Bibliografía - Trabajo Fin de Grado

At this stage in the argument our portrait of the Byzantine Republic contains only the following elements: (a) a concept (the politeia) that pos-its republican norms for the operation of the public sphere; (b) program-matic ac know ledg ments by the emperors themselves that the purpose of their ofﬁ ce was to promote the welfare of their subjects and the good of the republic; (c) ritual participation of the people (in fact, the entire polit-eia, through its representatives) in the acclamation of a new emperor, in order to confer legitimacy upon him according to those republican norms (but rarely in his election); and (d) a few moments of “mob action,”

when the people took the po liti cal sphere into their own hands outside the framework of formal institutions. In fact, the only institution in which the people had the right to participate were those acclamations, which, many scholars believe, were an antiquated shadow of Roman practices.

Even this is saying a lot already, and provides the basis for a reevalua-tion of the Byzantine po liti cal sphere. The argument for republicanism, however, can be taken much further. We must fi rst set aside the fi eld’s fi xation on the formal institutions of the state, for, with the partial ex-ception of the acclamations of new emperors, these were almost all part of the basileia itself, that is, they were aspects of the exercise of imperial authority ( judicial, military, fi scal, etc.). But the basileia and the politeia were not interchangeable. The republicanism of Byzantium was a func-tion not so much of institufunc-tions as of the ideological context in which those institutions operated. For instance, there was no structure of pub-lic law that defi ned the purpose and scope of the exercise of monarchical power within the republic; that was something that emperors and subjects

The Sovereignty of the People in Practice 119 knew and negotiated between them by virtue of being shareholders in the republic. It was not any written “constitution” that educated emper-ors as to the purpose of their power, yet they consistently proclaimed that it was to serve the republic. No institutions set formal limits on the emperors, yet they crossed the limits of consensus at their peril.

There were no laws that regulated the manner of the succession, and here the people had the ﬁ nal say. In sum, the real power of the people was extralegal and outside the operation of institutions. In fact, when the people intervened, that often took the form of a suspension of legal au-thority, during which some even took the opportunity to commit crimi-nal acts. But the purpose of these noninstitutiocrimi-nal interventions was to institute a new legal authority, or to restore one that was in jeopardy.

Byzantium oscillated between the “animate law” of the emperor, a state of permanent exception that was stable only insofar as the emperor chose to respect the norms of the republic, and the extralegal sovereignty of the people, which, in the absence of ﬁ xed institutions, was often asserted in a violent and revolutionary way. Precisely because it could make and un-make imperial legitimacy, it operated beyond the sphere of imperial law.

Patterns of Pop u lar Intervention

This chapter will give historical weight to the theoretical argument by considering a range of environments in which the people asserted sover-eign rights. The downfall of Michael V was not an aberration. The peo-ple intervened regularly in many types of controversies— political, reli-gious, and dynastic— even if only to register their discontent, and emperors had to pay heed if they wished to stay on the throne. The following selec-tion of episodes aims to show how the narrative of pop u lar intervenselec-tion played out and what its underlying premises were. I have restricted the selection here to instances when the people were the primary agent of discontent. I have avoided those in which the racing factions (also called the demes) dominated the action, in order to stay clear of the debate over their role and the degree to which they represented the people.¹ I have also deferred to a later section of this chapter discussion of cases where there was a conspiracy or rebel army in motion, even if the people played a decisive role in the resolution of the crisis; such events will require us to nuance the argument for pop u lar sovereignty. When the people ﬂ exed their collective muscle, they could either depose an emperor or block a

120 The Byzantine Republic

rebel from seizing the throne. The deciding factor was the relative “pop-ularity” of the two men, so this will lead to a discussion of public opin-ion in Byzantium.

