The University of Chicago Political Families in Byzantium: the Social and Cultural Significance of the Genos As Kin Group, C
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THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO POLITICAL FAMILIES IN BYZANTIUM: THE SOCIAL AND CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE GENOS AS KIN GROUP, C. 900-1150 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE DIVISION OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY BY NATHAN LEIDHOLM CHICAGO, ILLINOIS JUNE 2016 To my parents, Jan and Dwayne TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables iv Acknowledgements v Abbreviations viii Introduction 1 1. Defining the Genos 21 2. The Genos and the Language of Kinship 71 3. Marriage Impediments and their Consequences for the Genos 136 4. Shared Blood, Mixed Descent, and the Cultural Significance of Consanguineous Kinship 187 5. The Politics of Reputation and Heritable Surnames 235 6. Being a Syggenēs: Case Studies in the Genos as an Historical Phenomenon 282 Conclusion 340 Bibliography 351 iii LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Frequency of Appearance of Genos in Historical Narratives 87 Table 2: Frequency of Appearance of Genos in Historical Narratives 87 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The completion of this dissertation would not have been possible without the generous support of many institutions and individuals. Over the past several years I have had the opportunity to interact with numerous excellent scholars and staff at several different universities, research institutes, and libraries, all of whom have made valuable contributions in one way or another. Junior fellowships at the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Koç University’s Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations provided me with the wonderful opportunity to focus on my research and writing. The generous staff and fellows at both of these institutions contributed a great deal both to this study and to my professional development more broadly. I am also indebted to the Dumbarton Oaks Greek Summer School, which I attended in 2010. It was a rare opportunity to focus squarely on the language of Byzantine sources under the direction of excellent tutors. Without this experience, the process of reading and analyzing the many sources included in this study would have been much more difficult and time consuming. I was fortunate to have received a William Rainey Harper Fellowship from the Social Sciences Division of the University of Chicago in order to finish the final stages of the dissertation, and I owe a debt of gratitude to the University of London’s Institute of Historical Research, whose staff so graciously welcomed me and whose facilities served as a vital academic base for me while living in London. The faculty, staff, and facilities at the University of Chicago have all proven to be immensely helpful throughout my graduate career. One could scarcely ask for a better place to v complete a PhD, and I will always look back on my time there with great fondness. I would also like to thank all those who have been or are currently involved in The Workshop on Late Antiquity and Byzantium. The workshop is a unique strength in the University of Chicago’s program of study, and I hope that it continues to be recognized as such well into the future. I have benefited immensely from the guidance and support of Walter Kaegi. I am extremely grateful for the time and effort he has expended on my behalf. Jonathan Lyon and Leonora Neville have been no less instrumental in the development of my research and much more. My interest in the Byzantine world was first sparked by Bill Caraher, whose enthusiasm for all things Byzantine proved contagious and set me on my current path. Tessa Murphy deserves a special word of thanks. Much of my growth over the past several years is due to her influence. I have learned more about what it means to be a professional historian from her example than perhaps any other source. A great many others have contributed to this study, as well as to my professional and personal development, in their various capacities as professors, colleagues, and friends. This includes, but is by no means limited to, Margaret Mullett, Stratis Papaioannou, Alice-Mary Talbot, Michael Allen, Jonathan Hall, Rachel Fulton Brown, Margaret Mitchell, Anita Skarpathiotis, Jordan Pickett, Foteini Spingou, AnnaLinden Weller, Ivan Drpić, John McCluskey, Chris Fletcher, Daniel Larison, Jason Banks, Pınar Aykaç, and many others who have made my time as a graduate student such a fulfilling and productive experience. Any shortcomings in the following study are my own, but its successes are certainly due in large part to the contributions of those mentioned here. For that, I can only say a heartfelt thank you. Of course none of this would have been possible without the love and encouragement of my parents, Jan and Dwayne. No matter what strange course my life has taken, they have never vi stopped providing me with their unwavering and unconditional support. It is to them that I dedicate this work. vii Abbreviations Actes de Lavra 22 vols. Series editor Gabriel Millet. Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1937-. Actes d’Iviron Lefort, Jacques, Nicolas Oikonomidès, Denise Papachryssanthou, and Hélène Métrévéli, eds. 4 vols. Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1985-95. BMGS Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies BZ Byzantinische Zeitschrift DOP Dumbarton Oaks Papers GRBS Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies LBG Trapp, Erich. Lexikon zur byzantinischen Gräzität, besonders des 9.-12. Jahrhunderts. Vienna: Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1996. LSJ Liddell, H.G. and P. Scott. A Greek-English Lexicon. Ninth Edition with Revised Supplement. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. ODB The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, ed. Alexander Kazhdan. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. PG Migne, J.P., ed. Patrologiae cursus completus: Series Graeca. 161 vols. Paris: J.P. Migne, 1857-89. REB Révue des études byzantines Rhalles and Potles Rhalles, G.A. and M. Potles, eds. Σύνταγμα τῶν θείων καὶ ἱέρων κανόνων. 6 vols. Athens: G. Chartophylakos, 1852-56. Zepos and Zepos Zepos, Ioannes and Panagiotes Zepos, eds. Jus graecoromanum, 8 vols. Aalen: Scientia, 1962. viii Introduction “Basil Vatatzes [d. 1194], the scion of an undistinguished family (γένους μὲν ἀσήμου), had been honored with the office of domestic of the East and girded with the ducal command of the Thrakesion theme because he was married to the emperor’s second cousin on his father’s side.”1 With these words the Byzantine historian Niketas Choniates describes the beginnings of the meteoric rise of the family of Vatatzes. Within a single generation, Basil’s descendants could be counted among the most politically and socially influential people in Byzantium and its successor states after 1204. By the first few decades of the thirteenth century, the name of Vatatzes appeared alongside those of Komnenos, Doukas, and others, whose impeccable nobility had been established and celebrated since the eleventh century. Basil’s marriage was, according to Choniates, enough to raise his family (genos) out of obscurity in a single moment. By joining his family to that of the emperor, however distantly, Vatatzes immediately associated himself, 1 Niketas Choniates, Annals, ed. Van Dieten, p.400; Harry J. Magoulias, trans. O City of Byzantium: Annals of Niketas Choniates (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1984), p.220. The translation is that of Magoulias. Μετ’ οὐ πολὺ δὲ ὁ Βατάτζης Βασίλειος, γένους μὲν ἀσήμου βλαστῶν, διὰ δὲ τὸ εἰς γυναῖκά οἱ γαμετὴν συναφθῆναι τὴν τοῦ βασιλέως πρὸς πατρὸς ἐξανεψιὰν δομέστικος τῆς ἀνατολῆς τιμηθεὶς καὶ τὴν δουκικὴν ἀρχὴν τῶν Θρᾳκησίων ἀναζωσάμενος… 1 his relatives, and his descendants with the most powerful elements of Byzantine society and politics. Basil’s story is emblematic of the way in which Byzantine politics had become family politics by the late twelfth century. Over the course of the previous few centuries, imperial authority had merged with the system of social hierarchy and cultural values of the Byzantine aristocracy, which had themselves been transformed in that same time. Within this system, the genos emerged as the cornerstone of aristocratic identity and factional politics. The Byzantine aristocratic genos (γένος, pl. γένη/genē) is alternately treated by modern scholars as a western European-style lineage, some kind of nebulous “clan,” or is simply left untranslated. Most scholars have viewed it as a kind of amorphous, poorly defined Byzantine “extended family,” and have contrasted the genos with the oikos/household or nuclear family. Despite the fact that it was foundational to the social and political structure of the Byzantine aristocracy from at least the eleventh century, the precise nature of the genos as a distinct form of kin group remains relatively unexplored among modern scholarship. This study will show that the genos was a strictly consanguineous kin group (or at least imagined as such), whose members were thus linked through bonds of shared descent and whose membership was limited to the seventh degree of consanguinity (at least in issues of legal marriage).2 It was largely immune to change beyond the reproductive act, and adults maintained their identities as members of their natal gene, even after marriage. It came to be marked by a surname (family name), at least among the elite, over the course of the eleventh century, by the 2 This is following the Roman tradition of calculating degrees of kinship. 2 end of which the genos had become perhaps the single most important marker of collective identity and source of social prestige within the Byzantine aristocracy. What follows is a study of the genos as both a social group and, importantly, a concept. Its purpose is to ascertain the role and function of the Byzantine aristocratic genos as a distinct entity, particularly its political and cultural role, as it appears in a variety of sources between the tenth and twelfth centuries. The analysis focuses primarily on the elites because of the nature of the sources, and because many of the structures and ideals associated with the genos as kin group pertained primarily, if not exclusively, to them.