Book by Michael E Stewart
Routledge Handbook on Identity in Byzantium, 2022
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The Routledge Handbook on Identity in Byzantium, 2022
This volume is the first to focus solely on how specific individuals and groups in Byzantium and... more This volume is the first to focus solely on how specific individuals and groups in Byzantium and its borderlands were defined and distinguished from other individuals and groups from the mid-fourth to the close of the fifteenth century. It gathers chapters from both established and emerging scholars from a wide range of disciplines across history, art, archaeology, and religion to provide an accurate representation of the state of the field both now and in its immediate future. The handbook is divided into four subtopics that examine concepts of group and specific individual identity which have been chosen to provide methodologically sophisticated and multidisciplinary perspectives on specific categories of group and individual identity. The topics are Imperial Identities; Romanitas in the late antique Mediterranean; Macro and Micro Identities: Religious, Regional, and Ethnic Identities, and Internal Others; Gendered Identities: Literature, Memory, and Self in Early & Middle Byzantium. While no single volume could ever provide a comprehensive vision of identities on the vast variety of peoples within Byzantium over nearly a millennium of its history, this handbook represents a milestone in offering a survey of the vibrant surge of scholarship examining the numerous and oft-times fluctuating codes of identity that shaped and transformed Byzantium and its neighbours during the empire’s long life.
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Amsterdam University Press
A generation of historians has been captivated by the notorious views on gender found in the mid-... more A generation of historians has been captivated by the notorious views on gender found in the mid-sixth century Secret History by the Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea. Yet the notable but subtler ways in which gender coloured Procopius’ most significant work, the Wars, have received far less attention. This monograph examines how gender shaped the presentation of not only key personalities, but also the Persians, Vandals, Goths, Eastern Romans, and Italo-Romans, in both the Wars and the Secret History. By analysing the purpose and rationale behind Procopius’ gendered depictions and ethnicizing worldview, this investigation unpicks his knotty agenda. Despite Procopius’s reliance on classical antecedents, the gendered discourse that undergirds both texts under investigation must be understood within the broader context of contemporary political debates at a time when control of Italy and North Africa from Constantinople was contested.
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This monograph examines the various ways martial virtues and images of the soldier’s life shaped ... more This monograph examines the various ways martial virtues and images of the soldier’s life shaped early Byzantine cultural ideals of masculinity. It contends that in many of the visual and literary sources from the fourth to the seventh centuries CE, conceptualisations of the soldier’s life and the ideal manly life were often the same. By taking this stance, the book challenges the view found in many recent studies on Late Roman and early Byzantine masculinity that suggest a Christian ideal of manliness based on extreme ascetic virtues and pacifism had superseded militarism and courage as the dominant component of hegemonic masculine ideology. Though the monograph does not reject the relevance of Christian constructions of masculinity for helping one understand early Byzantine society and its diverse representations of masculinity, it seeks to balance these modern studies’ often heavy emphasis on “rigorist” Christian sources with the more customary attitudes we find in the secular, and indeed some Christian texts, praising military virtues as an essential aspect of Byzantine manliness. The connection between martial virtues and “true” manliness remained a powerful cultural force in the period covered in this study. Indeed, the reader of this work will find that the “manliness of war” is on display in much of the surviving early Byzantine literature, secular and Christian
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Papers by Michael E Stewart
Medieval World: Culture and Conflict, 2023
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12 generals: Portraits of Generalship & Authority in the Age of Justinian , 2024
It might surprise some that the general who speaks the last words in Procopius’ Wars is neither ... more It might surprise some that the general who speaks the last words in Procopius’ Wars is neither Belisarius nor Narses, but another general, John the nephew of Vitalian— a former rebel and magister militum praesentalis who had been liquidated in 520 at the behest of the emperor Justin (r. 518-527) and his adopted son, Justinian. Almost as surprising— considering his well-deserved epithet of “Bloody John” — Procopius has John advise Narses in this passage to be satisfied with his victory over the Goths and allow their defeated enemy to retreat unhindered from the battlefield. While a close examination of John’s life and career of one of Justinian’s most trusted and successful generals is overdue, in this chapter I examine Procopius' depiction of John's search for a wife.
