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Heroes and Romans in Twelfth-Century Byzantium

The Material for History of Nikephoros Bryennios

Leonora Neville

Book DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511933967

Online ISBN: 9780511933967

Hardback ISBN: 9781107009455

Chapter

Chapter 1 - Twelfth-century politics and the House of Komnenos pp. 13-

28

Chapter DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511933967.006

Cambridge University Press

 c h ap t er 1

Twelfth-century politics and the House of Komnenos

Nikephoros’s early twelfth-century history looks back on a period of intense

civil war and political calamity in the s. The Seljuk Turks entered prac-
tically unimpeded into Roman imperial territory following their defeat and
capture of Emperor Romanos Diogenes at the famous battle of Manzikert
in . The disaster at Manzikert often overshadows the Norman capture
of Bari, also in , ending centuries of Byzantine rule in southern Italy.
Pechenegs raided as far south as Thrace and the Slavic provinces in the
Balkans revolted. Troubles with wild currency devaluation and a decrepit
taxation system impeded imperial financing. Not since the Arab conquests
of the seventh century had so many things gone wrong for the Empire. But
while the seventh century had the highly capable Heraclius, the eleventh-
century Empire was ruled by Michael VII who was so incompetent that
no one – from his most trusted relatives to his bitter enemies – thought he
could govern without someone at his side doing the real work. During this
chaotic period the ruling elite was consumed by a series of civil wars for
control of the Empire that hindered any coherent opposition to the Seljuk
or Norman advances. Fueled at least partially by Michael’s incompetence,
there were ten civil wars fought between  and .
 The political fallout from Romanos’s capture was more disabling for the Byzantines than the actual
battle: Jean-Claude Cheynet, “Manzikert, un désastre militaire?,” Byzantion ,  (): –;
Catherine Holmes, “Political-historical Survey: C –,” in The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine
Studies, ed. Elizabeth Jeffreys, John Haldon, and Robin Cormack (Oxford University Press, ),
; Carole Hillenbrand, Turkish Myth and Muslim Symbol: The Battle of Manzikert (Edinburgh
University Press, ).
 Paul Stephenson, “Byzantine Policy Towards Paristrion in the Mid-Eleventh Century: Another
Interpretation,” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies  (): –; Stephenson, Byzantium’s
Balkan Frontier: A Political Study of the Northern Balkans, 900–1204 (Cambridge University Press,
), –, –.
 Angeliki Laiou and Cécile Morrisson, The Byzantine Economy (Cambridge University Press, ),
–; Cécile Morrisson, “Byzantine Money: Its Production and Circulation,” in The Economic
History of Byzantium from the Seventh through the Fifteenth Century, ed. Angeliki Laiou (Washington,
DC: Dumbarton Oaks, ), –. On the taxation system see Leonora Neville, Authority in
Byzantine Provincial Society, 950–1100 (Cambridge University Press, ), –.
 Using Treadgold’s definition of a civil war as “an armed conflict in which a significant number of
Byzantine soldiers fought on both sides with a significant number of casualties.” Warren Treadgold,



