Reframing Empire: Byzantium and the Transformation of European Identity, C. 1400–1520 The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Aschenbrenner, Nathanael. 2019. Reframing Empire: Byzantium and the Transformation of European Identity, C. 1400–1520. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:42029579 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Reframing Empire: Byzantium and the Transformation of European Identity, c. 1400–1520 A dissertation presented by Nathanael Aschenbrenner to The Department of History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of History Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts May 2019 ! © 2019 Nathanael Aschenbrenner All rights reserved. Dissertation Advisor: Professor Dimiter Angelov Nathanael Aschenbrenner Reframing Empire: Byzantium and the Transformation of European Identity, c. 1400–1520 Abstract This dissertation investigates the social and political functions of ideas of empire in sustaining, subverting, and reshaping communities in late medieval and early modern Europe. Examining fifteenth-century imperial thought in and about the Byzantine empire drawn from rarely examined Greek and Latin texts, this dissertation shows how empire became a critical category in negotiations over political legitimacy and identity amidst the rapid reconfigurations of the Mediterranean world c. 1400–1520. In the dying Byzantine empire, oratorical celebrations of imperial authority bound elites together, but also magnified deep social and political divisions over church politics, imperial territory, and succession, hastening the empire’s demise. This Byzantine oratory, performed at the imperial court, also provided tools for the reconceptualization of Byzantium’s historical and ideological relationship to Latin Christendom and the Holy Roman Empire after the fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the Ottomans. This cataclysmic event prompted intellectuals in the Latin West to use Byzantium’s imperial past to justify contemporary programs of religious warfare, European harmony, and universal kingship. But it also sparked profound revisions to existing concepts of Europe, Christendom and the Roman Empire, granting the previously marginalized Byzantium a place at the heart of these cohering conceptions of community. By examining the way ideologies of empire drew communal and cultural boundaries, this study connects political developments in the eastern Mediterranean with late medieval and iii humanist political and historical thought, as well as modern scholarship on the formation of enduring concepts, such as the “West” and “Europe.” Drawing together the theories of empire articulated in Latin and Byzantine learned cultures, this dissertation illustrates the significance of the Byzantine legacy in the ideologies and politics of early modern Europe. Even more, it shows a new facet of empire’s persistent utility to thinkers and political actors in the late medieval and early modern world, even at a time when imperial states and institutions appeared decrepit. Reframing empire not only animated the politics of exploration, conquest, and state formation in early modernity. It also marked a critical development in the European colonization of a complex medieval past, and sketched the cultural frontiers of the European community that would persist into modernity. iv Table of Contents Acknowledgements............................................................................................................. viii Abbreviations..................................................................................................................... xii Introduction: Byzantium, Empire, and Christendom Between Medieval and Early Modern Europe....... 1 Europe and Christendom as Illusory Communities..................................................... 1 A Transcultural History of Imperial Thought............................................................. 8 On Method: Empire as Ideology................................................................................. 19 On Terminology: Greeks, Romans, Byzantines.......................................................... 21 Structure and Sources.................................................................................................. 23 1. Political Rhetoric and Imperial Orators in the Fifteenth Century................................................. 28 Introduction................................................................................................................. 28 Political Recovery, Rhetorical Revival........................................................................ 31 The Role of Political Rhetoric in Late Byzantine Society........................................... 39 Venue and Audience.................................................................................................... 48 Profiles of Orators: Authors and Texts........................................................................ 52 Imperial Orators as Propagandists?............................................................................. 80 Conclusion.................................................................................................................... 82 2. Consensus and Power in Late Byzantine Imperial Ideology........................................................... 86 Introduction................................................................................................................. 86 Rhetorical Modes and Models in Late Byzantium...................................................... 88 Elements of Ideological Consensus: Comparisons, Epithets, and Virtues................... 99 Sacral Authority........................................................................................................... 109 Monarchy and Regime Theory................................................................................... 111 The Duties of Monarchy.............................................................................................. 116 Succession of Emperors, Succession of Empires.......................................................... 121 Conclusion: Praise, Power and the Limits of Consensus............................................. 129 3. Politics and Discord in Imperial Oratory, 1430–1453............................................................... 131 Introduction................................................................................................................. 131 The Final Decades....................................................................................................... 135 King or Priest—The Politics of Church Union in Imperial Oratory.......................... 139 Imperial City to Urban Empire................................................................................... 151 King or Prince—Breaking Bonds of Alliance.............................................................. 161 Conclusion.................................................................................................................... 173 4. Johannes Vitéz, Enea Sylvio Piccolomini and the Revival of the Imperium Orientale in Fifteenth-Century Crusade Oratory................................................................................................ 176 Introduction................................................................................................................. 176 Eastern Empire in the Middle Ages............................................................................. 182 Vitèz and Piccolomini.................................................................................................. 193 Piccolomini and the Rhetoric of Roman Empire........................................................ 200 v Eastern Empire in Anti-Ottoman Oratory.................................................................. 206 Imperium Orientale and Piccolomini’s Concept of Empire.............................................. 218 Conclusion: The Shadow of the Eastern Empire......................................................... 223 5. Universal Monarchy Between Sultan and Pope: George of Trebizond, Rodrigo Sánchez de Arévalo, and Imperial Constantinople................................ 229 Introduction................................................................................................................. 229 George of Trebizond and the Imperial Sultan............................................................. 232 Rodrigo Sánchez de Arévalo and Imperial Polemics................................................... 246 On the Sins and Misfortune of the Perfidious Turk................................................................. 251 Conclusion.................................................................................................................... 265 6. An Imperial Europe: Reframing Byzantium in the Age of Maximilian I....................................... 268 Introduction................................................................................................................. 268 Maximilian’s Imperial Ambition in Politics................................................................