Maximilian C G Lau

“You think we have the Byzantine corruption.”

This quotation, from the tense meeting between Thufir Hawat and the Fremen after Duke Leto Atreides’s death and Paul and Jessica’s flight, sees the Fremen use one of the hugely enduring, pejorative meanings of the adjective ‘Byzantine’: treachery. The word is often used in synopses of Dune and similar works as the most suitable adjective to evoke the Imperium’s corruption, backstabbing politics, and overly bureaucratic complexity. It also evokes both decadence and exoticness. Such stereotypes were common in history books while Frank Herbert was writing. Based on the opinion contained in Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, the medieval, east Roman state referred to as ‘Byzantium’ by him and many others was seen as a diminished, corrupted, form of the Classical Republican and early Imperial Roman state.  Though previous studies have highlighted the Classical, Medieval European, and Oriental influences upon Herbert’s Dune, no study has focused on the empire that lasted over a thousand years between them, geographically and chronologically.  This essay will introduce those parallels, and then focus on the character of Princess Irulan Corrino. Her seemingly understated influence on Dune’s plot mirrors that of the twelfth century Byzantine Princess Anna Komnene, and thus understanding the one can yield some surprising conclusions as to the influence of the other upon both Herbert’s universe and Byzantine history.

This study will focus on a unique Byzantine court poem of Theodore Prodromos that describes the defence of Turkish held Gangra by its Amira in 1135. Though there had been Muslim women warriors since the dawn of Islam, and the contemporary Usama ibn Munqidh describes several women involved in warfare around his native Damascus, this unnamed Amira is only known from this one source, and shares little in common with the standard classical, biblical or contemporary paradigms used by Byzantine poets. Far from being hostile, this poem relates a startlingly complex portrayal for one resisting the rule of the emperor: alternately giving laudable, encouraging speeches to the defenders and boldly defying her enemies, plotting the emperor’s assassination, and then when all is lost nobly sacrificing herself to preserve the safety of her people. Furthermore, this portrayal is complicated further by contrasts drawn throughout the poem, particularly with the besieging Emperor John II Komnenos’ recently deceased wife, and John’s ‘unconquerable fellow general’ the Virgin Mary, both positively and negatively. In addition to bringing to light this otherwise unknown event and analysing its presentation, this study will make preliminary conclusions as to why the poet composed the poem in this way, suggesting that it can be explained either as an allusion to imperial policy, perhaps a connection to a wider middle eastern epic tradition of Muslim women, or a more complex classical model was at work in this poem.

The major historical sources for mid twelfth-century Byzantium share the deficit of being written many years after the events they describe, with the reign of Emperor John II Komnenos (1118–43) in particular being given sparse treatment. In using histories such as those by Niketas Choniates and John Kinnamos to understand the twelfth-century empire and its neighbours, the question as to what these historians used as their own sources is thus a crucial one. They are, however, not our only windows on this era, as there is also a large volume of court texts in the form of occasional poems, imperial orations, and letters written for specific events as they occurred. Upon closer examination, we find indications that these court texts were based upon campaign communiqués from the Emperor and his command, and yet these court texts provided one of the key sources of information for the later histories. Accordingly, the twelfth-century court of the Komnenoi saw a multi-layered practice of rewriting history going on routinely as it occurred — a practice that the Komnenoi used in an attempt to legitimize and increase their own authority, and which the chroniclers then used to have events serve as evidence for what they saw as the meanings in history. In the twelfth century, in the wake of the invasions and civil wars that characterized late eleventh-century Byzantium, such messages would have been particularly needed as the empire found its feet once again in the face of new challenges from both Latin and Muslim rivals. I argue in this paper that the twelfth-century Komnenian court depicted history as a continuum, whereby events in the biblical, classical, and more recent past were all part of the same divinely inspired order of the world, and the Komnenoi were the latest iteration that would restore that world order. This being so, the meanings of history included both the practical, to outline the Emperor’s political programme in terms of historical precedent and to legitimize that programme, and the theo-philosophical, whereby this plan was the God-ordained world order designed to be the role of the Roman Empire.
The court texts illustrated and clarified such meanings by deploying older history in support of these messages, and by rewriting history to suit contemporary purposes. Where the texts make gratuitous use of biblical, classical, and more recent historical similes, they are not only using standard rhetorical tropes to flatter the current Emperor and his regime, but are also making specific comparisons that elucidate how they themselves understood events, the Weltanschauung of the imperial court, and their intended goals. This paper will thus first outline the process of rewriting events, before going into more detail about the practices used in rewriting, drawing from the use of biblical, classical, and recent history of Byzantium.

