Research on Constantinople is flourishing, as witnessed by recent publications,[1] and much knowledge has been gained about the history and material culture of the city. In this short book, Paul Magdalino takes a slightly different approach: instead of approaching the city within a modern scientific framework, he seeks to uncover the motivations and process of research of Byzantine authors, “a research perspective on a research perspective of a different kind” (p. 2). While this might seem somewhat convoluted, the result is a highly readable book consisting of a string of analyses and close readings of a broad range of works, ranging from guide literature to high rhetoric. From the outset, Magdalino draws a clear distinction between writings on the city as a function of empire and the city in itself, focusing on the latter “as a literary construct of the long Byzantine search for a specifically Constantinopolitan urban identity” (p. 6). Authors of empire, such as Procopius and Agathias, are thus not treated at length, as their descriptions of Constantinopolitan architecture are less about the individual buildings of the city and more about the greatness of the emperor that produced them, marking a “tendency to break up the urban identity of Constantinople into its constituent monuments and to treat these as isolated, self-contained units set within an imperial as much as an urban framework” (p. 37).
Magdalino divides the research agenda of the sources into two different modes: the memorial and the aesthetic. The memorial mode researched, reproduced, and invented histories and myths for the city, its foundation, statues, and monuments, while the aesthetic concerned itself with impressions of the qualities of the sculptures and monuments, their size and beauty, and their rhetorical expression. Both modes appealed to a sense of wonder, but the memorial found this in the past of the places and objects, while the aesthetic discovered it in the moral, artistic, and other impressions of the city and the act itself of rediscovery and sublimation. These definitions provide the framework used throughout the work without constraining the analyses, as they allow the author to show how taste and demand changed over time: from the early re-used rhetoric in the Theodosian Notitia Urbis Constantinopolitanae, through a great deal of literature on Constantinople written in the memorial mode in the fifth to tenth centuries, to the revival of an aesthetic appreciation of the city in the following centuries, which came to dominate the last years of the empire.
The first three chapters take the reader through the history of city-writing. In “Historical Research on Constantinople, 330–600”, pagan and Christian perspectives are addressed together with the lost Patria of Constantinople, the praise of the city. The emperors of the late fifth century, particularly Anastasios I and his court, furnished Constantinople with a mythological and historical past, giving it a civic identity as a late antique city. Under Justinian, however, this vogue for a polis identity had faded and was replaced with memorial literature written for Constantinople as a function of empire, such as the works of John Lydus and John Malalas.
The chapter “Memorial Literature and Research Culture, 6th–10th Centuries” presents two interesting works: the Parastaseis syntomoi chronikai and the Patria Constantinopolitanae. The Parastaseis (eighth century) is an impossible collection of spurious historical tales, false references to other authors, and ludicrous etymologies (e.g., the Senate is called thus because a certain Senatos had built it), but Magdalino makes a clear point of seeing the work within its context: contemporary readers might very well have wanted a collection of the stories surrounding the city’s statues and monuments, however strange, and so the author(s) provided a researched work, collecting curious tales and adding a layer of parody, witticisms, and pseudo-scholarship, that appealed to contemporary notions. The Patria (tenth century) is not a patria in the late antique sense but a compilation of earlier material on Constantinople, including the Parastaseis. While it omits the pseudo-learning of the earlier work, the stories and anecdotes are equally spurious, which gives the impression that the two works catered to audiences with the same taste for the curious and fantastic but with different expectations concerning form; the Patria clearly belongs to the encyclopaedic world of the tenth century. Magdalino analyses these difficult texts carefully and with great sensitivity without forcing conclusions on the texts, offering instead hypotheses and inspiration for further research.
The chapter “Cultural Heritage and Tourist Disinformation 1000–1453: from Bureaucratic to Scientific Antiquarianism” closes the chronological narrative and traces the further life of the Patria in a revised form as a guidebook to the city and evidence of other aids for tourists, including mentions by William of Tyre, Liudprand of Cremona, and other visitors.
In the fourth chapter, “The Rhetorical Rediscovery of Constantinople, 10th–13th Centuries”, Magdalino takes a step back and examines the works of Constantine of Rhodes, Theodore Prodromos, and Nicholas Mesarites together with the “generation of 1204” and the development of a holistic vision of Constantinople, that is, a description of the city as a whole and not as a sum of the ekphraseis of its parts.