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 I Twelfth-century contexts
The era of civil war was put to an end when Alexios Komnenos seized
the throne in a violent coup in . Alexios managed to stay in control for
thirty-seven years and passed on stable rule to his son, John. Nikephoros
uses the story of Alexios Komnenos’s rise to power as a narrative core for
his history of the civil wars of the s. The political situation of the
Empire during Nikephoros’s mature years in the early twelfth century was
markedly different from that of the chaotic period his history describes. In
the early twelfth century the Empire was ruled by two energetic, reforming,
warrior emperors: Alexios Komnenos and his son John. There were revolts
against Alexios and John, but far fewer than had been the norm in the later
eleventh century, and only one of these may be considered a full-scale civil
war. The reigns of Alexios and John were characterized by significant gains
in the recovery of Byzantine power in the east and strengthening Byzantine
control in the west, as well as by internal political stability. Alexios’s and
John’s reigns were times of political steadiness, expansion, and strong rule.
Alexios presented himself as a reformer. He demonstrated a willingness to
act radically in the face of old problems, a tendency he showed by instituting
a monetary reform through issuing new coinage; extensively reforming the
taxation systems of the Empire and pressing great monasteries to make
appropriate fiscal contributions, cashiering age-old systems of government
service, imperial titulature and salaries; as well as in bullying intellectuals
and burning heretics. No doubt some were riled by his vigorous pursuit
of reform.
Alexios came to power with the help of an extraordinary alliance of aris-
tocratic households. Once firmly in power Alexios systematically reduced
the authority of the families that helped bring him to office. Most of his
“Byzantium, the Reluctant Warrior,” in Noble Ideals and Bloody Realities: Warfare in the Middle Ages,
ed. Niall Christie and Maya Yazigi (Leiden: Brill, ), –; Jean-Claude Cheynet, “La politique
militaire byzantine de Basile II á Alexis Comnene,” Zbornik Radova Vizantolosko Instituta  ():
–.
 Treadgold considers Michael of Amastris’s revolt as fitting his definition. Treadgold, “Byzantium,
the Reluctant Warrior,” . Cheynet regards this as a more limited event: Cheynet, Pouvoir et
contestations à Byzance (963–1210) (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, ), .
 Margaret Mullett and Dion Smythe, eds., Alexios I Komnenos (Belfast Byzantine Enterprises, ).
Reform: Paul Magdalino, “Justice and Finance in the Byzantine State, Ninth to Twelfth Centuries,”
in Law and Society in Byzantium, Ninth–Twelfth Centuries, ed. Angeliki Laiou and Dieter Simon
(Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, ), –; Paul Magdalino, “Innovations in Government,”
in Alexios I Komnenos, ed. Mullett and Smythe, –. Taxation: Neville, Authority, –. Heretics:
Kaldellis, Hellenism, –; Dion Smythe, “Alexios I and the Heretics: the Account of Anna
Komnene’s Alexiad,” in Alexios I Komnenos, ed. Mullett and Smyth, –. Alexios’ reign saw further
development in the urban landscape of Constantinople: Paul Magdalino, “Medieval Constantinople,”
in Studies on the History and Topography of Byzantine Constantinople (Aldershot: Ashgate, ), –
.
 Magdalino, “Aspects of Twelfth-Century Byzantine Kaiserkritik,” –.

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 Politics and the house of Komnenos 
military energy was spent on vigorous campaigns in the Balkan frontier.
Alexios’s re-conquests in Asia were limited largely to coastal areas, leaving
the highlands of Anatolia in the hands of the Turks. Alexios’s ability to grant
his chosen followers estates in newly conquered territory in the Balkans
to replace those lost in the east gave him an unprecedented power over
the aristocracy. While the imperial elite undoubtedly benefited in some
ways from the cessation of civil war and the stability which Alexios’s reign
brought, those whose wealth had come from eastern estates were perma-
nently displaced and increasingly dependent on the largesse of the ruling
Komnenos family to maintain their elite status. This spike in the power
of the emperor vis-à-vis the aristocracy created a new social situation for
the aristocracy than had existed in the previous several centuries.

