Byzantine ideology of war in the period of the Crusades

The proposed project will focus on the exploration of the Byzantines` perception of war and peace in the period from the enthronement of Alexios I Komnenos (1081) to the fall of Constantinople to the crusaders (1204). Unlike the previous period (7 th -11th century), the period to be focused on here was characterized by differentiated political, economic and military circumstances - defined by the decay of the administrative and military organization of the themata, the loss of the bigger part of Asia Minor to the Seljuks, the schism of 1054 and the crusades movement - and therefore has to be approached and explored independently. The aim of the study will be to clarify the religious character of Byzantine war through an exploration of the ideological background of Byzantine war policies during the "Reconquista" of the Komnenoi and the impact of crusader ideology on the Byzantine perception of war. The project will deal with the development of official Byzantine war ideology consequent to the political, economic and military status quo of the period. Further, it will explore Byzantine attitudes towards the crusader concept of war as a means for repentance of sins. Finally, it will focus on the Byzantines` individual perceptions of war and peace and explore differentiated perceptions and concepts of war and peace inside Byzantine society. Our working hypothesis is that the Byzantines` perception of peace defined their perception of war as a necessary means for achieving peace. So, in order to clarify if Byzantine society`s ideological background produced a perception of war primarily as means to achieve peace or as an evil thing to be avoided for the sake of peace, we have to explore the ways in which peace was determined by political and economic circumstances in society for the period from the late 11th to the early 13th century. Regarding the religious character of Byzantine war, the deprecatory Byzantine attitude towards the concept of Islamic Jihad allows the hypothesis for a deprecatory Byzantine attitude towards the concept of the crusades, considering that the ideological core of both Jihad and the crusades consisted in the perception of war as a means for repentance of sins. Our method is based on the analytical reading of written sources from the period extending from the first crusade (1095) until the year 1206 (establishment of the Empire of Nikaia) and the registration of any information relevant to war and peace. The registered material will be compiled on the basis of synthesis - comparative analysis and interpretation of information in order to extract final results. The results will round out the image of Byzantine war ideology in the period after Justinian I (527-565), continuing the recently completed study of Byzantine war ideology in the period from the 7th to the 11th century. Answers to the complex question of "holy" war in Byzantium can also be expected. In this way, our research will supplement existing studies on Islamic Jihad and the crusades and will thus offer a broad approach to the image of "holy" war in the Middle Ages.

The projects main aim was to scrutinize the views on warfare in Byzantium (Eastern Roman Empire) in the period of the early crusades (10811204). The project completed an exploration and systematic analysis of a) the attitudes of the imperial government of Constantinople towards war and peace, b) the construction of collective identities in warfare within the framework of a medieval imperial state, c) the influence of religion on the ethic of war, that is, on a medieval states or a societys right to engage in an armed conflict, and d) the Byzantine attitudes towards the ideology of the Crusades and the similarities or differences between the role of the Western and the Eastern Christian Church in the promotion of military violence. The results dismissed the old image of a non-bellicose or peace-loving Byzantine society that in principle sought for the avoidance of military conflict. The focus was on the sophistication of the ideological mechanisms with which the imperial government was able to justify expansionary warfare based on the interactive relation between statecraft and religion. This countered the hitherto dominant theory about a clear contrast between a passive, defensive Byzantine mentality and a warlike, expansionary mentality of the western Latin society. Moreover, the project demonstrated that the projected allegiance of the emperors subjects to ideal dichotomies, such as Romans vs. Barbarians or Christians vs. infidels was hardly universal, but mainly referred to the ideology of those social layers that were closely connected with the imperial power of Constantinople. In this regard, the Byzantine societys collective image of the enemy (infidel, barbarian) has been re-evaluated and, to a certain extent, deconstructed from the point of view of the dichotomy centre periphery. The most prominent aim of the research was the unfolding of the Byzantine approach to the crusade concept. The research looked behind the overall high degree of sacralization of warfare in medieval societies both in the eastern and the western Mediterranean, and the consequent superficial similarity of religious rhetoric in Byzantine and Crusader warfare respectively, by focusing on the actual role of religion juxtaposed to statecraft in configuring legitimizing arguments for resorting to military conflict or even promoting military violence. In this way, it provided a clear picture of the crucial differences between the Byzantine war ethic, the principles of which continued to be primarily defined by the ideal of maintenance of the Roman imperial states rule over an ideologically predefined Roman territory, and the crusading concept in which the right to engage in war was defined through the transcendent ideal of the triumph of the own religion over infidels and heretics, making thus the justice of the war-cause primarily dependent upon religious difference. In this light, the research demonstrated the alternative role of eastern Christianity and in particular the Byzantine Church in promoting war policies. This role, albeit not characterized by an ecclesiastical militarism and the relevant development of a holy war concept as in the West, was nevertheless equally crucial for the promotion of military violence on behalf of the imperial state by entrenching ideologically the legitimacy of its defensive and offensive military policies against all its enemies regardless of their religion.