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Histos/ https://histos.org/Histos_CurrentReviews.html, 2023
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Classica Cracoviensia , 2023
Few debates in modern academia are currently as heated as the one between those scholars who cons... more Few debates in modern academia are currently as heated as the one between those scholars who consider the arrival of bubonic plague in Constantinople in the Spring of 542 as a demographic and social disaster and those who argue for less tumultuous outcomes. Whatever side one stands on in the current discussion, the pandemic's immediate impact upon the administration, economy, politics, society, and religious culture within Constantinople and the wider Empire seems clear. I will suggest in this current article that one hitherto underappreciated result of the pandemic was increased competition amongst Constantinople's elites for a shrunken pool of suitable brides and grooms for their sons and daughters. The seminal Roman historian of the age, Procopius of Caesarea, offers ample evidence not only about the devastation wrought by the Bubonic Plague but also its impact upon the political alliances in Constantinople. Indeed, I will argue here that his numerous digressions in Secret History concerning marital politicking amongst Constantinople's elites provide evidence of this impact. Capitalizing upon advances in our knowledge about Procopius both as an author and historical figure, I will analyze his writings on three levels as history, literature, and propaganda. By asking what motivated Procopius to focus on these marital alliances, and, moreover pondering links between them, the paper offers some revisionist takes on these digressions, both as literary devices and as actual events
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Byzantina Symmeikta, 2021
Η αφήγηση του ιστοριογράφου Προκoπίου για τον πόλεμο εναντίον των Γότθων στην Ιταλία περιέχει πολ... more Η αφήγηση του ιστοριογράφου Προκoπίου για τον πόλεμο εναντίον των Γότθων στην Ιταλία περιέχει πολλές περιπτώσεις Γότθων, Ιταλών και Ανατολικών Ρωμαίων που αλλάζουν παρατάξεις κατά τη διάρκεια της μακράς σύγκρουσης. Η συστηματική εξέταση του θέματος δείχνει ότι ο Προκόπιος γενικά αντιμετώπιζε με συγκατάβαση τους στρατιώτες που λιποτακτούσαν, στάση, που αντικατοπτρίζει τις ευρύτερες μεσογειακές αντιλήψεις του 6ου αιώνα. Τί μπορούν να μας διδάξουν τα παραδείγματα των «προδοτικών» συμπεριφορών σχετικά με τη διαφωνία στην εποχή του Ιουστινιανού; Παρόμοιες και άλλες πράξεις διαφωνίας από στρατιώτες υποδηλώνουν ότι μονάδες του στρατού του Ιουστινιανού –τουλάχιστον κατά τη διάρκεια του δυτικού πολέμου– είχαν κάποιο επίπεδο ελευθερίας του λόγου και της δράσης, που μερικές φορές τους επέτρεπε να υπαγορεύουν όρους είτε στον διοικητή τους είτε στην κεντρική κυβέρνηση στην Κωνσταντινούπολη. Με τον ίδιο τρόπο και η γοτθική αντίσταση στην Ιταλία, μπορεί να ερμηνευθεί ως μια πράξη μη συμμόρφωσης πρ...
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Routledge, 2022
Though most of the work on identity in the post-imperial West rightfully has sought to uncover th... more Though most of the work on identity in the post-imperial West rightfully has sought to uncover the much more complex realities beneath the traditional tropes found in the early Byzantine literature, in this Chapter Stewart argues that to better understand the Age of Justinian and the some of the impetus behind his campaigns of reconquest in North Africa and Italy one must appreciate and better understand the ongoing belief amongst some Byzantines in the simplistic Roman/barbarian binarism. Indeed, if the Age of Trump has taught us anything, it’s that people’s vision of the past and prejudicial vision of peoples cast as dangerous others can have an allure that defies the much more complex realities on the ground.