nikephoros the author

In the mid eleventh century the Bryennios family rose to be among the
greatest aristocratic houses in the Empire. They had been known as an influ-
ential military family since the ninth century, based primarily in Thrace
and particularly in Adrianople. Nikephoros Bryennios the Elder was mag-
istros and dux of the West under Romanos Diogenes and commanded the
left flank in the battle of Manzikert. He was appointed dux of Dyrrachion
by Michael VII.
Bryennios was proclaimed emperor by his troops in Traianopoulos in
November of . The following spring Nikephoros Botaneiates, who
had rebelled in eastern Anatolia, was welcomed into Constantinople and
crowned emperor. Immediately upon his accession, Botaneiates sent Alex-
ios Komnenos to fight Bryennios’s insurrection. Alexios was victorious in
the conflict, capturing Bryennios who was then blinded. The elimination
of Bryennios’s rebellion was a key step in paving the way for Alexios’s own
successful bid for the throne in . Although their rebellion had failed,
the Bryennios family was not destroyed, either by Botaneiates or Alexios.
Their property was restored and the blinded Bryennios the Elder lived until
at least .
 Cheynet, Pouvoir, –, –; Peter Frankopan, “Kinship and the Distribution of Power in
Komnenian Byzantium,” English Historical Review ,  (): –; Frankopan, “Challenges
to Imperial Authority in Byzantium: Revolts on Crete and Cyprus at the End of the th century,”
Byzantion ,  (): –.
 Diether Roderich Reinsch, “O Nikephoros Vryennios – Enas Makedonas Syngrapheas,” in 2.
Diethnes Symposio Vyzantinē Makedonia, dikaio, theologia, philologia (Thessaloniki: Hetaireia Make-
donikōn Spoudōn, ), –; Cheynet, Pouvoir, , , , ; Antonio Carile, “Il cesare
Niceforo Briennio,” Aevum  (): –.
 Cheynet, Pouvoir, ; Carile, “Niceforo Briennio,” –.

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 I Twelfth-century contexts
When Alexios’s daughter Anna Komnene was born in , Alexios
betrothed her to Constantine Doukas, the son of Michael VII, strengthen-
ing the Komnenos claim to power by making Alexios the protector of the
previous ruling dynasty. After young Constantine’s death in , Alexios
moved to consolidate his authority by marrying Anna to the grandson of
his former enemy, Nikephoros Bryennios the Younger. While some schol-
ars have argued that the younger Nikephoros Bryennios was the son of the
usurper, the preponderance of evidence indicates that Nikephoros was his
grandson. Nikephoros was given the title Caesar and married Anna in
around . In  Nikephoros received one of the new Komnenian court
titles, panhypersebastos. According to the Alexiad, Alexios gave Nikephoros
command in a fight with the troops of Godfrey of Bouillon outside the
walls of Constantinople in . He continued to serve Alexios and
campaigned with John. Nikephoros died in /.
The key political event of Nikephoros’s life to have entered the historical
record was the dispute regarding the succession to imperial power of John
Komnenos, Nikephoros’s brother-in-law. Discontent with Alexios’s mode
of autocratic government, and especially his subordination of the other
grand aristocratic families of the eleventh century, has been interpreted
as fueling an attempt to have Nikephoros succeed Alexios rather than his
son John. The standard story is that Alexios’s wife Irene Doukaina and
her daughter Anna plotted to have Anna and Nikephoros succeed to the
throne instead of John. Nikephoros became the natural focal-point of the
attempted rebellion because of the imperial ambitions of his family, but
he allowed the plot to fail through his refusal to participate. The event is
commonly seen as the last gasp of the leading aristocratic families of the
 Reinsch resolved the question of whether Nikephoros was the son or grandson of Nikephoros
Bryennios the rebel by making use of additional information in George Tornikes’ funeral oration for
Anna; Diether Roderich Reinsch, “Der Historiker Nikephoros Bryennios, Enkel und nicht Sohn des
Usurpators,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift  (); Antonio Carile, “Il problema della identificazione
del cesare Niceforo Briennio,” Aevum  (): –.
 Anna Komnene, Annae Comnenae Alexias, edited by Diether R. Reinsch and Athanasios Kambylis,
(Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, ): ..; Jonathan Harris, Byzantium and the
Crusades (London: Hambledon and London, ), .
 Carile, “Niceforo Briennio,” –; Elizabeth Jeffreys, “Nikephoros Bryennios Reconsidered,” in
The Empire in Crisis (?) Byzantium in the Eleventh Century, Diethnē symposia, 11 (Athens: Institouto
Vyzantinon Ereunon, ), –; Reinsch, “Der Historiker Nikephoros Bryennios,” –.
 Carile, “Niceforo Briennio,” –; Élisabeth Malamut, Alexis Ier Comnène (Paris: Ellipses, ),
–; Paul Magdalino, “The Pen of the Aunt: Echoes of the Mid-Twelfth Century in the Alexiad,”
in Anna Komnene and her Times, ed. Thalia Gouma-Peterson (New York: Garland Publishing, ),
–; Barbara Hill, “Actions Speak Louder than Words: Anna Komnene’s Attempted Usurpation,”
in Anna Komnene and Her Times, ed. Thalia Gouma-Peterson (New York: Garland Publishing,
), –; Lynda Garland, Byzantine Empresses: Women and Power in Byzantium AD 527–1204
(London: Routledge, ), –.

