. 36-39. 22 J. Shepard, ‘Aspects of Byzantine Attitudes and Policy towards the West in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries’, Byzantinische Forschungen 13 (1988), pp. 67-118. Constantine VII justifies the organisation of Italian Themes,

14 which is a purely administrative and political object, with the cultural differences separating Calabria from Longobardia. On the imperial vision of Italy, see E. Malamut, ‘Constantin VII et son image de l’Italie’, in Byzanz und das Abendland im 10. und 11. Jahrhundert, E. Konstantinou, ed. (Köln-Weimar-Wien, 1997), pp. 269-92. 23 In order to describe St Phantinos the Younger’s Calabrian homeland, the author of his Life, a native of , specifies that it is the region close to Sicily (Vita di San Fantino il Giovane, ed. E. Follieri, Subsidia Hagiographica, 77 (Brussells, 1993), ch. 2, p. 402, l. 5). This same writer distinguishes himself by his ignorance of historical and chronological data, and even the Arabs are absent from his text (while the Life of the Nilos of Rossano reports the agonies into which Phantinos plunged when thinking of the Saracen destructions in continental Italy). Arab threats do not belong to the author’s experience, himself being more worried by the Bulgarians (ibid. pp. 117-118). 24 The rebellion of the inhabitants of Rossano against a new tax aimed at recapturing Sicily is quite suggestive: see the account in Nilos of Rossano’s Life: Bios kai politeia tou hosiou patros hèmôn Neilou tou Néou, ed. G. Giovannelli (Badia di Grottaferrata, 1972), ch. 60-1, § 72-95, pp. 112-31. 25 Peters-Custot, ‘L’identité d’une communauté minoritaire’, pp. 88-90. 26 Peters-Custot, Les Grecs de l’Italie méridionale, p. 141 n. 281. 27 F. Nitti, Le pergamene di S. Nicola di Bari. Periodo greco (939-1071), Codice Diplomatico Barese, IV (Bari:1900) n° 46, before 1071. 28 Peters-Custot, ‘L’identité d’une communauté minoritaire’, p. 92, and notes, and Ead., Les Grecs de l’Italie méridionale, p. 394 n. 162. 29 P. Cherubini, Le pergamene di S. Nicola di Gallucanta (IX-XII), Fonti per la storia del Mezzogiorno, 9 (Altavilla Salentina, 1990). 30 Sancti Adalberti episcopi Pragensis et martyris Vita prior, C. Redactio Casinensis, ed. J. Karwasinska, Monumenta Poloniae Historica, series nova, 4, 1 (Warsaw: 1962), pp. 69-84, at ch. 15, p. 78. 31 Peters-Custot, ‘Le barbare et l’étranger’, p. 151. 32 A. Peters-Custot, ‘L’identité des Grecs de l’Italie méridionale byzantine’, in Ampélokèpion. Mélanges offerts à Vera von Falkenhausen, III = Néa Rhômè. Rivista di Ricerche bizantinische 3 (2006), pp. 189-206. 33 J.-M. Martin, ‘Société et communautés chrétiennes en Calabre méridionale (XIe-XIIIe siècles)’, in Calabria cristiana, Società, religione cultura nel territorio della diocesi di Oppido Mamertina-Palmi, S. Leanza ed. 2 vols (Soveria Mannelli, 1999), I, pp. 225-50, esp. pp. 230ff. 34 See E. Cortese, ‘Per la storia del mundio in Italia’, Rivista italiana per le Scienze Giuridiche 91 (1955-56), pp. 323-474. 35 G. Ferrari dalle Spade, I documenti greci medioevali di diritto privato dell’Italia meridionale e loro attinenze con quelli bizantini d’Oriente e coi papiri greco-egizii, Byzantinisches Archiv, 4 (Leipzig: 1910), pp. 61-71; A detailed example can be found in V. von Falkenhausen, ‘Un’inedita singrafe dotale calabrese del 1208/1209’, Rivista Storica Calabrese 6 (1985), pp. 445-56; and J.-M. Martin, ‘Pratiques successorales en Italie méridionale (Xe-XIIe siècles): Romains, Grecs et Lombards’, in La transmission du patrimoine. Byzance et l’aire méditerranéenne, J. Beaucamp and G. Dagron, eds, TM Monographies, 11 (Paris: 1998), pp. 189-210, at p. 210. 36 Indeed, there is no certainty of communication in the legal manuscripts of Southern Italy: the Greek translation of some texts of the Lombard legislation is still controversial, and these manuscripts date back to the second half of the twelfth century, at the earliest. Cf. Peters-Custot, Les Grecs de l’Italie méridionale, pp. 93-5. 37 For this argument, see A. Pertusi, “Rapporti tra il monachesimo italo-greco ed il monachesimo bizantino nell’alto medioevo”, in La Chiesa greca in Italia dall’VIII al XVI secolo. Atti del convegno storico interecclesiale (Bari, 30 aprile-4 maggio 1969), Italia Sacra. Studi e documenti di storia ecclesiastica, 22 (Padova: 1973), pp. 473-520; and E. Morini, “il monachesimo italo-greco e l’influenza di Stoudios”, in L’Ellenismo italiota dal VII al XII secolo. Atti del Convegno (Venezia, 13-16 novembre 1997), Fondazione nazionale ellenica delle ricerche. Istituto di ricerche byzantine. Convegno internazionale, 8 (Athènes: 2001), pp. 354-90. 38 The first mention of this western introduction appears in a Greek deed written in 1053, in which a Greek family gives a Calabrian monastery to the benedictine abbot of Cava (F. Trinchera, Syllabus graecarum membranarum, Napoli, 1865, n. 40 pp. 49-51). All the latter mentions date the second quarter of the 12th Century (Ibid., n. 99, 1126; n. 112, 1132, etc. Others example may be found in the deeds of the Greek monastery of Carbone, in Southern Basilicata). 39 ‘Etenim, ut iste habitus et intonsi barbe pili testantur, non indigena, sed homo Grecus sum’: Sancti Adalberti episcopi Pragensis, ed. Karwasinska, p. 78. 40 V. Déroche, ‘L’obsession de la continuité: Nil de Rossano face au monachisme ancien’, in L’autorité du passé dans les sociétés médiévales. Actes du colloque, Rome, 2-4 mai 2002, J.-M. Sansterre. ed., Bibliothèque de l’Institut historique Belge de Rome, 52 (Rome, 2004), pp. 163-75.