The Byzantine aristocracy of the late eleventh and twelfth centuries have been traditionally blamed as one of many long-term factors that brought about the disaster of the sack of Constantinople in 1204. Their greed for power and money supposedly led to political and economic hardship, together with “restraining” the Byzantine economy from developing, such that it was defenceless against the more innovative merchants of Venice and the other Italian maritime republics. Crucial to this picture is the perceived ‘feudalisation’ of the Byzantine economy, as plucky smallholders and free farmers supposedly became serfs, and major landowners dominated production and consumption to the detriment of their peasants and the Byzantine state. Recent evidence has contradicted this picture, however, as it appears that the twelfth century was a period of economic growth and wealth for Byzantium.
This paper aims to demonstrate that the twelfth century Byzantine aristocracy had the theoretical economic knowledge to invest and develop their holdings, and that they carried this out for the benefit of both themselves, the people and the imperial government. Using a mixture of monastic documents, personal letters and material culture, this paper will paint a new picture of the twelfth century where the growth of the domainial estates of large landowners provided increased capital investment for resource development, as well as providing better connections between where goods were produced, and where they were sold. There is also limited evidence of both village leaders and landowners negotiating for better conditions and profits, and the emperor actively attempting to keep both workers and landowners happy, rather than the emperor taking one side or the other. The implications of this research changes the social, political and economic history of twelfth century Byzantium, as well as demonstrating how twelfth-century aristocrats could relate to their people and the imperial government for mutual gain.

This paper will focus on the experience of non-Roman ethnic and religious groups who immigrated within the bounds of the twelfth-century Roman Empire, or were absorbed by the expansion of the empire at this time. Previous studies on minorities in Byzantium have tended to be bilateral, examining Byzantium and the Latins, or The Byzantine Turks in broad studies across centuries; this paper intends to examine a vertical slice of all such minorities in the mid-twelfth century, and thus discern if there was a specifically mid-Komnenian era Byzantine experience and interaction with immigrants and cultural pluralism, and derive reasons for this experience. The paper will first survey the non-Roman cultural, religious and ethnic groups within the empire, before analysing the broader relationships between empire, immigrants and cultural pluralism in general, and the varieties of experience within those relationships. Minorities included are the Jews, Nomads, Serbs, Armenians, Latin Christians, Black Africans, Romany Gypsies, Turks and Muslims. The limits of tolerance will then be discussed with regards to heretics, and in this way a snapshot of Komnenian tolerance and its limits will be analysed.

This paper posits that Matthew had the Emperor John II Komnenos (fl. 1087-1143) specifically in mind for the prophesied Roman Emperor he mentions in his chronicle, and that that this was due to a rapprochement in the 1130s between him and a faction of Armenian Cilicians who favoured a return to imperial rule, politically and ecclesiastically. It will propose that there was no monolithic Armenian voice during this period, but diverse factions in a divided land, and that Matthew’s continuator, Gregory the Priest, was part of a faction opposed to the empire. It shall also highlight lesser-known documents such as a letter between the Armenian katholikos and Emperor John, which testifies to this attempted rapprochement. I outline the specifics of John’s dealings with the Armenians, his conquest of Cilicia, and how that fed into Matthew’s positive opinion of John. This will be followed by a discussion of how the prophecy related above fits John, particularly in regard to his actions during the campaign of 1137-8. It will then demonstrate how it is therefore possible for Matthew to have lived and written long enough to have experienced John’s conquest of Cilicia, with his brief overlordship of Antioch and Edessa, and still hold a positive opinion of John II Komnenos. Thus I will also reopen the question of the date of Matthew’s last entry in his chronicle.

Note: This paper contains a translation error, as unfortunately I mistranslated one of the sources back in 2012 when I first put this paper together, and was not able to change it with the publishers in the intervening year. This is noted in bold as a change from the print copy at the appropriate section.
Abstract:
The inspiration for this paper lay in noting that all of Piroska-Eirene’s successors as Empress until 1204, bar the usurping Emperor Alexios III Angelos’ wife Euphrosyne Doukaina Kamatera, were Latins: western foreigners. With the sole exception of Maria of Alania there had been no foreign Empresses of any nationality since Eirene the Khazar had married Constantine V in 732, and these being some of only a few in all of Roman history.
On the one hand, this development may be completely explainable as a direct result of the new political realities that the Komnenoi and Angeloi found themselves confronting: since at least the scholarship produced by Paul Magdalino on the reign of Manuel I Komnenos, there has been the understanding that after the Crusades, dialogue with the Latin west became relevant in the empire in a way that had never been the case before, and its reduced state meant it was more in need of the alliances that marriage with westerners could bring.  On the other however, what did it mean in practical terms that the Empress – the Augousta, Despoina and Kyria of the Basileon Romaion – was now no longer a daughter of an imperial noble house, court trained and cognisant of the powers and duties of her position, but a barbarian foreigner? Magdalino may have identified the cause, but the effect, the analysis of the nature and the practice of this new development has yet to be examined in full, and such an analysis must begin with its originator: Piroska-Eirene.
In this paper, I intend to focus my analysis upon the way contemporary court sources in particular reconciled the nature of the Empress’ ancestry within imperial panegyric to bolster the imperial rhetoric of John’s regime, and then to investigate the practical effect of a westerner becoming the Byzantine Empress.

Picture a superpower, once unquestioned, but now increasingly challenged by the rise of new powers. After political and financial crises, it tries to jumpstart its economy with international free trade, which, though it makes major cities and certain sectors of society very wealthy, also increases the strain on everyone outside these societal and geographical groups.

This leads to resentment towards both foreigners and elites, while those elites continue to focus on constraining rising powers abroad and, in particular, to extend their influence in the Middle East, the Balkans, and Crimea. This ends with the rise of a popular demagogue, who rules chaotically. But the people support him as they see his measures against foreigners and elites as justified in what they see as a broken system.

Sound familiar?