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 Politics and the house of Komnenos 
eleventh century, the Doukai and the Bryennioi, who had been pushed
aside as Alexios gained power.
While this interpretation is entirely plausible, it is worth pausing to
remember how much of this story is a matter of modern analysis. Scholars
have identified possible causes of discontent and associated them with
information about the revolt. Our medieval sources describe the revolt in
terms of the personalities and personal relationships of various members of
the imperial family, rather than the more general social or political problems
that are the usual subject of modern explanations. Because the revolt is a
central act in the modern reconstruction of Nikephoros’s biography, it is
worth reviewing what we actually know about the events. The only sources
that speak about the succession dispute explicitly are the histories of John
Zonaras, written in the middle of the twelfth century, and that of Niketas
Choniates, written in the early thirteenth century. A brief notice of the
dispute occurs in an anonymous Syriac chronicle written in Edessa around
. Zonaras’s chronicle covers history from the Creation to the death of
Alexios in  and is largely hostile to Alexios. Choniates’s history begins
with the stories of strife surrounding the death of Alexios and ends in the
early thirteenth century after the Latin conquest of Constantinople. The
Alexiad, a biography of Alexios written by Anna Komnene in the middle of
the twelfth century, makes no mention of an attempted usurpation against
her brother, although her portrait of John is not flattering. A funeral oration
for Anna by George Tornikes alludes vaguely to tensions surrounding the
death of Alexios but argues strongly for Anna’s proper conduct.
In both Zonaras and Choniates the actions of the women in the imperial
family serve, at least in part, to create a gendered critique of the imperial
men. The narratives of Zonaras and Choniates either question or entirely
undermine the masculinity of Alexios, John, and Nikephoros. Medieval
Roman authors seem to share in the classical Roman cultural logic that

 Anonymi Auctoris Chronicon ad A.C. 1234 Pertinens, ed. Albert Abouna (Louvain: Corpus Scriptorum
Christianorum Orientalium, ), vii, .
 Magdalino, “Aspects of Twelfth-Century Byzantine Kaiserkritik,” –.
 George et Demetrios Tornikes. Lettres et discours, ed. Jean Darrouzes (Paris: Editions du Centre
national de la recherche scientifique, ), –.
 On the study of gender as a means of revealing some of the functions of women in Greek texts
see: David M. Halperin, “Why is Diotima a Woman?,” in One hundred Years of Homosexuality and
Other Essays on Greek Love (London: Routledge, ), –; Elizabeth Clark, “Ideology, History,
and the Construction of ‘Woman’ in Late Ancient Christianity,” Journal of Early Christian Studies
 (): –; Elizabeth Clark, “The Lady Vanishes: Dilemmas of a Feminist Historian after
the ‘Linguistic Turn’,” Church History  (): –; Kate Cooper, “Insinuations of Womanly
Influence: an Aspect of the Christianisation of the Roman Aristocracy,” Journal of Roman Studies
 (): –. Similar methodologies may be fruitfully applied to medieval Greek texts.