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41 Jean-Marie Martin talked about this subject at a conference entitled Perception et influence du monachisme oriental en Occident, Moyen Âge – époque moderne, organized by A. Peters-Custot and D.-O. Hurel, Villejuif (LEM – Laboratoire d’Étude des Monothéismes), 18 December 2009. 42 On this argument, see J. Gribomont, Histoire du texte des Ascétiques de S. Basile, Bibliothèque du Muséon, 32 (Louvain: 1953). 43 St Benedict is the first to mention St Basil’s Asketikon as a rule (regula, and not instituta, as for Rufinus) the monks have to read regularly: see La règle de saint Benoît, A. de Voguë, J. de Neufville eds., 7 vols, Sources chrétiennes, 181-186 (Paris: 1972-1977), 73, 5-7, II, p. 672 ; see either the commentary of Adalbert de Voguë, I, p. 145-148. 44 See Peters-Custot, Les Grecs de l’Italie méridionale post-byzantine, pp. 459-63. 45 Cherubini, Le pergamene di S. Nicola di Gallucanta ; Peters-Custot, Les Grecs de l’Italie méridionale post- byzantine, p. 76 ; Ead., ‘L’identité d’une communauté minoritaire au Moyen Âge’. 46 Codice diplomatico del monastero benedittino di S. Maria di Tremiti (1005-1237), A. Petrucci ed., 3 vols, Fonti per la Storia d’Italia, 98 (Rome: 1960), II, 69, pp. 211-3. 47 H. Ahrweiler, Recherches sur la société byzantine au XIe siècle: nouvelles hiérarchies et nouvelles solidarités, in TM 6 (1976), pp. 99-124, at pp. 122-3. See also G. Dagron, ‘Formes et fonctions du pluralisme linguistique à Byzance (IXe-XIIe siècle)’, in TM 12 (1994), pp. 219-40. 48 Ioannis Scylitzae Synopsis Historiarum, ed. H. Thurn, Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae, 5 (Berlin: 1973), p. 151.

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