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BYZANTINA ΣΥΜΜΕΙΚΤΑ, 2021
Though it was a trademark of ancient historians to maintain neutrality and tell both sides of the... more Though it was a trademark of ancient historians to maintain neutrality and tell both sides of the story, by examining instances of desertion and treason in Books 5 to 8 in the Wars, we argue in this chapter that such an even-handed posture reveals Procopius’ generally benign opinion about soldiers who deserted, a forgiving attitude which reflects wider sixth-century Mediterranean values. Indeed, when discussing military loyalties, Procopius recognises that soldiers would naturally switch sides if the expected rewards were provided by the enemy, or, in certain circumstances, if the opponent’s commander was a charismatic and/or fair leader like the Goth Totila or the Roman Belisarius.
If this premise is correct, we might then ask what can this and other examples of ‘traitorous’ behaviours and such desertions by both sides tell us about dissent in the age of Justinian? We will propose in this chapter, that these and other acts of dissidence by soldiers suggest that units of Justinian’s army, at least during the western wars, had some level of freedom of speech and action that sometimes allowed them to dictate terms to either their commander or to the central government in Constantinople. So too may Gothic resistance, in Italy, be interpreted as an act of nonconformity by a polity and/or individuals who rejected imperial visions of them as barbarian others, with no rightful claim over Italy. Yet, the chapter will demonstrate the necessity of appreciating Procopius’ literary aims, which are often just as critical to understand as his historical purpose. So, rather than use Procopius’ writing purely as a ‘database’ for our investigation, as much previous scholarship on the issue of desertions and treason in the Gothic war has done, in this chapter we will demonstrate how Procopius deploys his many vignettes on these topics as a literary tool by which to serve his larger didactic purpose
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Brepols, 2023
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Brill’s Companion to Bodyguards in the Ancient Mediterranean World, ed.M. Hebblewhite & C. Whately, 2022
At the opening of the fifth century CE, eunuchs were an everyday sight on the streets of Rome and... more At the opening of the fifth century CE, eunuchs were an everyday sight on the streets of Rome and Constantinople. This reality reflected the growing importance of eunuchs for the function of imperial and high society in the Later Roman Empire. Within the imperial court, eunuchs’ acute dependence upon the emperors whom they served made them particularly loyal, dedicated, and therefore indispensable servants. Although there has been much scholarly interest in the past two decades on the significant roles that eunuchs played within the burgeoning early Byzantine court and within Byzantium’s theological and gendered ideology, scholars have only recently come to appreciate Byzantium’s growing acceptance of eunuchs engaging in more martial, physical and typically hyper-masculine roles as soldiers, bodyguards, and assassins
It is eunuchs’ role as imperial bodyguards in the fifth and sixth centuries that serves as this chapter’s focus. By tracing the rise of eunuch-spatharii and other armed-cubicularii as an important part of the highly stratified and still imperfectly understood imperial palace corps, the chapter seeks to place these eunuch-guards within the larger framework of more studied units like the protectores, domestici, scholae, candidati, excubitores, and scribones. I will suggest that by participating and indeed thriving in such male-dominated realms, these martial- eunuchs could be understood simply as men, rather than judged as gendered anomalies.
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Acta Classica Supplementum, 2022
Abstract:
When attacking their enemies—late Roman and Byzantine intellectuals recognised that wor... more Abstract:
When attacking their enemies—late Roman and Byzantine intellectuals recognised that words could be effective and sometimes deadly weapons. These authors have left some memorable polemics. Of these, the most famous and widely read today is the sixth-century Anecdota or Secret History by Procopius. This paper examines the role polemic plays in Secret History and, particularly Procopius’ hostile portrait of his former superior, the general Belisarius.