My purpose is to restore the po liti cal dimension of these interventions, to show that they were not just riots by the restless masses (“the mob”) over nonpo liti cal issues, such as entertainments. I wish also to draw at-tention to how emperors responded to these interventions: with few ex-ceptions, they submitted to the demands of the people, or had no choice in the matter, or humbly asked for forgiveness, to play for time or reestab-lish their legitimacy. This is what we would expect in a republican mon-archy. It is not what we would expect if the throne was understood to be based on absolute, especially theocratic, principles. Only one emperor ever struck back successfully against a concerted uprising, Justinian.² We begin with Anastasios, the circumstances and terms of whose acces-sion we witnessed in Chapter 4.

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In 511, a doctrinal controversy pitted the emperor Anastasios against the patriarch Makedonios. A source favorable to Makedo-nios, Theodoros Anagnostes, who may have been present, claims that a vast multitude (πλῆθος ἄπειρον), including women, children, and abbots, surged to the patriarch’s defense and insulted the em-peror, calling him a Manichaean and “unworthy of the basileia.”

Theodoros would have us believe that because of this protest Anas-tasios changed his mind “out of his fear of the crowd” and invited Makedonios back to the palace; along the way, the patriarch was even acclaimed by the guard.³ Certainly, the populace was divided on this issue and the protests did not topple the regime, but this source wants its readers to believe that Anastasios was de iure illegit-imate in the eyes of the community, or potentially so, for as long as he did not respect their wishes. Religious protest was here express-ing itself in the form of republican politics. Anastasios eventually deposed the patriarch for calling him a heretic and allegedly plot-ting against him. But before doing so, he summoned the captains of the guard and the patrikioi of the court and required them to swear an oath of loyalty to him and the politeia, gave largess to the army, and set guards at the gates and harbors.⁴

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In 512, Anastasios’s reign was rocked by another pop u lar protest over a religious question. The protesters were chanting, “A new

The Sovereignty of the People in Practice 121 emperor for Romanía (ἄλλον βασιλέα τῇ Ῥωμανίᾳ),” and they de-clared for Areobindos after burning the house of the unpop u lar ex- prefect Marinos. Areobindos ﬂ ed but Anastasios appeared in the hippodrome without his crown and offered to abdicate, which calmed the crowd.⁵ When the people told him to put his crown back on, they were symbolically reinvesting him with imperial authority, which they had originally given to him in 491.⁶ A contrite appear-ance in the hippodrome and a desire to open negotiations were a standard imperial response to such situations, as we saw with Mi-chael V (in 1042) and will see often in this chapter.

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In 532, the people of the City attempted to take down the regime of the emperor Justinian in one of the most violent uprisings in Ro-man history, the Nika riots. To be sure, it was sparked by a confron-tation between the factions and the urban authorities, but it soon acquired a general character as the populace joined in with its griev-ances against the regime, setting fi re to the praitorion (which quickly spread). It should be noted that most or all of the senate eventually joined the uprising but had not orchestrated it, and the rival emperors proclaimed by the crowd, fi rst Probos who fl ed (the crowd had chanted Πρόβον βασιλέα τῇ ῾Ρωμανίᾳ), then Hypatios (also a nephew of Anastasios) were unwilling, though Hypatios warmed to it. It was the people, on their own initiative, who proclaimed him emperor in the hippodrome, which indicates that they believed that they had the right to do this. No source counters this belief.⁷ Justin-ian made concessions to pacify the crowd, dismissing unpop u lar of-fi cials whose deposition had been demanded and appearing in the hippodrome to negotiate with the populace. When all seemed lost, he considered fl ight until, according to Prokopios, he was embold-ened to fi ght back by his wife Theodora, whom the historian gener-ally presents as an enemy of the modes and orders of the free Ro-man politeia.⁸ At any rate, this was the only insurrection of the people in Byzantine history that failed.