What will be less familiar is the setting: the 12th century Byzantine Empire (the surviving eastern part of the Roman Empire) during the Crusades. The outsider politician: an ageing prince named Andronicus Komnenos (1118-1185).

The reign of Emperor John II Komnenos has traditionally been overlooked by scholars due to an apparent lack of source material, particularly in comparison to his father and son, Alexios I and Manuel I. As such, developments from this period tend to be examined in broader bilateral studies examining Byzantine dealings with peoples such as Serbs, Hungarians, Turks and Venetians separately, or only in reference to one region, or another figure, and the same goes for Crusader and Islamic polities later in the reign. This is despite the fact that John’s reign, occurring between the First and Second Crusades, occurred at a crucial time in Eurasian history, when Western Europe and the Middle East entered a new phase of contact on account of the Crusades. Byzantium was still, arguably, the most powerful Christian nation, and examining how the formerly unquestioned hegemonic power dealt with the rising powers of the Normans, Turks, Italian maritime republics and others deserved study if these developments are to be understood at all. As such, this paper aims to expose the changes in our analysis that result from the incorporation of non-traditional source material, highlighting how John’s reign as a whole should be re-examined with this methodology. Using the years 1123-1126 as a case study, the dividends such a methodology can pay will also be shown through analysis of Byzantine foreign policy in this period, as a previously overlooked crisis occurred for John’s regime in 1126.

The eleventh and twelfth centuries have traditionally been interpreted as the era when the Byzantine navy declined, and then was allowed to disappear. Historians often mark the death knell of the Byzantine navy with Emperor John II Komnenos ending the collection of taxes for localised defence fleets. Niketas Choniates describes the act as a money-hungry measure devised by the finance minister John of Poutza, whereby fleet taxes would be collected and spent centrally, leading to the end of localised fleets as funds were diverted to other sectors. This reform has traditionally been interpreted as one that led to losing a war with Venice in the 1120s, provincial insecurity, the eventual outsourcing of the Byzantine navy to the Italians, and finally the sack of Constantinople itself by the forces of the Fourth Crusade when the Italians turned against them.
Such an interpretation does not however sit easily with the reign of John II Komnenos, during which on numerous occasions the navy is referenced as playing a crucial part in the emperor’s campaigns, a feature that began in Alexios’ reign and continued into Manuel’s. Though Pryor and Jeffreys have previously expressed doubt that such a centralising naval reform could really spell the end of the Byzantine fleet, and possibly the empire itself, this paper will build upon that doubt with evidence that necessitates a re-evaluation of the traditional interpretation. First, the narrative of John’s war with Venice in the 1120s will be examined, followed by how the subsequent naval reform was shaped by these events, which themselves only confirmed the experiences of the Byzantine Navy in previous decades, and so highlighted the need for reform. This analysis will demonstrate that a centralising reform was a coherent measure undertaken to increase the efficiency of the fleet, and to officially recognise trends in organisation that had already emerged under Alexios. Subsequent fleet operations in John and Manuel’s reigns reveal that the role of the navy did indeed change in the early 12th century, but the narrative of decline is false. Throughout this section it will also be shown that analysis of the Byzantine navy has been overly shaped by use of hostile sources. The second part of this paper will then move on to highlight three major uses of the fleet that have been undervalued by scholars focused on traditional sea battles: its use on rivers as well as the sea, its use for transport and logistics, and its ‘soft power’ diplomatic capacity. The combination of these factors reveal a Byzantine navy that was a crucial part of the Komnenian restoration of Byzantine fortunes in the twelfth century, and that its decline after the death of Manuel must be seen as a product of other factors, rather than a cause of the late twelfth-century imperial decline in itself.

Unlike the Mediterranean, few studies exist that examine the Black Sea world as a whole, particularly for the late eleventh and twelfth centuries. Such an oversight is particularly surprising as this period saw the contemporaneous reigns of monarchs who are all acclaimed as conquerors or restorers of their nations.
All of these monarchs faced the same enemies: Pechenegs, Cumans and the Seljuk Turks. Using this as a touchstone to evaluate cross-cultural exchange across the Black Sea world, it can be seen that military campaigns were conducted against the Turks and steppe nomads by these monarchs at the same time as significant diplomatic marriages. Together with other evidence, this correlation implies coordination, and thus this paper will advocate that the changed political order of this period facilitated increased cooperation across the Black Sea. In particular, though the comparatively weakened state of Byzantium faced grievous challenges, this new order brought new opportunities for multilateral action from which the Black Sea nations all sought to profit, perhaps accounting for a measure of the success of these monarchs.

Emperor John II Komnenos is accredited for building Lopadion on the Rhyndakos, which scholars have previously labelled as a "fortified camp" and grouped with John's other fortifications as a simple castle. On visiting the site however, the scale is on a level with classical cities such as Nicaea and Antioch, and upon checking contemporary texts we see it described as a city; undoubtedly a base for military operations, but also a bishop’s see, a large market for crusading armies, a place for the ladies of the court to spent their time while the Emperor was on operations against the Turks, and the site of a major bridge over the Rhyndakos. All of this made it the nerve centre of John’s network of fortifications in Anatolia, and more than this, it was not even a ‘new’ settlement at all, but it's place in the rhetoric of the Imperial court established it as a key part of the contemporary narrative of the rebirth of the Roman Empire.
Because it was built in the 12th century, historians have seen it as a small fort, but for those at the time, it was a new Roman city. This paper will therefore show Lopadion as those who lived at the time saw it, drawing upon the intersection of ruins and rhetoric to reveal its role in the 12th Century Empire.