Capitalising upon recent advancements made in our understanding of the possible literary and political context behind Secret History, I suggest that Procopius’ seeming turn against Belisarius in Secret History—which inverts the historian’s heroic characterization of Belisarius from his Bella or Wars—is best seen as a calculated piece of political manoeuvring rather than as evidence of the historian’s ‘true’ animosity towards the general.
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Diciembre 2020 – N.ºXXV: La legión romana (VII) El ocaso del Imperio, 2020
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Amsterdam University Press, 2020
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Medieval Warfare Magazine IX.4, 2019
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The Art of Generalship in Byzantium , 2022
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https://www.karwansaraypublishers.com/mw-issue-viii-5.html, 2018
On the morning of 15 August 717, the residents of Constantinople awoke to find their resplendent ... more On the morning of 15 August 717, the residents of Constantinople awoke to find their resplendent city besieged by 100,000 of the Umayyad Caliphate’s finest soldiers. Years in the planning, the siege was the recently emerged Muslim Empire’s most ambitious attempt to capture Constantinople and snuff out the stubborn resistance of the Christian Roman Empire once and for all.
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Book by Michael E Stewart
Papers by Michael E Stewart
If this premise is correct, we might then ask what can this and other examples of ‘traitorous’ behaviours and such desertions by both sides tell us about dissent in the age of Justinian? We will propose in this chapter, that these and other acts of dissidence by soldiers suggest that units of Justinian’s army, at least during the western wars, had some level of freedom of speech and action that sometimes allowed them to dictate terms to either their commander or to the central government in Constantinople. So too may Gothic resistance, in Italy, be interpreted as an act of nonconformity by a polity and/or individuals who rejected imperial visions of them as barbarian others, with no rightful claim over Italy. Yet, the chapter will demonstrate the necessity of appreciating Procopius’ literary aims, which are often just as critical to understand as his historical purpose. So, rather than use Procopius’ writing purely as a ‘database’ for our investigation, as much previous scholarship on the issue of desertions and treason in the Gothic war has done, in this chapter we will demonstrate how Procopius deploys his many vignettes on these topics as a literary tool by which to serve his larger didactic purpose
It is eunuchs’ role as imperial bodyguards in the fifth and sixth centuries that serves as this chapter’s focus. By tracing the rise of eunuch-spatharii and other armed-cubicularii as an important part of the highly stratified and still imperfectly understood imperial palace corps, the chapter seeks to place these eunuch-guards within the larger framework of more studied units like the protectores, domestici, scholae, candidati, excubitores, and scribones. I will suggest that by participating and indeed thriving in such male-dominated realms, these martial- eunuchs could be understood simply as men, rather than judged as gendered anomalies.
When attacking their enemies—late Roman and Byzantine intellectuals recognised that words could be effective and sometimes deadly weapons. These authors have left some memorable polemics. Of these, the most famous and widely read today is the sixth-century Anecdota or Secret History by Procopius. This paper examines the role polemic plays in Secret History and, particularly Procopius’ hostile portrait of his former superior, the general Belisarius.
Capitalising upon recent advancements made in our understanding of the possible literary and political context behind Secret History, I suggest that Procopius’ seeming turn against Belisarius in Secret History—which inverts the historian’s heroic characterization of Belisarius from his Bella or Wars—is best seen as a calculated piece of political manoeuvring rather than as evidence of the historian’s ‘true’ animosity towards the general.
