Imperial Ideology and Political Thought in Byzantium, 1204 - 1330

by Dimiter Angelov

This 2007 study was the first to systematically investigate Byzantine imperial ideology, court rhetoric and political thought after the Latin conquest of Constantinople in 1204 - in the Nicaean state (1204 61) and during the early period of the restored empire of the Palaiologoi. The book explores Byzantine political imagination at a time of crisis when the Empire ceased to be a first-rate power in the Mediterranean. It investigates the correspondence and fissures between official political rhetoric, on the one hand, and the political ideas of lay thinkers and churchmen, on the other. Through the analysis of a wide body of sources, a picture of Byzantine political thought emerges which differs significantly from the traditional one. The period saw refreshing developments in court rhetoric and political thought, some with interesting parallels in the medieval and Renaissance West, which arose in response to the new historical realities.

Genres: History

474 pages, Hardcover

First published March 5, 2007

Reviews

[Γιώργος Τζαβέλας · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book ! Now i want to read more about the imperial ideology and the thinking in byzantinum ! Recommended , although a not literary work is very sophisticated on the way is written .

[Anatolikon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book examines the political imagination in thirteenth and fourteenth century Byzantium in order to understand what changed when the state ceased to be a first-rate power. Angelov approaches this be contrasting the official ideology of kingship with material that talks about kingship. It's an intellectual history: the interest is in what is said rather than what is being done. To do this, Angelov examines secular thinkers, imperial propaganda, and ecclesiastical thinkers, while recognizing that there are divisions in some of these levels. The result is a rich canvas that smashes the idea that there was no political theory in Byzantium. Struggles across time and through the groups are evident: emperors perpetuated the ideology of the tributary state in response to the rise in power of the elites, the church aggressively took on the imperial office and won some ground, and the elites, never a unified group, worked for their own aggrandizement. Interestingly, the recapture of Constantinople in 1261 comes across almost as less significant than its loss in 1204. In Angelov's scheme, the Palaiologoi continued the theme of aristocratic domination and running the state for bettering the clan that the Komnenoi started. The Laskarids made some efforts against this, but were ultimately unsuccessful.

[Byzantine Philology · Rating 4 out of 5]

one of the few analyses of this period in late Byzantium