John II Komnenos was born into an empire on the brink of destruction, with his father Alexios barely preserving the empire in the face of civil wars and invasions. A hostage to crusaders as a child, married to a Hungarian princess as a teenager to win his father an alliance, and leading his own campaigns when his father died, it was left to John to try and rebuild the empire all but lost in the eleventh century.

This book, the first English language study on John and his era, re-evaluates an emperor traditionally overlooked in favour of his father, hero of the Alexiad written by John's sister Anna, and of his son Manuel, acclaimed for reigning at the height of Komnenian power. John's reign is one of contradictions, as his capital of New Rome/Constantinople was to fall to the armies of the Fourth Crusade just over sixty years after he died, and yet his descendants led vibrant successor states based in the lands that John reconquered. His reign lacks a dominant textual source, and so this history is related as much through personal letters, court literature, archaeology, and foreign accounts as through traditional historical narratives. This study includes extensive study of the landscapes, castles, and cities John built and campaigned through, and provides a guide to the world in which John lived. It covers the empire's neighbours and rivals, the turning points of ecclesiastical history, the shaping of the crusader movement, and the workings of Byzantine government and administration.

This volume contains selected papers from the XV International Graduate Conference, highlighting the latest scholarship from a new generation of Late Antique and Byzantine scholars from around the world. The theme of the conference explored the interaction between power and the natural and human environments of Byzantium, an interaction that is an essential part of the empire's legacy. This legacy has come down to us through buildings, literature, history and more, and has proved enduring enough to intrigue and fascinate scholars centuries after the fall of Constantinople. From religion and trade at the end of Antiquity, imperial propaganda and diplomacy at the end of the first millennium, to culture and conquest under the Komnenian and Palaeologan dynasties - this volume demonstrates the length and breadth of the forays being made by young academics into the still often undiscovered country of the Late Antique and Byzantine world.

Introduction:
“Man’s activities are very plainly moulded by the environment” – so argued Mark in his doctoral thesis in 1987, and yet when analysing the reign of the twelfth century Byzantine emperor John II Komnenos, these landscape related factors have been often been missing from previous studies, studies that have tended to debate the key issues based almost entirely upon often contradictory textual sources.  This paper today will focus on the most ambitious of the emperor’s campaigns, that to Cilicia and Syria in 1137, which has been the subject of a hugely diverse range of interpretations in past studies. 
This paper will argue that the divided political landscape of Cilicia in 1137, combined with the physical landscape of the country itself, explains the events of the campaign just as much, if not more than, any other ideological or personal factors involved. The research for this paper builds upon my original doctoral thesis and my more literature-based paper on Cilicia in this period that came out in the recent Dreams, Memory and Imagination in Byzantium, but significantly the research I am presenting today is based on a two week survey of sites between Konya and Antakya that I carried out in March of this year.  This trip was very much in the Whittownian tradition, drawing on Mark’s own research in the 1990s as part of the Oxford/BIAA Survey of Medieval Anatolian Castles project, and then the surveys he encouraged me to do as part of my doctorate in Serbia, Kosovo and western Turkey.  This research demonstrates that beyond their architectural specifics, these surviving castles, monasteries, churches and other structures demonstrate the intersection of human interaction with the landscape around them: the siting of a particular settlement within a specific theo-geo-political space (and I could probably add more prefixes if necessary here) has a great deal to tell us about the cultural, religious, economic, ideological and political history of the society that built it, and its interaction with those around it. This is not to be wholly geographically determinist about history, but as Mark said, history is certainly shaped by it, and so adding in these landscape factors to our analysis of John’s great eastern campaign is certainly required, in addition to the fieldwork itself being what I hope is a fitting tribute to Mark’s own work. Thus, in methodology, though I will mention architectural features when it comes to dating in particular, this paper will mainly be examining the relationship between these sites and the landscapes they inhabit, and the events they shaped. When constructing this paper for today, I had two choices: either I could cover every site, and thus my argument, in brief detail, or I could deep dive into a few sites to fully explore some of the more interesting possibilities this research involved, and in the end I decided for the latter, as there were some deeply intriguing possibilities this trip suggested that I thought would be fascinating to share with you today, though I look forward to questions on other sites as well, as the full chapter of my book this will be contributing towards now runs into the 25,000 word mark (I had fun cutting this paper down).
As an overview, this paper will therefore first introduce the condition of Cilicia in 1137 in our textual sources, before outlining select elements of John’s own campaign in the region, with particular focuses on where he launched the campaign from near Seleukeia, and then how expansive the campaign may have been to the north, demonstrating how the more contemporary texts in particular work with the landscape to potentially explain what has previously been so hotly debated, as well as raising new questions for further research.