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In 577, pagans from eastern cities were put on trial in Constantino-ple for performing nefarious rites, but, it was believed, they were let go because the judges had been bribed. The people began to mur-mur and protest and soon gather in large numbers, chanting, “Dig up the judges’ bones!” and “Dig up the pagans’ bones!” A hundred thousand people rallied to these cries. They smashed the palace in

122 The Byzantine Republic

which the trials had been held, broke open the prisons and set the prisoners free, and destroyed the rec ords in the praitorion. The em-peror (Tiberios II) managed to calm their spirits; one account notes that the protesters had been denouncing him as well. He then pun-ished some of the alleged ringleaders of the riot, but also retried and convicted the pagans who had originally been acquitted, leading to an antipagan purge.⁹

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In 598, the general Kommentiolos was defeated in battle by the Av-ars and took many casualties. It was believed that he had deliber-ately led his soldiers to their deaths to punish them for reasons that are given variously in different accounts, including even that the emperor Maurikios had instructed him to do so. The armies in Thrace sent letters demanding that he be investigated. A ﬁ erce riot broke out in the City, which forced the emperor to appoint a com-mission to investigate (the charge was refuted and the general was reappointed).¹⁰

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At the lowest point in the war with Persia, probably in the late 610s, Herakleios proposed in despair to move the capital to Carthage, but

“the citizens opposed this as best they could” and the patriarch made him swear on the altar that he would not leave the City.¹¹

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In 641, after the death of Herakleios, his widow (and niece), Mar-tina, who was unpop u lar, assembled the patriarch, the magistrates, and the people of Constantinople; announced Herakleios’s will that his sons Konstantinos and Herakleios (Heraklonas) be proclaimed co- emperors; and asked that she, as Augusta, be given the se nior im-perial rank. But some of the people cried out to her that she should be content with the rank of mother of the emperors. Nor was she to receive foreign embassies: “May God forbid that the Roman politeia should come to such a pass.” They then acclaimed the emperors, but not her.¹² We cannot know who said what at that meeting or how the people collectively expressed their opinion. Possibly some of the notables were doing the speaking, though not necessarily: the people may well have had their own spokesmen. What matters, however, is that “the people” collectively are depicted as having the ﬁ nal say, re-gardless of who was actually doing the talking. Only they had the authority to ratify such decisions. Martina withdrew her claim.

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According to Peter Hatlie, “mass pop u lar manifestations against Church and government continued to occur periodically over the

The Sovereignty of the People in Practice 123 course of the [seventh] century, including protests against the re-duction in bread rations early in the century, the denunciations of patriarch Pyrrhos by ‘Senate and City’ at mid- century, and the odium vented against Konstas II and Justinian II prior to their re-spective dethronements in 668 and 695. All of these demonstrations in Constantinople’s streets, hippodrome, and Great Church took place, remarkably, without any reported participation by monks on an individual or group basis” (he cites sources for all of this).¹³

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In 1044, Konstantinos IX was on his way to church in a grand pro-cession when someone called out, “We do not want Skleraina [his mistress] as an empress, nor do we want our mothers, Zoe and The-odora who were born in the purple, to die for her sake.” Whereupon the people rioted and came close to killing the emperor. They calmed down only when the empresses appeared, and the emperor ﬂ ed back to the palace. This was a follow- up to the deposition of Michael V in 1042.¹⁴

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In 1197, Alexios III Angelos imposed a “German tax,” basically pro-tection money to stave off a western attack. He assembled all the people of the City, the senate, the clergy, and the trades, probably in the hippodrome, and asked for a contribution from each.

