International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

POLITICAL IDEOLOGY AND HERESIES
Chairs: 
Demetrios Kyritses, Jonel Hedjan
Boris Milosavljević
, 
The Byzantine Empire in the Typology of States 
(Typical Medieval State, Byzantine Republic, Modern Absolute Monarchy)
Demetrios Kyritses
, 
The Palace and the City as Political Stage: The Theatrics of Public Deliberation in Byzantium
Ioannis Smarnakis
, 
Plethon’s Reformatory Proposals of the Despotate of Morea. 
A Paradigm of Early Modern Political Thought?
Stefan Staretu
, 
Two Models of Byzantine Monarchy
Carl Stephen Dixon, 
Innovation, Intrigue and Intertextuality: The Paulicians and Byzantine Heresiology
Nicholas Mathieou
, 
Heresy and Society in East Roman Caucasia, c. 1000-1071 
Re-Imagining ‘Paulicianism’ and the ‘T‘ondrakian Movement’
Mirela Ivanova, 
Bogimils and Moral Instruction: Rethinking Kozmas’ Discourse against Heretics
Maja Angelovska-Panova, 
Heresy and Social Structure: The Case of Bogomil Communities

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Boris Milosavljević
Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Institute for Balkan Studies, Belgrade, Serbia; 
[e-mail]
The Byzantine Empire in the Typology of States 
(Typical Medieval State, Byzantine Republic, Modern Absolute Monarchy)
The theory of the state and the typology of states have a long tradition. Plato’s and Aristotle’s 
state typologies have not lost relevance even today. Political philosophy (ancient as well as modern) 
has the state as the focus of study. The state is an object of analysis in political philosophy, political 
science and law. The general theory of the state (Аllgemeine Staatslehre) analyses basic issues 
concerning the formation of the state and its historical types. 
According to the theory of the state, elements of the state are people, territory and sovereignty. 
The state is a compulsory organization with a centralized government that has a monopoly on the 
legitimate use of force in a certain territory. This definition has a very wide extension. The state may 
be a city-state, polis, or a Kelsenian (Stoic, Ch. Wollf’s) civitas maxima, a global state. It is a state in 
both cases. If a state does not hold firm and unique power in the whole territory it claims, that does 
not mean it is not a state. The state may be a union of states, a federal state (confederation is not 
a sovereign state) or a state that has devolved some of its original statehood attributes upon lower 
levels. A state can lose a part or even all of its territory, and still be a state.
A state is born, lives and dies. According to Thomas Hobbes’s metaphor, the state is “mortal 
God” (deus mortalis). In comparison to humans, the state is divine and long living, but it is not 
eternal. The death of the state may be its destruction, but also its unification with other states. 
If we take look at the Byzantine Empire as a type of state, we can say that it lasted for a very 
long time and that it was part of the history of Rome. As a matter of fact, “the Byzantine Empire” is a 
modern term. The Byzantine state was a Roman state, and the “Byzantines” considered themselves to 
be Romans. Byzantium was not the ancient Roman Empire, but it undisputedly was a Roman state. 
This is very important since the Roman state became an ideal model for Renaissance theorists of the 
state (Machiavelli). The Roman background and the Roman legal (etc.) character of the Byzantine 
state were not denied, but they were not taken into account in theories of the state. 
The basic difference between premodern (medieval) and modern states is most obvious in 
the concept of sovereignty. Premodern states did not exercise full sovereignty. By sovereignty we 
understand internationally recognized (external) sovereignty of the state (nation) and the internal 
sovereignty of the state, the supreme power. A state is sovereign if it manifests or exercises sovereign 
power over its territory. As we have already noted, a state is sovereign even if it temporarily does not 
exercise its power over parts of its territory. 
The Byzantine state exercised sovereign power over its territory. It is less important how large 
the territory was at different periods of its history. Byzantium suffered great territorial losses, but 
imperial rule continued to be based on the bureaucracy: “The structure of government retained the 
outlook and the body of theory which it had inherited from the unitary Rome state”. The government 
succeeded in maintaining direct subordination and avoided the hierarchy of independent vassals 

