cahn | Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 42

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Last post, we had (among other things) Danish kings and their favorites; Louis XIV and Philippe d'Orléans; reviews of a very shippy book about Katte, a bad Jacobite novel, and a great book about clothing; a fic about Émilie du Châtelet and Voltaire; and a review of a set of entertaining Youtube history videos about Frederick the Great.

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From:

selenak

THIS is why the Byzantines have the reputation they do and the word "byzantine" means what it does! :PP

Well, yes and no. This is the kind of thing people are thinking of, yes, but no, it didn't just happen in Byzantium but everywhere else as well, and Byzantium had just as many stable periods (as for example Basil II's reign (i.e. the one where he himself was in charge, not the regencies when he was a child and youth) - he could even afford to be on campaign for years, not return to Constantinople for the winter, without worrying that he'd get deposed. This is more than many an HRE Emperor could say for himself, and let's not even get into the Merovingian blood both in what became France, part of which is chronicled in "Dark Queens", the book Mildred recced me a while ago. I mean, that one culminates in a 70 plus old woman (one of the Queens of the title) being drawn and quartered in a truly vicious way by her rival's sole surviving son, complete with flaying while he was at it. The Carolingians later weren't that brutal with each other, but deposing of fathers and brothers complete with imprisonment and/or poisoning? Absolutely.

The reason why the term "Byzantine" became popular - as opposed to, I don't know, monarchical? Imperial? - is that in 1204, there was no getting around the fact that a Christian city had been brutally sacked by not just fellow Christians (this happened, what with all the inter Christian wars going on, and Team Byzantium had done their fair share of sacking in this regard, too) but doing explicitly so while on Crusade, i.e. on a mission where supposedly all violence was directed against infidels and for helping your fellow Christians, and that said sacking came with a gigantic robbery of not just worldly treasure but icons and relics. So in order to justify this, - the robbing of churches ON CRUSADE in addition to the general brutality - , Latin historians (Latin meaning here French, German, Italian et al) declared that Constantinople never deserved all these relics and icons etc, because they weren't real Christians, they were extra duplictious, they had kept betraying honest Latin Christians to the Muslims etc. etc. etc.. This image stuck around beyond the middle ages - from the quotes I've seen, Edward Gibbon totally goes for it -, but has been revised in current presentations.

BTW, needless to say: In Byzantine/Greek written Chronicles, the Latins are the ones constantly false, duplicituous, long before 1204. Which is as one sided and not true in that sense, either. But while venerating Ancient Greece, Western European historians for the longest time tended to belittle or ignore medieval Greek writers. Or ignore how strong the identification of later Greeks with Byzantium is. When I was at the Athens bookfair around 2000 or thereabouts, I talked with a lot of Greeks and the big cultural influence, the "our ancestors" kind of thing wasn't with Pericles et all, it was with Byzantium, and the poet quoted most often was Konstantin Kavavys from Alexandria, not Homer. There was quite a buzz due to the upcoming visit from the Pope, the first of a Pope ever, and whether he'd apologize for the 1204 sacking of Constantinople. (In Athens, mind.)

Wow, really? That's awesome. Gotta imagine there were some pretty tense family dinners...

IKR? But yes, that's that the chonicles say he said at least. :)

(Note that none of the three got blinded. Constantine VII, formerly Little C, was a nice guy in this regard. Or very confident his in-laws couldn't make a comeback.)

These poor kids.

Yep. As I said, little Otto lucked out and was the exception from the rule.

From:

cahn

Haha, I meant less the violence and more, the bit where everyone was planning to do everyone else in but was foiled by someone else planning to do someone else in. Though okay, yeah, I guess that happened everywhere :P (Although I'm now remembering Tarr's Aspasia saying something like, in Germany they rebel openly, in Byzantium they would have just snuck around and killed the previous emperor...)

There was quite a buzz due to the upcoming visit from the Pope, the first of a Pope ever, and whether he'd apologize for the 1204 sacking of Constantinople.

Gosh. It's always kind of amazing to me to realize how far back these old grudges go.

From:

selenak

Although I'm now remembering Tarr's Aspasia saying something like, in Germany they rebel openly, in Byzantium they would have just snuck around and killed the previous emperor..

Well, that's only true if you compare John Tzimitzikes' successful ursurpation with Henry the Quarellsome's failed attempt. A good number of Byzantine takeovers started the good old fashioned Roman way, by a very successful general getting hailed as Emperor by his troops. Now whether or not they then made it all the way to the throne depended on the era they lived in. If it was an unstable one, you got a whole series of Emperors in quick succession and all the outer enemies invading for added kicks. Otherwise, or if the reigning Emperor turned out to be very good at his job, you have the young Basil II vs Bardas Phokas versus Bardas Skleros situation, where both Bardas' were hailed by their respective troops as Emperor (Bardas Phokas twice, even), but got defeated nonetheless.

Meanwhile, in addition to the open rebellions, the Ottos and later the Salians accused their share of magnats of secretly conspiring against them, and then deposed said magnate. Correctly? Made up accusation against a potential troublemaker and/or easy way to get your hands on land and cash? Who knows.

...and then there's always the Fourth Crusade. Where Pope Innocent wanted everyone to go to Egypt because the situation there was unstable enough at the time that a potential conquest seemed possible, but "Go to Egypt" didn't sell as well as "Go to Jerusalem", so the preachers preached the traditional "Jerusalem!" creed. Meanwhile, Alexios the son of Isaac Angelos, who'd been blinded and deposed by his brother, also called Alexios, had escaped from his uncle's prison and made it to Germany where his sister Irene was the wife of Philip of Swabia, one of the two German kings currently duking it out in our very own War of the Roses (the other was Otto of Brunswick, and yes, they were both crowned Kings), and his in-laws thought bringing Alexios the younger to the throne, thereby getting the support of the next Byzantine Emperor, would be a great thing to have. And then there were two French nobles who made a deal with Enrico Dandolo the Doge of Venice to buy an entire fleet with money they didn't have, still with the end goal of going to Egypt, but the financing would be done by some sacking on the way... All of which converged into a situation where 90% of the army thought they were going to Jerusalem, the officers thought they were going to Egypt, and no only the leading generals knew they would have to go to Constantinople first, get Alexios on the throne and then get paid the fabled riches of the East Roman Empire, or else. As far as blatant dishonesty was easily the match of anything going on in Byzantium.