The Latin occupation of Constantinople precipitated a change of perspective on the possession of Constantinople and the legitimacy conferred by being present in the city. Continuing a trend tracing back to the eleventh century, the exiled elites nurtured the concept of the theatron and the idea of the polis to produce a vision of Hellenism as an aesthetic appreciation of the Roman Greek past and heritage. This Hellenism was construed by the Choniates brothers in opposition to the western barbarians: the very material act of the Latins melting the city’s statuary was opposed to the enduring spirit of Greek learning and the power of artistic expression. The appreciation of the aesthetic and the lament for its loss differs from earlier descriptions of the statuary of Constantinople, which expressed wonder at the mystical powers and meanings imbued in them. It also marked a shift from the condemnation of pagan myths in the tenth century (e.g., by Constantine of Rhodes) to an appreciation of the Hellenism that nurtured and expressed them. Thus, the past became heritage at the moment when it seemed, or for a great part was, lost. In the mind of Theodore II Laskaris, who was born in exile, the idea of Constantinople as a city of wonders receded in favor of the broader region of the Aegean, the Hellenic world, including but not confined to the imperial city.
The reconquest of Constantinople gave impetus to the appraisal of the city’s past and present glory, which, considering its state after 1261, was quite far removed from the realities of the day: “Constantinopolitans wrote about Constantinople as never before, and continued to see it in a golden haze long after the initial euphoria [of the reconquest] had worn off; indeed, its continued existence as the empire around it collapsed was a further cause for celebration and wonderment” (p. 103).
The final chapter is dedicated to the city encomium by Theodore Metochites, the Byzantios, or Concerning the Imperial Great City, produced half a century after the reconquest, as well as that text’s legacy. Metochites shapes his Byzantios in the tradition of the city encomia of Aristides and Libanius and couches his praise of Constantinople in the rhetoric of the late antique idealized polis. His praise is both classicizing and personal, endowing medieval Constantinople with the institutions of Athens in the classical period while emphasizing the spectacle of the city and its surroundings as parts of a theatrical performance. Magdalino offers a series of close readings of the Byzantios from different approaches, such as Hellenism, Nature, and Wisdom and Learning, and traces lines of thought throughout the oration, effectively encapsulating the fertile and encyclopaedic mind of the author of the Semeioseis Gnomikai. Among many other observations, under the heading “Constantine and Imperial Power”, Magdalino points out how Metochites compares Babylon with Constantinople without drawing on the eschatological connotations of the Apocalypse, instead presenting the ancient, oriental, and barbarian city as an opposite to the ordered and harmonic city of Constantinople. Thus, the idea of Constantinople as the New Jerusalem or as the New Babylon is absent from his oration, if not from the minds of the audience, marking a break with a long tradition of biblical typology (p. 122). Another peculiarity of the work is the way Constantinople emerges as a complete and Christian city from the moment of its foundation by Constantine, with Rome being relatively absent from the story. Thus, Metochites again breaks away from earlier narratives and disrupts the notion of the translation imperii favored in most rhetoric on the city. Likewise, Constantine’s successors remain mostly anonymous: “It was a vision that emphasised the authority of Constantine’s imperial city at the expense of Constantine’s successors, through its focus on the theatre of power as opposed to the performance of power by the actors who followed Constantine on stage” (p. 123).
In the epilogue to the chapter on Metochites’ oration, Magdalino briefly traces the further life of some of its themes in later praises of Constantinople down to Isidore of Kiev and the last decades of the Roman Empire or, rather, of the city-state of Constantinople. Isidore elaborates on Metochites’ idea that Constantinople is by its very nature Orthodox and presents a wishful vision of the city as a sacred place kept safe by the saints: “Change has not altered her at any time and no alien or lawless people has ever dominated her, though many have surged or rather streamed against her, both singly and in concert, like torrents unleashed by the force and fury of a deluge. But their movement is rolled back and becomes null and void” (p. 143, from Isidore of Kiev, Encomium of Manuel and John VIII Palaiologos). Thus, Constantinople came into its own right as a sacred, eternal polis.
This review does not do justice to the myriad observations and insights of the work, which is a condensed tour de force of concise analysis; each chapter could easily be expanded within a broader historical and literary context. Magdalino, however, judiciously dispenses his analyses and only once or twice (e.g., in the chapters on the Patria and Metochites’ Byzantios, which easily merit lengthier works themselves)[2] departs from the succinct overview in favor of expanding the readings. The book has an up-to-date bibliography and is an excellent companion to the study of Constantinople and the interplay between literature and aesthetics. It is highly recommended.
Notes
[1] E.g., S. Bassett (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Constantinople, Cambridge University Press 2022.
[2] One such work is hinted at in n. 334 (p. 117): Magdalino, “The Byzantios”, but, alas, it is not included in the bibliography or to be found in searches online.