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and subordinate sub-vassals which became characteristic of the West-European middle ages. “We 
shall not be far wrong if we think of Byzantium as having persisted as a single structure of society 
ruled by a state which was in slow decline but which was saved for centuries from disruption, though 
not from vast losses of territory, by the resilience of the agencies and attitudes it had inherited from 
Rome” (F. H. Hinsley).
On the other hand, the spiritual power of the papacy and the universal and supreme power 
of the elected (Holy) Roman Emperor (of German nations) in the west were not sovereign powers. 
The modern sovereign state is a contemporary state. The modern state is actually absolute 
monarchy. Supreme power is one and unique in the whole territory and over all of its inhabitants. 
The legislator has the right to make, change and abolish laws. 
If we look at a broader picture, we may conclude that Byzantium has much more in common with the 
modern sovereign state (created at the time of the western absolute monarchy and the Reformation) than 
with the western medieval state. This is quite obvious. Yet, influential, mainly Protestant historiography 
(from Whig to Hegelian) usually considered Byzantium as a side track of world history, a decadent, 
dying remnant of the Roman Empire. There was a strong anti-Byzantine sentiment. It was unthinkable 
to say that the Byzantine state model was a “progressive” one, in fact a model that could have been an 
example for western states. On the contrary, historiography framed Byzantium as a retrograde state, 
the worst of all medieval states. It is not a conspiracy against the Byzantine Empire; namely, all modern 
historiography rested on ideas that were basically anti-medieval (anti-Catholic). There is a whole set 
of mainly Protestant prejudices as well as prejudices of the French Enlightenment that are built into 
contemporary historiography. This is a major issue for the philosophy of historiography. The problems 
of medieval history raise historiographical and methodological questions of the utmost importance, 
starting with the well-known “tyranny of concepts” (e.g. the concept of feudalism). Byzantium was 
placed lower than less developed countries (in terms of legal and state organization) because liberal and 
revolutionary historians were fighting the “absolute monarchy” which the Byzantine Empire actually 
represented. There was no empathy for Byzantium. Since Byzantium was dead and gone, it was placed 
lower on the ladder than the western states.
Certain limits to imperial power tend to be taken as a proof that the Byzantine state was not an 
absolute monarchy. Such limits, however, existed in modern western absolute monarchies too. The 
royal prerogative in the absolute monarchy is usually described as “absolute” in the sense that it was 
not subject to restriction or control by any other power. 
Byzantium was a monarchy as Rome had been. A monarchy could be a kind of lifelong 
dictatorship or just a nominal monarchy. In ancient times the Roman Kingdom was an elective 
monarchy. Different combinations of monarchy and aristocracy or oligarchy or democracy were 
well known in ancient Greece (in philosophy as well as practice). If there was a certain “democratic” 
impact on the legislative or executive powers in Byzantium, that does not mean that Byzantium was 
not a monarchy. If supreme executive power in Byzantium was centred in the ruler, monarch, it is 
quite obvious that it was an absolute monarchy. Certain popular interventions in the politics of the 
New Rome, or periodical rebellions, cannot be taken as a proof that sovereignty was vested in the 
people (“extralegal sovereignty”). It is anachronistic to argue for popular sovereignty in Byzantium 
since it is an 18
th
-century Rousseauan concept. Can we say that official power was delegated to 
the emperor by the people or that “Rousseau’s view of republican sovereignty perfectly reflects 
Byzantine norms” (A. Kaldellis)? 

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As far as Rousseau’s theory is concerned, we first have to understand basic concepts: the people, 
the general will, natural rights, the social contract etc. For Rousseau, the “people” are somehow 
outside the state, or opposed to the state. The people are therefore abstract people. There is no place 
among the people for the state structure (the monarch, the church and clergy, the bureaucracy, the 
nobility). Actually, for Rousseau, primitive rural people are the people. It is not wrong to say that 
his ideal is the primitive noble savage (although he does not use that term). Rousseau sees “the 
state of nature” as true freedom. We could say, however, that the people (or nation) are not outside 
the state structure, as it was conceived in Rousseau’s theory. Rousseau’s concept of the people was 
not the concept of the American Revolution. Thomas Paine transferred and interpolated French 
revolutionary ideas and terminology into American states (including his attacks on Christianity). 
Edmund Burke, the first critic of the French Revolution, was not critical of the American Revolution. 
Those revolutions were very different in their ideologies.
Republic as res publica (Res publica Romana), commonwealth, is not contradictory to monarchy. 
Monarchy can be a commonwealth. The Queen of the United Kingdom is the Head of the British 
Commonwealth (Commonwealth of Nations). Monarchy could have some republican institutions 
(republican in the Roman sense, by its origin). A monarchy as res publica is not contradictory to the 
Western modern absolute monarchy either. The weight of the king’s legislative sovereignty in West-
European absolute monarchy (French) has been miscalculated since it occupied a less prominent 
position in legal theory and practice than previously assumed. 
It is attractive and provoking to speak of republican features of the Byzantine state. Democratic 
influence on the Byzantine monarch does not mean that Byzantium was a republic. There is another 
term hiding under the term republic, and that is democracy. The term “republic” is not synonymous 
with the term “democracy”. A republic was usually the republic of the aristocracy or oligarchy (e.g. 
the Roman Republic, the Republic of Venice, the Republic of Ragusa). 
Medieval history opens a set of complex theoretical and methodological questions that the 
philosophy of historiography should deal with. It is not only Byzantium that has been misinterpreted 
form the frame of reference of the Reformation and Enlightenment, but all of the middle ages. A 
historical period should first be interpreted from the “inside”, from its own time, from the perspective 
and concepts of the people of the past. To understand how people of the past responded to an event, 
we have to understand how it was viewed from their perspective, not our own. To see Byzantium 
as a state modelled according to Rousseau’s theory of the state could be refreshing or challenging 
(against stereotypes), but it will not solve the problems. On the contrary, it will bring new ones, 
confusion to begin with. Byzantium was a modern absolute monarchy in the best sense of the word, 
the kind of state that had not yet emerged in the West. Basically, the modern sovereign state.

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