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Elif Demirtiken
University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom;
demirtiken@gmail.com
The Monastic as an Element of Late Byzantine Constantinople
The period between the re-conquest of Constantinople by Michael VIII Palaiologos in 1261
and the beginnings of the second civil war in 1341 witnessed not only a political struggle to re-
establish the Byzantine power in the region as it once was with its administrative center at the
capital, but also a religious endeavor to establish the patriarchal see as well as the glory of the
monasteries back in the city. The diversity of the backgrounds of the monks and nuns, their daily
lives, political interventions and seeking (or in some cases providing) patronage deserves particular
attention in this period when their social and political power was growing. Although individual
names and stories are relatively well known, it is hard to take a great leap forward in understanding
monasticism, an essential Byzantine institution, without employing a systematic investigation of
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the known monastics. In this presentation, I will seek to discuss the diversity of the monastics,
both monks and nuns, in Constantinople in the early Palaiologan period; how they identified
themselves in the society and how their identities reverberated in politics at the capital. In addition
to the monastic typika dating to the period in question, the histories and chronicles of the period,
the patriarchal register and monastic archives are utilized to represent numerous contemporary
perspectives. This presentation will also open to debate whether or not the religious denominations
such as monk, nun, and monastic, still refer to a homogenous category beneficial in illuminating the
complexity of the Byzantine society.
Koji Murata
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Nagoya, Japan;
kmurata7496@gmail.com
State Intervention in the Monastic Archives under the Early Palaiologoi:
The Case of Patmos
The monastery of St. John the Theologian on the island of Patmos has conserved numerous
Byzantine imperial documents from its foundation in 1088 until the middle of the fourteenth
century when the Ottomans occupied Patmos. At a glance into the monastic archive, we notice that
the number of imperial documents from the twelfth century and the period under the Laskarids is
remarkably small compared to the end of the eleventh century and the period of the early Palaiologoi
(11
th
c.: 12 documents; 12
th
c.: 8 doc.; Laskarids: 7 doc.; Palaiologoi: 27 doc.). Almost twenty years
ago, N. Oikonomides, who examined the composition of the monastic archive in Patmos, insisted
that such an imbalance originated from the method of archival management by the monks, rather
than it reflecting the actual number of documents issued to the monastery. Comparing a list of
documents possessed by the monastery of Patmos from around 1200 with the present state of the
archive, Oikonomides supposed that the monks had intentionally disposed of a large number of the
twelfth-century documents. They periodically put aside documents having temporal effects, such as
administrative orders and pronoia granting documents, which increased from the twelfth century,
while they carefully conserved older privileges (chrysobulls) confirming monastic fundamental
properties as well as most of the documents issued by the Palaiologoi, the last Byzantine authority
to which the monastery was subordinate (N. Oikonomides, ‘Byzantine Archives of the Palaiologan
Period, 1258–1453’ in R. Britnell, ed., Pragmatic literacy, east and west, 1200–1330, Woodbridge
1997, pp. 189–197).
Oikonomides’ thesis is persuasive on the point that not only internal and/or external accidents,
but also the monks’ intentions, could disperse the documents. Nevertheless, in the above study, he
takes an ambivalent attitude toward the reason why the imperial documents during the Laskarids
have hardly been transmitted. In fact, he discusses the Laskarids’ documents together with twelfth-
century documents when those paucities are concerned, while when talking about the abundance of
imperial documents of the Palaiologoi, he explains that it was caused by the number of new property
acquisitions of the monastery during the thirteenth century. If one follows the latter argument, it seems
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likely that more imperial documents from the Laskarids would remain in the monastic archive of
Patmos. Oikonomides, however, did not seem to notice the contradiction. Therefore, we need another
explanation for the paucity of imperial documents by the Nicaean emperors in the Patmos archive.
In this presentation, I examine the relationships between the transmitted and dispersed
Nicaean imperial documents in favour of the monastery of Patmos. In fact, Nicaean Emperors
Theodore I Laskaris and John III Vatatzes conferred new properties and privileges, respectively, to
the monastery by their chrysobulls. Remarkably, the two imperial acts seem to have had lost their
effects during the reign of Andronikos II Palaiologos and eventually disappeared from the monastic
archive. This point leads us to the possibility that the Palaiologan state intervened in the formation
of the monastic archive of Patmos in some manner, aiming to consolidate their dynastic legitimacy
and to eliminate the memory of the Laskarids. Our study will hopefully hint at the process of
formation of other Byzantine monastic archives.
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