This paper will focus on a unique and previously untranslated Byzantine court poem of Theodore Prodromos that describes the defence of Turkish held Gangra by its Amira in 1135. Though there had been women warriors from the dawn of Islam, and the contemporary Usama ibn Munqidh describes several women involved in warfare around his native Damascus, this unnamed Amira is only known from this one source, and shares little in common with any other classical, biblical or contemporary paradigms. Far from being hostile, this poem relates a startlingly complex portrayal for one resisting the rule of the emperor: alternately giving laudable, encouraging speeches to the defenders and boldly defying her enemies, plotting the emperor’s assassination, and then when all is lost nobly sacrificing herself to preserve the safety of her people. Furthermore, this portrayal is complicated further by contrasts drawn throughout the poem, particularly with the attacking Emperor John II Komnenos’ recently deceased wife, and John’s “unconquerable fellow general”, the Virgin Mary, both positively and negatively.
            This poem’s lack of literary models for the Amira and the events described, combined with the ‘press release’ nature of these occasional poems, must suggest that it relates actual events, and may even have been performed in the Amira’s presence shortly after the city was taken. This paper will first present this previously unknown account, before analysing what this means for the portrayal of women and outsiders at the Byzantine court, and its implications on Byzantine government policy. This paper will either be published in a conference volume at a later day or sent into a journal depending on the wishes of the committee.

The Byzantine aristocracy of the late eleventh and twelfth centuries have been traditionally blamed as one of many long-term factors that brought about the disaster of the sack of Constantinople in 1204. Their greed for power and money supposedly led to political and economic hardship, together with “restraining” the Byzantine economy from developing, such that it was defenceless against the more innovative merchants of Venice and the other Italian maritime republics. Crucial to this picture is the perceived ‘feudalisation’ of the Byzantine economy, as plucky smallholders and free farmers supposedly became serfs, and major landowners dominated production and consumption to the detriment of their peasants and the Byzantine state. Recent evidence has contradicted this picture, however, as it appears that the twelfth century was a period of economic growth and wealth for Byzantium.
This paper aims to demonstrate that the twelfth century Byzantine aristocracy had the theoretical economic knowledge to invest and develop their holdings, and that they carried this out for the benefit of both themselves, the people and the imperial government. Using a mixture of monastic documents, personal letters and material culture, this paper will paint a new picture of the twelfth century where the growth of the domainial estates of large landowners provided increased capital investment for resource development, as well as providing better connections between where goods were produced, and where they were sold. There is also limited evidence of both village leaders and landowners negotiating for better conditions and profits, and the emperor actively attempting to keep both workers and landowners happy, rather than the emperor taking one side or the other. The implications of this research changes the social, political and economic history of twelfth century Byzantium, as well as demonstrating how twelfth-century aristocrats could relate to their people and the imperial government for mutual gain.

This paper has two goals. First, to highlight the continuing contact and interaction between Byzantium and the Great Seljuks after the battle of Manzikert in 1071 and the reign of Alexios I Komnenos (1081-1118), which has been overlooked in most historiography, that traditionally sees no further interaction after the loss of eastern Anatolia in the eleventh century. In fact, the two formerly hegemonic powers interacted both indirectly through dealings with Georgia and the Islamic powers between them, and directly as evidenced by a letter sent from Sultan Ahmad Sanjar (1118-1157 to Emperor John II Komnenos (1118-1143), and references to Byzantine troops being deployed as far as Persia in the Chronicle of Michael the Syrian. This paper will collate and draw conclusions as to how these two great powers of the Near East interacted despite no longer sharing a border, and indeed despite the reduced state of both of these empires.

This relates to the second goal of this paper. In accordance with the definitions of the Global Middle Ages established by Holmes and Standen, from the comparison of the contemporary polities of Byzantium and the Great Seljuk Sultanate we can learn much as to how rulers and their subjects and enemies functioned in this period, and how typical both problems and their potential solutions are to medieval polities in general. The comparison of these two powers is particularly striking due to both empires previously having held hegemonic power over their respective theo-geo-political spheres of influence, but by the reigns of John and Sanjar, both empires existed in an increasingly challenged, fallen, state. Both rulers contended with nomadic raiders together with religious and political challenges from within and without, and yet both also made claims to universal rule in accordance with their empire’s former status. By coincidence, both rulers rose to unquestioned authority in 1118, and thus it is startling that they have not been compared before; the analysis of their respective successes and failures will therefore elucidate the specific features of both polities and thus enhance our knowledge of the Global Middle Ages as a whole.

As such, the original contributions of this paper include the collation and presentation of previously overlooked evidence of continuing relations between Byzantium and the Great Seljuk Sultanate in the twelfth century, and conclusions as to what such continuing relations meant for both parties. Equally, the comparison of the two polities and their rulers in this period in relation to their shared challenges. The latter in particular is thus a contribution to the study of the Global Middle Ages in particular.

Anna Komnene’s Alexiad described the Roman Empire as once stretching from the Pillars of Hercules in the west to the Pillars of Dionysus in the east, Thule to the north and the troglodyte country to the south. Though this rhetorical description is used to overemphasise how small and beleaguered an empire Alexios I had to defend by comparison, it does raise real questions as to the perceptions and pretentions to empire that the twelfth-century Roman emperors held. The term Komnenian ‘reconquista’ is often used to describe this period, but between court rhetoric and diplomatic and military practicality, what did these emperors aim to reconquer?