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 I Twelfth-century contexts
equated virtue with maleness so that an attack on one impugned the
other. The criticism implicit in both histories becomes clearer when we
pay attention to how the actions of the imperial family invert the Roman
ideals of proper familial relations between men and women. The function
of Irene and Anna in these critical narratives should inform our reading of
the evidence for their participation in the revolt.
Zonaras’s story casts Irene and her son John as the major antagonists.
Zonaras introduces the topic of Irene’s excessive influence at court with a
discussion of the marital relations between Alexios and Irene. As a young
man Alexios was not particularly devoted to her and only had sex with
her out of a sense of duty until “the passing of time blunted the fire-
throwing arrows of Eros.” He then became inordinately fond of Irene
and she shared in the administration. As Alexios’s health declined the
empress became increasingly powerful and held power over her son John.
This situation was intolerable for John, who was not only a full-grown
man, but already had been a husband for some time and was a father of
children. John came to fear for his life as well as his succession and went
around secretly asking friends and relatives to renew the oaths they had
already taken that they would accept no other ruler after Alexios’s death.
The men were eager to reassert their loyalty to John. Irene had John
followed by spies and tried to cut off access to him, but he continued to
draw supporters anyway.
Here Zonaras’s story implicitly criticizes Alexios first for having affairs
as a young man and then for over-indulgence of his wife as an old man.

 On Roman masculinity see Mathew Kuefler, The Manly Eunuch: Masculinity, Gender Ambiguity,
and Christian Ideology in Late Antiquity (University of Chicago Press, ), –; Myles Anthony
McDonnell, Roman Manliness: Virtus and the Roman Republic (Cambridge University Press, ).
On Byzantine conceptions of gender see Charles Barber, “Homo Byzantinus?,” in Women, Men
and Eunuchs: Gender in Byzantium, ed. Liz James (London: Routledge, ), –; Kathryn
M. Ringrose, The Perfect Servant: Eunuchs and the Social Construction of Gender in Byzantium
(University of Chicago Press, ); Martha Vinson, “Gender and Politics in the Post-Iconoclastic
Period: The Lives of Antony the Younger, The Empress Theodora, and the Patriarch Ignatios,”
Byzantion  (): –; Dion Smythe, “Gender,” in Palgrave Advances in Byzantine History,
ed. Jonathan Harris (New York: Palgrave, ), –.
 Zonaras, Ioannis Zonarae epitomae historiarum libri xviii, edited by M. Pinder and T. Büttner-Wobst,
 vols. (Bonn: Weber, –): .–. pr¼v d• tŸn koinwn¼n toÓ b©ou ¾ basileÆv oÕtov oÎt’
ˆpostr»fwv e²ce t¼ pr»teron oÎte l©an –ke©nh‚ pros”keito, ˆfrodis©wn d’ ¡ttÛmenov oÉ
p†nu t‡ –v eÉnŸn –tÅgcane d©kaiov, Âqen kaª b”lesin ¡ AÉgoÅsta zhlotup©av –b”blhto. –peª
d’ ¾ cr»nov prožkwn t aÉtokr†tori t‡ purf»ra b”lh toÓ ›rwtov ¢mblune, t»te pr¼v
tŸn AÉgoÅstan tr”yav t¼n ›rwta Âlov §n tv pr¼v –ke©nhn storgv kaª ¢qelen e²nai sced¼n
aÉtv ˆdi†spastov.
 Zonaras .–. t d• t¼ sk”mma oÉk ˆnekt¼n –v Šndrav ¢dh teloÓnti kaª gunaikª pr¼
polloÓ sunafq”nti . . . kaª pa©dwn gegon»ti patr©.
 Zonaras .–.  Zonaras .–.  Zonaras .–.