If this premise is correct, we might then ask what can this and other examples of ‘traitorous’ behaviours and such desertions by both sides tell us about dissent in the age of Justinian? We will propose in this chapter, that these and other acts of dissidence by soldiers suggest that units of Justinian’s army, at least during the western wars, had some level of freedom of speech and action that sometimes allowed them to dictate terms to either their commander or to the central government in Constantinople. So too may Gothic resistance, in Italy, be interpreted as an act of nonconformity by a polity and/or individuals who rejected imperial visions of them as barbarian others, with no rightful claim over Italy. Yet, the chapter will demonstrate the necessity of appreciating Procopius’ literary aims, which are often just as critical to understand as his historical purpose. So, rather than use Procopius’ writing purely as a ‘database’ for our investigation, as much previous scholarship on the issue of desertions and treason in the Gothic war has done, in this chapter we will demonstrate how Procopius deploys his many vignettes on these topics as a literary tool by which to serve his larger didactic purpose
It is eunuchs’ role as imperial bodyguards in the fifth and sixth centuries that serves as this chapter’s focus. By tracing the rise of eunuch-spatharii and other armed-cubicularii as an important part of the highly stratified and still imperfectly understood imperial palace corps, the chapter seeks to place these eunuch-guards within the larger framework of more studied units like the protectores, domestici, scholae, candidati, excubitores, and scribones. I will suggest that by participating and indeed thriving in such male-dominated realms, these martial- eunuchs could be understood simply as men, rather than judged as gendered anomalies.
When attacking their enemies—late Roman and Byzantine intellectuals recognised that words could be effective and sometimes deadly weapons. These authors have left some memorable polemics. Of these, the most famous and widely read today is the sixth-century Anecdota or Secret History by Procopius. This paper examines the role polemic plays in Secret History and, particularly Procopius’ hostile portrait of his former superior, the general Belisarius.
Capitalising upon recent advancements made in our understanding of the possible literary and political context behind Secret History, I suggest that Procopius’ seeming turn against Belisarius in Secret History—which inverts the historian’s heroic characterization of Belisarius from his Bella or Wars—is best seen as a calculated piece of political manoeuvring rather than as evidence of the historian’s ‘true’ animosity towards the general.
In order to understand the innovative aspects of the new Christian heroic ideal as Procopius presented it, the thesis traces the origins and development of both Classical and Christian notions of valor. It focuses on Greek writers from the heroic age of Homer, to the sixth-century CE ecclesiastical and pagan historians. It then examines the similar and different ways these writers defined ideal and non-ideal men.
The thesis explores how the new Christian heroic ideal influenced Procopius’ description of foreign peoples. It suggests that Procopius’ descriptions of “barbarians” represented a new Christian vision of ethnicity. People were no longer described as Romans and barbarians, but increasingly, were designated as Christians and pagans.
The thesis concludes by comparing and contrasting Procopius’ descriptions of holy men and secular men. It asserts that understanding the new heroic ideal helps explain why secular warrior-heroes like Belisarius and Totila, so familiar from Classical literature, gradually disappeared from literature in the ensuing centuries and were replaced by these “holy heroes of Christ.”
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Since Prokopios probably included Belisarios in this group of hesitant generals, it has been seen as a subtle effort by the historian, even at this early stage, to cast Belisarios and the East Roman high command in a disparaging light. For these revisionists, it offers further proof that Prokopios was against Justinian’s campaigns in the West from the beginning, and no sycophant of Belisarios even at this early stage. This paper refutes these claims, suggesting that such views simplify the role that the multifaceted Greek concept of fear plays in Prokopios and other early Byzantine writers dealing with military matters. In fact, far from a just a negative trait, for Prokopios “fear”— in a multitude of contexts—functions as an essential tool of sound generalship and soldiering.
This article does not intend to reconstruct the events behind the reconquest or uncover the Goths, Byzantines, and Italians as they really were, rather it will trace Procopius’ views of the Italians found in Wars. Though the native Italians play a relatively minor role in the Gothic Wars, the essay will suggest, that in Procopius’ mind, the Western Romans’ ‘decision’ to forego their martial roles for less martial forms of male self-fashioning in the fifth century had led, not only to the rise of the ‘barbarian’ Vandals and the Goths, but had separated the Italians from an essential component of Romanitas—masculine martial virtues.