Though court rhetoric often makes comparisons between the Komnenoi and great figures of the past, this paper argues that when such similes are made, court rhetors such as Theodore Prodromos, Michael Italikos and Nikephoros Basilakes do so with specific messages in mind. Taking the reign of the often under researched John II as a primary case study, the deeds of mythological, Old Testament, classical and more recent figures are deployed to illustrate the political intentions of his regime.

This paper will analyse the uses of the memory of empire during the twelfth-century Komnenian restoration, primarily within Byzantine court rhetoric but also that contained in Eastern Christian, Arabic and Latin writers. Such an analysis will reveal which lands and peoples these emperors sought to reconquer as they were cast in the light of their predecessors, allowing us to understand the Komnenian ‘Dream that was Rome.’

Emperor John II Komnenos was the son of a usurper: his father Alexios’ soldiers had even looted the imperial capital when he seized power. And yet Alexios and John created a brand of dynastic authority so strong that the Komnenos family name became an essential addition to the imperial titulature for every emperor that followed them, a feat only otherwise accomplished by Julius and Augustus Caesar. The successful construction of this brand was a major achievement of John’s regime, which has previously gone unrecognised due to the lack of conventional historical sources covering this reign. Using previously untranslated contemporary court texts, this paper will demonstrate that John established his authority through both traditional and charismatic means, to such an extent that the Komnenos family became the only legitimate imperial family from that point on. These texts, when examined through the lens of Weber’s theories of authority, thus necessitate a re-evaluation of this understudied emperor’s reign as a crucial period when Roman authority was redefined as the old empire found itself in a new political order. An image of the emperor was created so as to connect him to both the classical and more recent past, with the additional purpose of re-establishing the legitimacy of the emperor’s ecumenical authority over the Roman world after the crises of the eleventh century. This paper will therefore outline the importance of both Weber’s typology and John’s regime for an understanding of Byzantium’s place in the twelfth century and beyond.

This paper will demonstrate that during the rule of Emperor John II Komnenos, the Byzantine Empire relocated and accepted diverse peoples in order to re-establish Roman imperial authority and identity.
Pecheneg and Cuman nomads were settled in the Balkans, in an action reflecting similar developments in the Rus, Hungary and Georgia. Serbs were settled in Nikomedeia and Armenians in Cyprus. Turkish, Jewish, Gypsy, Latin and other Christian communities flourished in this period. Both the extent and purpose of these developments have been overlooked by scholarship due to over-reliance on the imperfect narrative histories of Choniates and Kinnamos. Incorporating court texts from rhetors such as Theodore Prodromos, non-Greek texts and archaeology necessitates a change in how we interpret this period. They not only inform us of unknown developments whilst clarifying those known, but also allow us to take the contemporary political pulse: seeing how the imperial regime’s actions were presented to the court and the people of Constantinople, and the effect upon the archaeological record.
What emerges is a regime recreating its Roman, imperial identity in the wake of the eleventh century crises, and particularly the identity of its sovereign as the ecumenical emperor of the world. This was done through ruling diverse peoples as clients, and reflecting that in rhetoric and ritual. The movement and acceptance of peoples in the period between the first and second crusade reflects not chaos and crisis, but an attempt to consolidate a place for Byzantium in the new world of Crusaders, Italian city states, Norman and Turkish rivals. This migration of people, and imperial attempts at their integration, into the empire played an important role in the Komnenian restoration of Byzantium’s fortunes in the twelfth century.

The reign of John II Komnenos has often been overlooked in favour of his father Alexios and his son Manuel, with most research on his reign only carried out as part of broader regional or bilateral studies, such as those regarding Byzantium in the Balkans, Byzantium and Venice or Byzantium and the Turks. Coupled with this is an overreliance on narratives whose focus is not John, particularly Kinnamos and Choniates, who often omit or misrepresent information as part of their broader narrative goals or lack of knowledge.
The sources problem can, however, be overcome through use of both occasional court texts from rhetors such as Prodromos, Basilakes and Italikos, and regional texts such as those of the Priest of Diokleia and Michael the Syrian. Equally, recent archaeology can provide an intersection between rhetoric and the reality on the ground, such that the narrative provided by Kinnamos and Choniates can be re-evaluated.
Incorporating these sources therefore illuminates previously unclear events of his reign, and in particular the 1120s, where the basic chronology has for many years open to debate. Particularly, when exactly John campaigned against the Serbs and when he fought a war with Hungary has long been a matter of opinion due to contradictory sources. Equally his war with Venice has been interpreted as a pointless endeavour, particularly as the emperor’s efforts may have been better expended in Anatolia.
This paper will delineate that through using all of these sources, a coherent chronology can be established, and one that clarifies the emperor’s actions and policies in the Balkans. This is in addition to highlighting how the Constantinopolitan sources marginalise or omit actions in which the emperor did not take part. Equally, the reason why peace with Venice was sought at this time can be determined, as far from a humiliating climb down such a course of action was the lesser evil in comparison with developing situations in both the Balkans and Anatolia. The coincidence of three fugitive princes of Diokleia, Hungary and Ikonion seeking support in Constantinople simultaneously has not previously been recognised, and John’s attempt to deal with them all while prosecuting a war with Venice caused overextension, revolt in Trebizond and thus a crisis of empire that scholarship has previously overlooked. 
Faced with multiple fronts, John focused on ending the Serb insurrection and defending his lands from Stephen of Hungary, whilst still financing Mas’ud to retake Ikonion. He reformed his fleet after making a treaty with Venice, and with the Balkans settled he re-entered the Anatolian theatre with Mas’ud as an ally to take on both the Danishmendids and push through towards the rebellious Trebizond.
This paper will thus rewrite the historical narrative and open up a new dimension on how John’s foreign policy operated: his cumulative acquisition of client rulers to pursue increasingly ambitious campaigns. As such, it will raise broader questions regarding the nature of empire after the crises of the eleventh century, and thus the nature of the twelfth-century Komnenian restoration.

