The Byzantine Republic: People and Power in New Rome

309 Pages·2015·1.7 MB·English

by  Anthony Kaldellis

The Byzantine Republic

ANTHONY KALDELLIS
The Byzantine Republic
People and Power in New Rome
Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, En gland 2015
Copyright © 2015 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
First printing
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Kaldellis, Anthony.
The Byzantine Republic : people and power in New Rome / Anthony Kaldellis.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-674-36540-7 (alkaline paper)
1. Byzantine Empire—History—527–1081. 2. Byzantine Empire—Politics and
government—527–1081. 3. Legitimacy of governments—Byzantine Empire. 4. Power
(Social sciences)—Byzantine Empire. 5. Republicanism—Byzantine Empire.
6. Monarchy—Byzantine Empire. 7. Authority—History—To 1500. I. Title.
DF571.K35 2015
949.5'02—dc23 2014011695
To Carolina López Ruiz
with love and admiration

Contents
Preface ix
1 Introducing the Byzantine Republic 1
2 The Emperor in the Republic 32
3 Extralegal Authority in a Lawful Polity 62
4 The Sovereignty of the People in Theory 89
5 The Sovereignty of the People in Practice 118
6 The Secular Republic and the Theocratic “Imperial Idea” 165
Conclusion 199
Notes 203
Bibliography 255
Ac know ledg ments 285
Index 287

Preface
The goal of this book is to present an original argument regarding the
nature of what we call “the Byzantine empire” as a po liti cal society. In
discussing the Byzantine pol itic al sphere, scholarship has focused al-
most exclusively on the emperor and has tended to accept at face value
the theological grounds for the legitimacy of his power often claimed by
the court. This picture, I will argue, is partial and even misleading. Byz-
antium must fi rst be understood as a republic in the Roman tradition.
As I will explain in Chapter 1, by “republic” I mean a regime in which
only popu l ar consent could authorize the allocation of power, which
could be used only to benefi t the totality of the Roman people (whom we
call the “Byzantines”). According to this defi nition, and following most
pol itic al theorists down to the Enlightenment, republics and monar-
chies were not incompatible. By contrast, what we (and not the Romans)
call the “Republic” was only one specifi c type of regime by which the res
publica or res Romana was governed in one phase of its history, namely, by
the senate, consuls, and pop u lar assemblies. Byzantium was a republic
in the broader sense. The Roman people remained the true sovereign of
the po liti cal sphere, and they both authorized and de-authorized the
holding of power by their rulers. The latter, “the emperors of the Romans,”
must be understood in relation to the pol itic al sphere constituted by the
totality of the Roman people. The politeia was the Byzantine Greek trans-
lation and continuation of the ancient res publica.
This project is part of a two- pronged effort to rehabilitate the Roman
dimension of Byzantium and the Roman identity of the Byzantines
themselves. The sequel and companion book will argue, according to
both the evidence and theoretical models that have prevailed in the social
ix