While one can rightly question how heavily one should lean upon the mid-sixth century historian Procopius’s vision of Theodora’s ‘meddling’ and ‘manipulation’ of marriage alliances both within and outside of the imperial family, in this paper I will look at Theodora’s role in two thwarted unions: Procopius’s vivid account in the Anecdota of Theodora’s attempt to wed her grandson to the daughter of the decorated general Belisarius and his powerful wife Antonina and Theodora’s active role in thwarting the marriage between a powerful Pers-Armenian general Artabanes to Justinian’s recently widowed niece Praeiecta. I will suggest that the two episodes are indeed closely linked, which helps confirm that the unpublished Anecdota was being written around the same time as the close of Wars in the late 540s and was meant to be integrated into the wars if Justinian died or was overthrown. Indeed, the two episodes offer keen insights into the political context surround the thwarted plot to assassinate Justinian in 549.
It is eunuchs’ role as imperial body-guards and assassins that serves as this talks’s focus. Although there has been a great deal of work recently on the significant roles eunuchs played both within the burgeoning Byzantine court and more psychologically within Byzantine theological and gender frameworks, only recently have scholars begun to appreciate Byzantium’s growing acceptance of eunuchs playing more martial, physical and indeed masculine roles as soldiers, body-guards, and assassins. By tracing the rise of eunuch-spatharii and other armed-cubicularii as an important part of the multifaceted and still imperfectly understood imperial palace corps, I seek to place these eunuch-guards within the larger framework of more studied units like the protectores, domestici, scholae, candidati, excubitores, and scribones. Answers to two further questions will be sought. First, what did contemporaries see as some of the advantages and disadvantages of these eunuch-guardsmen vis-à-vis their palace counter-parts? And second, can the rise and efficiency of eunuch-bodyguards and assassins help to explain why emperors from Justinian began to grant castrates important military commands?
Marriage, to be sure, plays a key part in the mid-sixth-century writings of Procopius, especially his unpublished Anecdota, which famously engaged in slanderous accusations against the emperor Justinian (ruled 527-565) and his wife Theodora. While the emperor Justinian’s famous union with the former actress Theodora has attracted significant scholarly interest, other marriages, such as Theodora’s sister Comito to the Gothic (or Armenian, his precise identity remains disputed) magister militum Sittas have received far less attention. This chapter will examine the role of marriage in establishing and maintaining both external and internal social networks within the emperor Justinian’s inner-circle. To begin, I will suggest that these marriages offered not just safety for Justinian, but also served as a way of tying both ‘established’ and “new” men and women to the regime and the Roman state, while simultaneously distancing certain members of the traditional aristocracy from the corridors of power. Finally, I will posit that these shifts in long-standing Roman traditions of marriage will help us understand why Procopius, concentrates so heavily on the imperial couples meddling in Constantinopolitans’ marriages.
Yet, Procopios’ account, describing the calamitous twenty-year battle to return Italy to the imperial fold, reveals that those whom Procopius describes as the “native” Italo-Romans did not necessarily see Belisarios and his soldiers as either saviours or fellow Romans. Indeed, we find the Romans from Constantinople often disparaged instead as ‘unmanly Greeks’, while the Goths could be cast as new Romans: just and manly protectors of Italy and the Italo-Romans. This reality offers a reminder that ancient concepts on ethnicity and identity were more malleable and complex than the traditional historical binary of Roman versus barbarian.
Such caveats have shaped recent work on the continuing relevance of Roman identity in what we moderns prefer to label Byzantium. Given modern concern with identity politics and ethnic strife, it is not surprising that recent debates concerning Roman identities are, to borrow the words of one recent scholar, ‘heated and conducted with a sense of urgency.’
Today’s talk will look at how Procopius defined ‘Romanness’ and modern interpretations of this evidence. I will offer my own suggestions for lessons we may learn by better understanding these ancient concerns.