The late eleventh and early twelfth centuries have traditionally been interpreted as a period of decline for the Byzantine navy, during which the thematic fleets deteriorated until they were finally abolished under Emperor John II Komnenos. Niketas Choniates describes the act as a money-hungry measure of the finance minister John Poutzes, whereby fleet taxes would be collected and spent centrally. Scholars have interpreted this measure as one that led to losing a war with Venice, the end of local naval defence, the eventual outsourcing of the navy to the Italians, and even the sacking of Constantinople by the forces of the Fourth Crusade.
This interpretation does not, however, fit the facts concerning successful naval operations during the reigns of Emperors John and Manuel Komnenos. Equally, it does not take into account the changed world of the late eleventh and twelfth century, whereby the Byzantines and the Fatimids were no longer the only naval powers in the Mediterranean, as the rise of Venice, Genoa and Pisa, as well as their interests in the region due to the Crusades, had changed this world from a dipolar political order into a multipolar one. Far from being a mistake that led to naval decline, John’s centralisation of the navy was a rational measure carried out in order to deal with the new threats the empire faced. More than this, it was a successful measure for the reigns of John and Manuel at least, as attested by previously untranslated court texts, the archaeological evidence of the building of coastal forts, and a rereading of existing sources that reveals that the thematic navy, like the thematic army, has been overly romanticised by historians, and was unfit for purpose by the 12th century. Thus this paper will reveal John’s naval reform as a positive turning point that contributed to the Komnenian revival, and that the turning point that led to the navy’s decline came much later in the century.

Since Emperor Basil II had restored the Danube frontier of the empire, Byzantium was faced with the problem of what do against the threat of nomadic tribes, such as the Pechenegs and Cumans. Emperors attempted many strategies to deal with this problem: attempting to either annihilate them, assimilate them, convert them, bribe them, deter, or distract them, and these same processes can be observed in the other settled polities surrounding the Black Sea. Between the end of the eleventh and the first few decades of the twelfth century however, each of these polities simultaneously began to succeed in their military campaigns and attempts to integrate these tribes, while at the same time increased diplomatic activity can be observed between Byzantium, Hungary, Kiev and Georgia in particular. The sources from the period all glorify their respective rulers: Emperors Alexios I and John II Komnenos, Kings Coloman and Stephen II of Hungary, Grand Princes Vladimir II Monomakh and Mstislav I of Kiev, and David IV ‘the Builder’ of Georgia, but have not noted the diplomatic contact between them, mainly evidenced through marriages, nor the almost coordinated nature of their expeditions against their mutual nomadic enemy, and this has led the historiography to be similarly divided.
In this paper, I will demonstrate the cross-cultural exchanges evident in this period, and discuss the likelihood of there being a ‘Grand Alliance’ against the nomadic threat between the settled powers, or whether the new challenges that arose in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries merely brought an opportunity for these powers to take advantage of the knowledge of each others successes.

The inspiration for this paper lay in noting that all of Piroska-Eirene’s successors as Empress until 1204, bar the usurping Emperor Alexios III Angelos’ wife Euphrosyne Doukaina Kamatera, were Latins: western foreigners. With the sole exception of Maria of Alania there had been no foreign Empresses of any nationality since Eirene the Khazar had married Constantine V in 732, and these being some of only a few in all of Roman history.
On the one hand, this development may be completely explainable as a direct result of the new political realities that the Komnenoi and Angeloi found themselves confronting: since at least the scholarship produced by Paul Magdalino on the reign of Manuel I Komnenos, there has been the understanding that after the Crusades, dialogue with the Latin west became relevant in the empire in a way that had never been the case before, and its reduced state meant it was more in need of the alliances that marriage with westerners could bring.  On the other however, what did it mean in practical terms that the Empress – the Augousta, Despoina and Kyria of the Basileon Romaion – was now no longer a daughter of an imperial noble house, court trained and cognisant of the powers and duties of her position, but a barbarian foreigner? Magdalino may have identified the cause, but the effect, the analysis of the nature and the practice of this new development has yet to be examined in full, and such an analysis must begin with its originator: Piroska-Eirene.
In this paper, I intend to focus my analysis upon the way contemporary court sources in particular reconciled the nature of the Empress’ ancestry within imperial panegyric to bolster the imperial rhetoric of John’s regime, and then to investigate the practical effect of a westerner becoming the Byzantine Empress.

