International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Luisa Andriollo 
Centre d’histoire et civilisation de Byzance, Paris, France; 
[e-mail]
Le roy est mort, vive le roy: Imperial Succession and Imperial Legitimacy 
in Kallikles’ Funerary Poems for Alexios I and John II Komnenoi
The death of Alexios I Komnenos, on 15 August 1118, and the contested accession of his son 
John have been the object of a number of historiographical discussions. Modern commentators 
have relied mainly upon the historical accounts of Anna Komnena, John Zonaras and Nicetas 
Choniates to highlight weaknesses and wavering in the transmission of power within the newly 
established Komnenian dynasty, and to bring forth possible forms of Kaiserkritik embedded in 
Byzantine historical writings. 

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The poems of Nicholas Kallikles, a court physician and poet under Alexios I and John II, 
provide an alternative – and often neglected – perception of these events, one that voices the official 
court narrative about imperial mourning, dynastic succession and the bequeathing of power in the 
Komnenian lineage. In particular, Kallikles’ epigram On the chrysotriklinos (ed. R. Romano no 
25) addresses the theme of imperial succession through the staging of grief, its inscription into the 
architectural space and the connection between poetry, visual art and court ceremonial. In this text, 
as well as in the epitaph ante mortem composed for John II Komnenos (ed. R. Romano no 31), the 
traditional motifs of funerary poetry are reemployed and reshaped to support the public display 
of dynastic power and the official claim for imperial legitimacy. I will analyze Kallikles’ funerary 
epigrams for Alexios I and John II in the light of their relation with previous examples of imperial 
epitaph and with other texts of the same author; in doing so, I will examine how a personal poetic 
language was created by adapting traditional rhetoric models to the needs of imperial commissioners 
and to the expectations and of the intended audience.