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Historical Experience of Byzantine Statehood within the Context of the Dialogue of

Marianna G. Abramova December 31, 2004

Original copyright © 2004 by World Public Forum Dialogue of Civilizations

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Historical Experience of Byzantine Statehood within the Context of the Dialogue of Civilizations

Marianna G. Abramova

Senior Lecturer, Financial Academy, Government of Russian Federation, Candidate of Historical Sciences

Originally published 2004 in World Public Forum Dialogue of Civilizations Bulletin 1(2.1), 115–21. 1

The main topic of our discussion concerns the dialogue of civilizations. Therefore, the concept of “” here is foremost. It stems from the CIVILIS – civilian or public. It is certainly no coincidence that is sometimes called “civilistics.” And although in the modern scholarly interpretation “civilization” is understood as the level or stage of social development of material and spiritual culture, in its initial, etymological sense, “civilization” acts rather as a synonym for “state.”

It is precisely to this aspect that I would like to draw your attention. After all, the discussion within the framework of a dialogue of civilizations is usually limited to examining the role of religious, moral, cultural and philosophical factors. As I see it, this narrows down the discussion and makes it more difficult to find common grounds. The framework that traditionally differentiates Orthodox conciliarism against Protestant individualism becomes too narrow for holding a fruitful discussion.

I would like to focus the attention of the participants of the Conference on “statehood” as a category that defines the role and place of the state itself, the head of the state, the church, law and in organized society, as well as on the differences between the Western and the Eastern (more specifically, Byzantine) statehood. These are the fundamental form-defining categories without which, the concept of “civilization” becomes an amorphous, so-called “culturological” phenomenon that one may use at one’s own will to single out progressive and retarded, technological and industrial, ancient and modernistic, and in general, worthy and unworthy, good and bad civilizations. Are there any general criteria for this approach? In my opinion, there are no such criteria if we leave out the studies of the concepts “state” and “law.” These social regulators form a peculiar type of legal culture; they establish state and juridical traditions in a country; they shape the individual person from the very childhood together with, and sometimes even more than religion and morals; they determine the principles of a person’s adult life, his

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or her professional orientation, and shape most primary cultural and moral reactions that arise even at the subconscious level. After all, if religion presupposes a person’s conscientious choice, then state and juridical institutions penetrate us whether we want it or not. Irrespective of our will, we are their “products” because, as I see it, the state and the law play the most important role in forming this or that archetype of civilization.

The historical experience of Byzantine statehood is especially important in the process of formation of the Russian variant of civilization. Strange as it may seem, this experience that is absolutized by seemingly opposite trends in social and political thinking, such as the supporters of the western-liberal model and the followers of a “special Russian road.” The former speak only about the negative Byzantine legacy: despotism, autocratic arbitrariness of the authorities, permission to the imperial rulers to do anything they wish, suppression of individual freedom of a person. On the contrary, the latter absolutize collectivism, conciliarism, lack of greed. Moreover, as it often happens, in the end, both sides agree on the main thing: “Byzantism” is, from the outset, incompatible with the western liberal-democratic model. As a result, each side sticks to its opinion that “the West and the East shall never meet.” And usually this is where the discussion ends.

I would like to turn this eternal dispute into another plane without taking any sides. Instead, let us try to decide whether the combination of the so-called western values and eastern peculiarities is really impossible. The experience of Byzantine statehood testifies that this state (civilization) that quite successfully combined Orthodoxy and imperial rule, on the one hand, and a basic liberal category, such as the , on the other, lasted for almost a millennium. Moreover, for some reason, supporters of the so-called “westernization” quite often forget that it was the that inherited the Roman Law when in the 6th century Emperor codified the Roman Law (), and essentially it was the Byzantine Empire that preserved the heritage of the Roman Law for the whole of mankind.

