Romans and Foreigners

It seems that a serious approach to the status of foreigners and the Byzantines'attitude towards them should now begin with a proper definition drawn from other disciplines, such as sociology and social anthropology. this chapter tries to estimate the political and legal dimensions of Romanness (Romanitas) in the meaning of citizenship vs. the status of the non-Roman in his relationship towards the empire. But since Romanitas is not only a political and legal but in particular a social and cultural reality, and since the levels are not always clearly distinguished, the discussion also refers to what form is the social and cultural identity of Roman vs. foreigner.

Seals and the Prosopography of the Byzantine Empire

For certain periods of the middle Byzantine era, seals, especially lead seals (molybdoboulla), played much the same role as do inscriptions for the Roman epoch. This chapter begins by stressing the impressive size of the epigraphic material. The number and importance vary through the centuries, but even from the most casual glance, one gets the impression that in two respects, both important to prosopography, developments reached their summit in the eleventh century: the number of seals, and the data that they offer. Working with such material involves at least three steps: reading, dating and interpretation.

Medieval Prosopographies and the Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England

This chapter discusses the origins of the project, the historian's concepts of database entities, ‘humanities computing’, and the new dynamics of collaboration. Prosopography in the sense of biographical compendia of exemplary males, especially office-holders in the service of the state, or church, grew out of those. As other papers in this volume show, an electronic database offers huge potential advantages over the old handwritten card-index methods of assembling a prosopography. This model, of standards adoption and standards building, is no less relevant to projects such as PASE, PBE, and other prosopographical projects. It holds out the realistic prospect, for example, of creating a compendium of all Anglo-Saxon materials, whether historical, literary, linguistic, visual or archaeological.

The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

Several lessons have been leant from the three volumes of PLRE. The scholarly response suggests that the most sought-after attributes of any prosopographical catalogue are clearly formulated and stated criteria for inclusion, consistency in the application of the criteria, and completeness of coverage. In sum, PLRE has caused people to rethink many of the ways in which they look at late antiquity. The development of the material demonstrates the growing diversity of the Mediterranean world: PLRE by PLRE III, one has a massive array of eastern and western non-Romans both within and outside the imperial frontiers. As a result of its increasing inclusivity, PLRE became more of a secular PLA than a PLRE. Overall, this chapter concludes that PLRE has become the one work that must be on the shelves of anyone who proposes to make a comprehensive study of the late antique world.

The Prosopographia Imperii Romani and Prosopographical Method

The official birthday of the Prosopographia Imperii Romani was 31 March 1874. That was the day on which Theodor Mommsen formulated an application to the plenary assembly of the Ködeiresniglich Preuβlische Akademie der Wissenschaften in Berlin to launch a ‘prosopography of renowned men of the Roman imperial period’ including chronologically ordered lists of consuls and governors and magistrates in general. But in fact, Mommsen had long before planned to add a summary of this kind to the editions of inscriptions. Mommsen himself probably intended PIR to be the foundation for further historical insights. Almost all the prosopographical works on the Roman empire have one thing in common: their source material predominantly or even solely comprises epigraphic texts in Latin and Greek. Of course, other sources are taken into account as well, but the importance of inscriptions is generally much greater.

Official Power and Non-Official Power

For the government of what was for a long time the largest state in Christendom, Byzantine the emperor had at his disposal a mere handful of official and armed forces whose strength was insufficient to ensure lasting control provinces against the will of the peoples who inhabited them. In order to determine the nature of this power, this chapter examines the many surviving official seals that represent the major part of the extant prosopographical material, in order to explain the problem of classifying the holders of official and other power. The nature of the power exercised by one or another individual cannot be easily defined with simply prosopographic elements, even though the latter generally suggest the most probable hypotheses. One must never forget that in the Byzantine empire, in spite of the Roman heritage, the division between public and private was never so clear as it is in modem states.

Prosopography and Byzantine Identity

This chapter reflects on the contribution of prosopography to Byzantine studies during the second half of the twentieth century. To get it right, the set of identities has to be comprehensive, each identity has to be complete and correct, and its points of contact with other identities have to be clearly visible. Prosopography retrieves and labels the bits, then it boxes the kits, from which past identities are assembled and interpreted scientifically. While it may not be committed to delivering finished solutions, it lays out the steps by which they are reached, through its absolute commitment to the principles which make it a distinct form of historical science: that every piece of historical data should be related to an identifiable historical person, that multiple identities should not be confused, single identities should not be multiplied and collective identities should always be defined in terms of connections between individuals.

Orthodoxy and Heresy in the Seventh Century: Prosopographical Observations on Monotheletism

In traditional ecclesiastical history, heresy was understood as dissent from the beliefs of the majority on the part of a minority which was organized as a church and had developed a defined system of doctrinal tenets. Today, heresy is seen as the result of a process of marginalization or in terms of the historical failure of a particular religious movement or teaching, Movements or creeds that were later termed heretical could hold sway over long periods of time, and thus themselves set the standards of orthodoxy for their period. The discussion suggests that the so-called disputes over Monenergism and Monotheletism were primarily conducted in writing, and are above all to be seen in the context of the rivalry between Rome, with its claim to primacy, and Constantinople. Only in a very restricted sense could one attribute a real political or social importance to the phenomenon.

The Contribution of Papyri to the Prosopography of the Ancient World: Evaluation and Prospects

Some are familiar with the dictum often attributed to Mommsen at the end of the nineteenth century, according to which papyrology was destined to become the leading discipline of ancient history in succession to epigraphy, which had previously been dominant. During the century in which this new branch of knowledge of antiquity has been in existence, the contribution of papyri and ostraca to the documentation of ancient societies has justified the hopes thus placed in it. It is all the more surprising, then, to note that among historians there persists a certain failure to appreciate this contribution and a reluctance to exploit it. The truth is that papyri share the same fragmentary, random and lacunose character that is a feature of the majority of documentary sources available to us for the study of the ancient world.

Exploring the Jungle: Hagiographical Literature between Fact and Fiction

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the German theologian Albert Ehrhardt wrote a chapter on the History Byzantine Literature. It included a paragraph on hagiography, where he compared Byzantine hagiographical literature to a ‘thick jungle with no path leading into its interior’. His remark touches upon one major problem of hagiography: the correct distinction between fact and fiction. Two extreme points of view have been developed with regard to the value of hagiographical texts as historical sources. According to one, hagiography provides valuable information about some aspects of daily life in Byzantium. It stresses the idea that hagiography contains hard facts. According to the second point of view, hagiography is mere fiction. Saints' Lives are hagiographical novels that tell us nothing about the saint and his life, and may at best reveal something about the author's intentions and the historical situation at the time of writing.