Given at the SPBS Symposium in 2012. The Byzantine Empire of the 10th and 12th centuries was in many ways a very different entity due to the fundamental changes wrought by the 11th. However, in both of these centuries there was great territorial gain through reconquest of former imperial lands, thus despite these changes, the situation an emperor found himself in when deciding on the administration and protection of these new territories was the same. This paper will examine how emperors in these centuries integrated their new territories, through comparison of Romanos I Lekapenos, his conquest of Melitene and establishment of the kouratoreia, with John II Komnenos and his establishment of monasteries subservient to large foundations in Constantinople, and their respective defences. Despite the chasm of a century of change, it would seem that imperial policy towards the integration of conquered territory saw continuity despite an evolution of methods.

Given at Leeds International Medieval Conference 2012, this paper examined the circumstances surrounding the death of the Emperor John II, on the eve of major military operations in the crusader states. It sought to establish who gained from his premature death and the likelihood of any foul play. As such the two parts of the paper will be to seek to assess John’s intentions towards the Crusader and Muslim states before his death, and then to attempt to reconstruct the ‘hunting accident’ that killed him. Thus this paper established both motive and opportunity for any who wished the Emperor, and his designs, ill.

Given at the Oxford University Byzantine Society International Graduate Conference 2012. John II Komnenos has often been characterised as a Soldier-Emperor who spent his reign campaigning against the enemies of Byzantium - and for most historians’ accounts a mere list of cities captured and battles fought is John’s contribution to Byzantine History between the more engaging narratives provided by John’s father Alexios I or his son Manuel I. Yet it appears that John was concerned that his legacy be more than a litany of blood and iron – he wished to balance his image as a conqueror with that of a man who was pious, a dedicated a philanthropist and a devoted husband. These images of John are all to found within the foundation charter and surviving buildings of one of the greatest monuments of Byzantium to come down to the present day – that of the imperial monastery of the Pantokrator in the empire’s capital, Constantinople. And through these images, we can begin to glean a shape of what the domestic policies John had during his reign were, and thus attempt to finally comprehend John’s legacy holistically, and not just through a list of campaigns. Over the course of this paper I will thus focus on what may be the key question to unlock this document - ‘Why?’ Why did John build such a complex, or indeed how much of it can we ascribe to John’s direct influence? Basing my analysis on the foundation charter, known as its typikon, the surviving architecture and what can be gleaned from textual and other material sources, I will seek to answer this question.

Given at the 22nd International Congress of Byzantine Studies, 2011, this paper built on my previous paper entitled 'a tale of two castles' by examining the entire fortress network of John II Komnenos in Anatolia, both by land and sea, and drew conclusions as to the nature of his reconquest of Anatolia from those fortresses.

Given at the Oxford University Byzantine Society International Graduate Conference 2011, this paper compared the historical and archeological context of two of the largest fortresses of John II Komnenos, and then related them to the wider issue of his defensive strategy.

"Today we talk to the man whose research has guided our last few podcasts Dr Maximilian Lau.

Dr Lau is Adjunct Professor of Economic History at Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo, and also a Research Associate in History at St Benet’s Hall, University of Oxford. He has been studying 12th century Byzantine history for many years now and the fruits of that labour can be found in his forthcoming book “Rebuilding New Rome. The Foreign Policy of John II Komnenos.”

The book is written and will be out next year and Dr Lau very generously shared it with me in advance. It’s been incredibly helpful in part because of its quality but also because it follows a format similar to our narrative episodes. It is a chronological account of John’s military and political activity with a discussion of the sources as each incident unfolds. As Dr Lau explains in the interview – John’s reign often gets short shrift in popular Byzantine books because our Roman sources cover him fairly briefly. But there are plenty of other sources to work with and Dr Lau has synthesised them to create a new history of John’s reign."

A talk given to Oxbridge summer school students on the supposed repetitions of history, and whether such a dialogue is useful. This talk approached issues of whether humans are violent by nature, and whether such can be a good thing, as argued by Ian Morris.

This talk reflected on the nature of evidence that survives from minority groups in Byzantium, and how these are often put away in their own separate section (having a class on 'women in Byzantium' or 'Jews in the Byzantium', etc), and the strengths and weaknesses of that approach. It will also highlight the cultural melange that was 12th century Byzantium and the near East.

Although 95% of a DPhil in History may take place in the library, this talk will be about the other 5%. It will provide both a practical guide as to how an Oxford historian leaves the Bodleian in favour of bribing checkpoint guards to cross a minefield in Kosovo, and then why you might want to. This talk will range from how the media is talking about the so-called Islamic State intending to destroy the world through Hadithic prophecy, and how the history of the Roman Empire during the Crusades sheds light on the truth behind often outrageous news stories. From finding lost castles to tracking population change, this will combine both a practical and theoretical introduction to the methods and uses of tomb raiding today.

Given at the Late Antique and Byzantine Studies Seminar, Oxford in 2013, this paper sought to present my initial findings from my field work in Anatolia in the summer of 2013, having cross referenced my studies with the historical and rhetorical sources. The research for this paper eventually contributed towards my paper in the Landscapes of Power volume.

Given at the Oxford Crusades Reading Group, 2013, this presentation and subsequent discussion explored my views on John's relations and intentions with regards Antioch in specific, and Tripoli and Jerusalem by extension, in particular drawing on the political rhetoric of Theodore Prodromos, Nikephoros Basilakes and John Italikos, and relating it to the wider picture of Byzantine diplomatic efforts in southern Italy. This paper built upon my previous work given at the Oxford Crusades Workshop, 2012.