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Among the civilizations of the past, perhaps there was not a single one that left behind more written than the Byzantine civilization. “ constituted one of the most vivid aspects of Byzantine culture, and by the force of its impact on other peoples, it is comparable only to and architecture.”1 The Byzantine state was defined as “a civilization in which social ties were regulated by laws and procedures; were concluded in the presence of witnesses and were attested by notaries; Byzantine legal experts compiled wills and testaments, marriage contracts, commercial deals; citizens filed law suits and complaints in of law. On their part, the were inspired by the ancient Latin saying: SUUM CUIQUE TRIBUERE (to each his own right).”2 That is why today, we, striving for a law-governed state and a , must use the vast experience of Byzantium where the judges were selected by the emperor and were given the Gospels and a sword at solemn prayers in St. Sophia Church, and they, in their turn, pledged to incorruptibly and to observe the principle of equality of all before the law.

Unlike western kingdoms in the , Byzantium addressed the issue of relationship between secular and church . Speaking before bishops in the Senate, Emperor John I Tzimisces (10th century) declared: “In this life there are two rulers: the clergy and the kingdom. To the first, the Creator entrusted concern for the people’s souls, to the other – guidance of the people’s bodies.”3 At a time when in Western Europe a fierce dispute erupted between monarchs and the about the investiture of royal power, Byzantium proposes a theory called “symphony of secular and spiritual authority.” The concept of kingdom (state) is inseparable, on the one hand, with religion, and on the other hand, with law. Church legislation had especially great influence on private that was administered through the largest and the most democratic type of Byzantine court – the court of bishops.

1 Lifschitz Ye. E. The Law and Courts in the Byzantine Empire in IV-VIII centuries. L., 1976.P.3. 2 Law and Society in Byzantium: Ninth-Twelfth Centuries: Washington, 1994. PP. 27-51. 3 Lev Diakon. History. Edited by G.G. Litavrin. M., 1988. P. 55.

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That is why the Byzantine system of law was aimed at inculcating in the public’s consciousness the idea of as a basis for all social relations. The main principles of legislation were justice and philanthropy or goodwill to fellowmen. Moreover, if the former, a legacy of Roman Law, was encountered in the West European legal systems of the Middle Ages, then we will never come across the latter (philanthropy). The main task of the government in the novel of Emperor Tiberius in 575 was “to fulfil the needs of the subjects and to come to their aid.”4 All this indicates that by means of law, the idea of equality as equality in respect to property, later on supplemented by the idea of equality of before God, was deeply ingrained in the minds of Byzantines.

In Chapter 16 of his “exhortations,” Deacon Agapit writes that “too much wealth is as evil as extreme poverty”. He advises Emperor Justinian to take surpluses from one and give them to others, and therefore to promote equality instead of inequality.5

But unlike Agapit, the Byzantine emperors never supported the idea of redistributing property. Property, in accordance to Roman legal tradition, is acknowledged as an acquired right and is not a subject to reconsideration. In regard topoor people, Emperor Justine suggests to improve their status at the expense of the state itself by applying the principle of charity, rather than the principle of justice: “Those having wealth shall make use of it, while those that have no wealth shall be given presents by the wealthy.” Moreover, in the 11th century, Lev Grammatik adds a very important reservation to the second part of that phrase: “presents shall be given to the poor if they are good." The moral nature of that reservation is obvious. It was necessary to assess the moral merits of a poor man and perhaps find out the causes that led him to poverty. Only a worthy person deserves to be helped, whereas an unworthy person shall be left to his own fate. Subsequently, these postulates are developed further by other law experts.

4 I.P. Medvedyev. Legal culture in Byzantium. St. Petersburg, 2001. P. 87. 5 I.P. Medvedyev. Legal culture in Byzantium. P. 87.

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Therefore, right from the earliest stage of the Byzantine state formation, we can clearly see the social function of the state, which are not present in thethe Western model of statehood.

Another important difference in the formation of the Byzantine statehood was absence of succession that would ensure, at least formally, the tradition of Roman statehood. In Byzantium there was a special state body – the synclit – that elected the monarch. Moreover, Byzantium was the place where the first prototypes of political parties – DYMIS (from the Greek DEMOS – people) appeared in the 4th-6th centuries. Although they were amorphous political organizations without any concrete ideological foundations, they played a significant role in shaping social and political traditions of the Byzantine statehood. They helped the Bishop of to ensure public order; they organized holiday festivities and repaired public buildings and structures. The supporters of the two largest “dymis” gathered at the hippodrome that was the center of social life back then and quite often vehemently expressed their political views by flinging mud and stones at the box of Emperor Justinian.

