The ideology of the lower strata within Byzantine society

The proposed project focuses on the exploration of an ideology of the "subaltern" within Byzantine society in the period from the reign of Heraclius (610-641) to the conquest of Constantinople by the crusader armies (1204). The period under scrutiny has been singled out due to certain geopolitical and cultural developments such as the de- Latinization of Roman imperial culture and the confinement of Roman territorial rule to the empire`s eastern parts, the geopolitical core of which consisted of Asia Minor and the Balkan Peninsula and in which the Hellenic language and culture were predominant, thus favouring greater political cohesion and cultural - religious homogeneity within the empire`s territories. The research aim is to scrutinize the lower strata`s assimilation to, or deviation from, the ruling ideology of the imperial government, that is, the common people`s perceptions of and attitudes towards the centralized imperial power and its ideals, with particular focus on the population of the provinces. The study will deal with core questions such as the image of the imperial office among the mass population, the common people`s perceptions of the imperial "state" apparatus, of the Roman political and legal order, and the political and cultural content of "Romanitas" as a collective identity. Our working hypothesis is that the empire`s population was not characterized by a high degree of ideological coherence as conveyed to us through the historiographical sources compiled in Constantinople. There was ideological differentiation, i.e. deviation and discrepancy with regard to the ruling imperial ideals, which has to be further scrutinized on the basis of certain dichotomies, such as ruling class vs. lower strata, centre (Constantinopolitan population) vs. periphery (provincial population), ruling ideology vs. oppositional ideologies, monolithic identity vs. discrepant identity. Our method is based on an understanding of ideology as an analytical concept which refers to sets of ideas and beliefs of a society as a whole, not simply of a society`s ruling group or class, and that it is interrelated with power relations and social divisions. The research foresees a close reading of various sources, with primary focus on hagiographical and other similar texts, which allow insights into the social action and concerns of the common people on the periphery. The material provided by the systematic scrutiny of these texts will serve as a basis for a comparative analysis with the material from historiographical and other sources that primarily reproduce imperial ideology. The expected results will provide insights into the ideas and beliefs of the lower strata, thereby enabling a bottom- up view of ideology and social structure within Byzantine society. Thus, they will complement the various studies that have focused on imperial ideology and the ideas of the upper class, and will round out the image of the Byzantine society`s ideology in the period from the seventh to the twelfth century, while promoting interdisciplinary research between the research fields of Byzantine Studies, Mediterranean Studies and Social History.

The goal of the project was to explore ideology in Byzantine society from the bottom-up in terms of social stratification and from outside-in in geographical terms, based on the distinction centre (Constantinople) periphery (provinces), between 600 and 1204. To exemplify the variety of ways in which the Byzantines related to the state system, religious hierarchy and local customs, the term vertical dualism between heavens and earth was proposed. This can be understood as either closed or open, the main difference being whether the laws of nature and the limits of society are understood as subject to change and perishability or not. The issue of a dominant ideology in the Byzantine social order was revisited from the point of view of the common people. The problematic aspects of the old debate as to whether theocratic absolutism or republican monarchism (Wahlmonarchie) was the dominant operative ideology of the Byzantine social order were highlighted. The central argument of the debate was dismissed insofar as it remains trapped within a dominant ideological tendency of twentieth-century historiography to place Byzantium into rigorous analytical categories from a Western and modern view-point. An alternative approach to a dominant ideology and its social function was proposed based on the fusion of action-oriented secular and religious ideas in the political theology of the medieval East Romans. We employed a basic distinction between an official/normative ideology of the imperial state of Constantinople (as can be deduced from court rhetoric), defined as Roman imperial ecumenism, and an operative ideology within the East Roman social order that contributed to its political unity, defined as divinely-ordained orthodox monocracy. We proposed that in the context of fusion of republican and Christian ideals in the dominant ideology of the Byzantine social order, the notion of divine ordainment had a distinctly operative that is socially pervasive political role. This was the only idea that could justify and explain both the success and the failure of revolt as a central political practice of irregular limitation of the emperors power within a socio-political system of non- hereditary autocratic rule that lacked an authoritative political body which could representatively decide in favour of or against an emperor on behalf of the whole community. Reference to Gods will was a pragmatic way to help common people explain the political systems arbitrary function, thus contributing to its re-stabilisation and unity. Last but not least, we proposed an analytical distinction between imperial and ethnic Romanness regarding the issue of collective identification in Byzantium. By pointing to a process of configuration of a dominant Roman ethnicity between the seventh and the eleventh centuries, we suggested that the boundaries of ethno-cultural and political community remained incongruent in Byzantine thought and ethnicity was a marginal factor of state-organization and political loyalty. The major change brought about by the disintegration of the Byzantine political order in the late-twelfth century was not the shift of élite notions of Romanness towards the ideal of ethnic Hellenism, but the irreversible regression of the dominant operative ideology of divinely-ordained orthodox monocracy that had determined the political unity of the East Roman community for centuries.