But soon he saw that he was accomplishing nothing and that his words were only empty talk. The majority deemed these burden-some and unwonted injunctions to be wholly intolerable and became clamorous and seditious. The emperor, blamed by some for squan-dering the public wealth (τὰ κοινὰ) and distributing the provinces to his kinsmen, all of whom were worthless and benighted, quickly discarded the proposal, as much as saying that it was not he who had introduced the scheme.¹⁵

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In early 1204, the people of the City realized that Alexios IV was only a puppet of the Latins. The narrative of events from Choniates, who was an eyewitness and participant, deserves to be quoted at length:

The City’s populace (τὸ δημῶδες τῆς πόλεως), acquitting themselves like men, pressed the emperor to take part with the soldiers in the struggle against the enemy [i.e., the Latins], as they were patriots (πατριώταις) . . . But Isaakios [his father] encouraged him to ignore the idle talk of the vulgar populace and to bestow the highest honors

124 The Byzantine Republic

on those who had restored him to his country [the Latins] . . . Some who associated with the Latins as comrades ignored the people’s deliberations as old wives’ gossip, being quicker to avoid battle with the Latins than an army of deer with a roaring lion . . . The City populace, ﬁ nding no fellow combatant and ally to draw the sword against the Latins, began to rise up in rebellion and, like a boiling kettle, to blow off steam of abuse against the emperors . . . A great and tumultuous concourse of people gathered in the Great Church;

the senate, the assembly of bishops, and the venerable clergy were compelled to convene there and deliberate together as to who should succeed as emperor . . . The multitude, simpleminded and volatile, asserted that they no longer wished to be ruled by the Angelos family, and that the assembly would not disband unless an emperor to their liking was ﬁ rst chosen.¹⁶

The preceding list is a selection of episodes when the people of Con-stantinople took the initiative to defend and enforce their views when it came to religious, po liti cal, ﬁ scal, and dynastic matters, or when they dis-liked an emperor and wanted to get rid of him. Again, I have listed here only episodes in which the role of the people was primary; when we turn to the rebellions in which their role was secondary but still decisive, we will then no longer be able to avoid the role of “public opinion,” that which all sides in po liti cal disputes were trying to monitor closely, cater to, and win over.

Even in this small set of episodes we can discern some recurring pat-terns of behavior. The people typically chant slogans about Romanía or against the emperor and his ofﬁ cials, they disrupt the operations of the praitorion, and they assemble in the hippodrome. It is noteworthy that the slogan “Dig up his bones!” and the attack on the praitorion (the hub of imperial law- and- order enforcement) are attested as early as the sixth century. We saw both in the events that led to the fall of Michael V (in 1042). As the people of the City were presumably not reading histories of earlier eras, this means that they had their own traditions— rituals even, perhaps even “institutions”— for instigating a pop u lar uprising, traditions that remained relatively stable over the course of many centuries. We will encounter and discuss some of these again below.

It is also important to note that the people asserted their will in all mat-ters that interested them, secular as well as religious. In the following

The Sovereignty of the People in Practice 125 detailed analysis I will concentrate on the former, mostly on civil wars and the succession problem where the people played (and were typically asked to play) a decisive role. But they were not passive when it came to religious issues, and did not wait to be told what to do.¹⁷ At the end of his landmark study of pop u lar participation in religious controversies, Tim Gregory tries to explain why the emperors paid any attention to public opinion at all. He prefers to cite pragmatic factors (especially their desire to stay on the throne), but when he has to explain what created the causal link between appeasing the people and staying on the throne in the fi rst place, he ultimately invokes the surviving “spark of the old Roman ‘demo-cratic’ tradition,” the idea “that power came ultimately from the gov-erned.”¹⁸ Gregory is understandably reluctant to fall back on this, because it makes historians seem “idealistic” and a bit wooly headed. Hence the qualifi ers, such as the word “spark” and the scare quotes around “demo-cratic.” But if there is no other way to explain the dynamic, we should abolish the qualifi ers and the bad conscience that comes with them. It was no spark. As the rest of this chapter will show, it was a confl agration that could erupt and consume emperors at any time.

Public Opinion and Contests for Power: A Theory of Civil War There has always been a tension between our understanding of the ideol-ogy of the imperial ofﬁ ce, which is grounded in absolute theological principles, and the messy and unpredictable realities of Byzantine po liti-cal history. What is most troubling is the gap between the alleged belief

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