It was the time when the German kingdom emerged as the main form of a political organization in the Western Europe. However, it was based not an abstract concept of state, but rather on personal relationships. Here we see the establishment of a regime of a warrior gang of barbarians headed by a tribal chieftain. In the period of the “barbaric truths” the Roman was replaced by theprivate law. The state was viewed not as a mechanism of serving “the common cause” but rather as a large personal domain of the chieftain. The very concept of a state disappeared. The concepts of “res publica,” i.e., “a public cause” and “state” that had been developed by Roman civic law, as well as the concept of monarchial rule as “ministerium,” i.e., “serving” a common cause passed into oblivion for many centuries. The concept of personalism, i.e., total identification of the kingdom in the person of the monarch as the bearer of sovereignty, appeared. The notion of borders became vague and indefinite. The concept of a capital city as the place where bodies

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of public authority are located almost disappeared. The apogee is witnessed in the state of the Franks in the epoch of Carolingians when the dynasty of legitimate but so-called “lazy” kings was replaced by their “managers” or “majordomos.” Later on appeared such detrimental to the statehood phenomena as the policy of personal unions, marriage unions, takeover of territories and re-carving of borders.

The change of the concept of the state, the disappearance of its most important social function, the absence of unity with the church were prompted by the very system of vassal-fief relationships that originated in the Western Europe in accordance with the well known legal doctrine: “the vassal of my vassal is not my vassal.”

Byzantium did not have this hierarchic ladder of vassal-fief relationships; the land was given out for services by the emperor himself. The Byzantine landholders never had complete juridical immunity over their possessions, like in the Western Europe. The right of supreme remained in the hands of the Byzantine state which, doubtlessly, strengthened the very institution of state power itself.

Law experts in Byzantium at that time formulated the principles of not taking away public power of the emperor, the doctrine of the state’s interests and public weal. Moreover, in the writings of Byzantine law experts we encounter the rudiments of the idea of public or agreement. In Chapter 35 of his “Exhortations,” Deacon Agapit expresses the idea that a king can consider himself safe and secure only if he rules with the consent of the people that voluntarily agree to obey him.6 But what is perhaps even more interesting is that such ideas are also found in legislative documents. For example, the famous Isagogics of the 9th century, the authorship of which is attributed to Patriarch Photius and which is the only Byzantine containing concerning emperor’s powers and the his attitude to the law, gives the following definition of law: “Law is the overall significant instruction, the decision of wise men, the general agreement of the

6 Ancient heritage in the culture of the . M., 1984. P. 138.

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citizens of the state.”7 Understandably, this is still very far from the classical teachings about public agreement, but the very idea itself, even in embryonic form, has already been articulated, moreover, not in a rhetoric composition, but in an official code of law.

What we see here is an organic unity of three main components – Hellenism as spiritual continuity of the culture of ancient Greece, Romanism as a system of state-legal and political doctrines inherited from the and in its Orthodox variant which comprise the essence of Byzantism, the Byzantine civilization.

The multitude of laws, the flexible system of changing them, unity or as was said above, the symphony of secular and spiritual authority, strong statehood (sovereignty), along with the presence of rudiments of political parties, the long- standing tradition of electing a monarch as well as the heritage of Roman Law – all these factors prove the existence of the the deep-rooted legal culture of the Byzantine civilization that, in its turn, represents the foundations of statehood.

Going back to what I have started with, once again I would like to emphasize that so far there is no universal criterion by which we can assess the contribution of this or that civilization to overall cause of mankind’s progress. But do we really need such a criterion? As Levi-Stross remarked: “if, for example, we take as a criterion the ability to overcome extreme geographical conditions, then doubtlessly first place should go to Eskimos and Bedouins.” Therefore, as I see it, the idea that mankind should be shaped according to some kind of the “best” model holds no water, since we cannot work out such criteria. The historical experience of the Byzantine civilization, together with diverse state-legal, cultural-philosophical and social-political schemes, models and examples prove the futility of the myth about Euro-centrism as one of those “best” projects.

7 I.P. Medvedyev. Legal culture in Byzantium. P. 42.

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Mankind, just like any ecological system, is alive and stable as long as a sufficient diversity of cultures and civilizations is maintained.

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