International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Ryan W. Strickler
Australian Catholic University, Brisbane QLD, Australia; 
[e-mail]
Wolves and Centaurs in Byzantium: 
Dehumanizing the Enemy in the Seventh-Century Byzantine Literature
The seventh century has been rightly understood as a period of significant crisis in the Byzantine 
Empire. In addition to the imperial throne, the emperor Heraclius inherited from his predecessor 
Phocas a divided Church and an entrenched defensive war against the Sassanid Persians. Before his 
costly victory in 628, Heraclius would see the loss of Jerusalem and with it the True Cross taken 
as spoils to Ctesiphon. This victory, which saw the restoration of the Cross in the newly recovered 
Jerusalem nearly bankrupted both Empires, and would leave the field open to the ascendant Arab 
forces, united under the new religion of Islam. By 637 Jerusalem would once again be lost as Muslim 
forces swept Palestine.
These two devastating defeats shocked Byzantine subjects of all persuasions. Throughout the 
seventh century, authors of all genres of literature and from all religious and cultural backgrounds 
struggled to interpret who was to blame, and what defeat meant for God’s chosen empire. A common 
strategy was to dehumanize the enemy, whether that be the Persian or Muslim army, a domestic 
population who colluded with the adversary, or an individual or group whose behaviour brought 
judgment upon the empire.
Significant work has been done on individual aspects of this issue. Concerning the revival of 
adversus Judaeos literature, the work of Robert Lewis Wilken, David Olster, Gilbert Dagron Vincent 
Déroche and Averil Cameron have brought about vigorous and productive debate concerning the 
portrayal and treatment of Jews by seventh-century Byzantine authors. Daniel J. Sahas has drawn 
close attention to the demonization of the Arabs in Maximus the Confessor.
However, most scholarship has dealt with issues of dehumanization of enemies in piecemeal 
manner, with few addressing this phenomenon from a cross-cultural perspective. Jews and 
Christians, poets and hagiographers all used the trope of dehumanization to provide understanding 
of their contemporary circumstances, to assign blame, and to categorize unknown adversaries, yet 
scholars have addressed this subject under the narrower headings such as Jewish-Christian relations 
or early Islamic reception. 

---

445
This paper examines such portrayals from multiple genres, including poetry, hagiography, 
historiography, epistolary literature and apocalyptic literature. Close attention will be paid to what 
role demonization played in the increasingly popular use of apocalyptic discourse in Byzantine 
literature. Ultimately, this paper hopes to clarify the varied coping mechanisms used by Byzantine 
authors to address the increasingly bleak circumstances of the seventh century.