International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Brendan Osswald
École française d’Athènes, Athens, Greece; 
[e-mail]
The State of Epirus as Political “Laboratory”
Even during the “classical” period, the Byzantine political system was never an inviolable one 
and was never constrained by unmodifiable rules such as a Constitution or a 
Magna Carta
. After 
1204, this instability of the political frames and institutions increased even more because of the 
general turmoil, and the successor States of the Byzantine Empire had to adapt to the new situation. 
Probably more than the Empires of Trebizond and Nicaea/Constantinople, Epirus had to change 
even more its way of considering her own political organization, because it had not achieved to 
become an Empire itself and also because it had to confront the Restored Byzantine Empire.
That is why we can but observe a continuous adaptation from the rulers of Epirus to the 
surrounding circumstances. Michael I ruled without any title, his brother Theodore and successor 

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took the imperial title and finally Michael II and the subsequent rulers bore the title of despots. But 
the signification and content of the despotic title changed a lot through throughout the centuries. 
Being a personal and non-hereditary honor received from the Byzantine Emperor and implying a 
familial connection with him, it became so closely connected to the land of Epirus that it evolved to 
become an almost feodal title; giving to Epirus the status of a 
despotate
. This Epirotic innovation was 
imitated in other places of the Byzantine and even Balkan world and despotates may be observed 
in Morea, Serres, etc.
Another Epirotic innovation is the increasing importance of its cities in the political system. 
Political divisions of Epirus led to the appearance of micro-states being no more than cities and 
their hinterlands. So the cities henceforth chose their sovereigns. This situation, recalling the 
contemporeanous situation of the Italian City-States, was unheard-of in the pre-Crusade Byzantine 
world. We should also observe that the necessity of finding allies and military support in difficult 
times led these Orthodox cities to call to non-Greek and even non-Orthodox rulers, which again 
should have sounded astounding some centuries or even some decades ago.
This constant adaptability clearly shows that Epirus, as a part of Byzantium, was definitely “a 
world of changes”. We can only suppose how, in some sense, revolutionary these events appeared to 
the contemporaries.