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 Politics and the house of Komnenos 
The incontinent young Alexios fails to exhibit the virtue of self-control,
sophrosyne, considered particularly vital for an emperor. The overly affec-
tionate elderly Alexios exhibits a different form of weakness in allowing
himself to be ruled by his wife. In not striving to nurture and support her
son, Irene is portrayed as derelict in the most basic duties of a mother. By
denying John’s status as an adult man and actively fighting against him,
Irene inverts the natural order of an ideal family.
Zonaras further relates that as the emperor’s health continued to decline
“the empress was extremely powerful and much authority belonged to her
son-in-law Caesar Bryennios.” Nikephoros was entrusted with making
proclamations and giving justice. Zonaras describes Nikephoros as a man
“inclined to knowledge” whose wife:
held her ground in intellectual pursuits, speaking accurate Attic and having a keen
mind for complex concepts. She added to her natural intelligence through study.
She was engrossed by books and profound conversations with learned men.
Everything was going well for the Caesar, who was universally praised. This
situation cast John, “the emperor’s son and emperor,” into despondency
and anguish, which he bore with endurance.
Zonaras admits doubts about what actually happened when Alexios
died. He presents several versions of Alexios’s deathbed scene, inviting
his audience to choose between competing stories. All of these, however,
describe the succession struggles as exclusively between Irene and John.
Nikephoros’s prominence in palace administration prior to Alexios’s death
is presented as a corollary to Irene’s control of the government. Neither
Anna nor Nikephoros figured at all in the drama surrounding Alexios’s
death, although Anna and her sisters were all present at Alexios’s death.
Zonaras says that after he was firmly in control of the Great Palace, John

 Helen North, Sophrosyne: Self-Knowledge and Restraint in Classical Antiquity (Ithaca: Cornell Uni-
versity Press, ); Barbara Hill, “The Ideal Komnenian Woman,” Byzantinische Forschungen 
(): ; Kazhdan, “Aristocracy and the Imperial Ideal,” –; Kuefler, Manly Eunuch, –.
 Roman mothers were expected to support their son’s careers without being overly ambitious: Suzanne
Dixon, The Roman Mother (London: Croom Helm, ), –, –; Susan Treggiari, “Women
in the Time of Augustus,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Augustus, ed. Karl Galinsky
(Cambridge University Press, ), –. On care for family as a chief virtue of women in
twelfth-century panegyrics see: Hill, “The Ideal Komnenian Woman,” .
 Zonaras .
 Zonaras .–. §n g‡r kaª l»goiv proske©menov ¾ ˆnžr, kaª ¡ sÅnoikov d” o¬ oÉd•n ¨tton,
e« mŸ kaª mllon –ke©nou, tv –n l»goiv paide©av ˆnte©ceto kaª tŸn glättan e²cen ˆkribäv
ˆttik©zousan kaª t¼n noÓn pr¼v Ìyov qewrhm†twn ½xÅtaton. taÓta d’ aÉt¦‚ proseg”neto
fÅsewv ½xÅthti kaª spoud¦‚. prosetetžkei g‡r ta±v b©bloiv kaª log©oiv ˆndr†si kaª oÉ
par”rgwv Þm©lei aÉto±v.
 Zonaras .–..

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 I Twelfth-century contexts
considered what he should do about his mother and sisters and Nikephoros
because he suspected them of wanting to plot against him. Zonaras does
not specify what John decided to do and turns instead to further description
of Alexios’s end and an assessment of his reign.
Choniates, although writing over half a century after Zonaras, presents
himself as having more information about the attempted coup. Zonaras’s
competing versions of Alexios’s death are replaced by one seamless nar-
rative. The characters are more fully drawn, but they are drawn as stock
types. Choniates uses the story of the succession dispute to create an image
of an unharmonious and unnatural imperial family in which all the famil-
ial and gender roles are inverted. Setting the beginning of his history in
the context of Alexios’s disfunctional household contributes to Choniates’s
larger agenda of explaining the fall of Constantinople in  in terms of
Komnenian failings. The opening of Choniates’s history invites a com-
parison with the opening of Xenophon’s Anabasis, in which a king and
queen fight over which of their two sons ought to succeed. In Choni-
ates’s telling, the Komnenos dynasty was perverse and unsound from its
foundation.
Choniates opens with a shrewish Irene badgering Alexios about his son
John’s faults. Choniates’s exquisite use of double-entendre allows him to have
Irene complain simultaneously about John’s moral weaknesses of rashness,
luxuriousness, and lack of virtue and his bodily weaknesses of diarrhea,
feebleness from recurring twisting of his bowels, and general ill-health.
In response to Irene’s nagging, Alexios manages to maintain his composure
some of the time, which crucially means that he lost his temper some of
the time. Choniates recreates one of Alexios’s tirades in which he points
out not only the logical reasons for John’s succession but also the bloody
nature of his acquisition of power:

 Zonaras .–.
 On the larger agenda see Alicia Simpson, “Before and After : The Versions of Niketas Cho-
niates’ ‘Historia’,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers  (): –; Alicia Simpson, “Studies on the
Composition of Niketas Choniates’ Historia” (Ph.D., King’s College London, ), –.
 Anthony Kaldellis, “Paradox, Reversal and the Meaning of History,” in Niketas Choniates: A Histo-
rian and a Writer, ed. Alicia Simpson and Stephanos Efthymiadis (Geneva: La Pomme d’Or, ),
–.
 Choniates, Nicetae Choniatae Historia, ed. Jan Louis van Dieten (Berlin and New York: Walter
de Gruyter, ): Choniates, John .– . . . propet toÓton ˆpokaloÓsa kaª Ëgr¼n t¼n b©on
pal©nstrof»n te t¼§qov kaª mhdam¦‚ mhd•n Ëgi”v . . . On str»fov used in contexts of incipient
defecation see Jeffrey Henderson, The Maculate Muse: Obscene Language in Attic Comedy (Oxford
University Press, ), .
 Choniates, John .–..

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 Politics and the house of Komnenos 
Oh woman, sharer of my bed and Empire, will you not stop admonishing me
on behalf of your daughter, undertaking to destroy praiseworthy harmony and
order as if you had been struck mad? Put it down to good fortune. Or rather
let’s now study and observe together who of all of those taking up the scepters of
Rome until now who had a son appropriate for rule overlooked him and selected
instead his son-in-law? Even if this did happen at some point, oh woman, we
should not follow the rarity as law. The whole of Rome would laugh out loud at
me and conclude that I had lost my senses if I, who seized the Empire, not in a
praiseworthy manner, but with the blood of compatriots and ways departing from
Christian laws, when I need to find an heir for it, would banish the one from my
loins and welcome in the one from Macedonia.

Here Alexios condemns himself for usurpation and his wife for insanity.
Irene’s lack of support for her own son again is an unnatural action that
disrupts the proper harmony and order of the household. When Irene
ignored Alexios’s arguments and persisted in pestering him, he would
pretend to think about it “since he was a dissembling man beyond all
others.” Within the cultural logic of Choniates’s text, the idea of disputing
the succession of the reigning emperor’s healthy adult male heir is absurd
and irrational. In addition to criticizing Irene for persisting with a bad
idea, Choniates disparages both Irene and Alexios for their inversion of
proper marital roles. Alexios lacked the authority to get his wife to stop
arguing with him while Irene did not respect her husband’s judgment.
Alexios appears weak and conniving while Irene appears shrewish.
Choniates provides a single continuous narrative of Alexios’s death.
John’s struggle to secure power is the narrative center. Choniates provides
a story about a second moment of contention within the first year of
John’s reign. John’s relatives formed a plot in favor of Nikephoros. The
plan was to strike against the emperor murderously in the night when
John was encamped outside the city. The guards had been bribed and
the conspirators would have struck “had not the customary dullness and

 Choniates, John –. å gÅnai, koinwn” moi l”couv kaª basile©av, oÉ t‡ pr¼v c†rin paÅsh‚ tv
sv Ëpotiqem”nh moi qugatr»v, ‰rmon©an te kaª t†xin –piceiroÓsa lÅein –painetžn, Þv e­per
qeoblabe©av met”schkav; b†l’ –v tÅchn ˆgaqžn. £ mllon deÓro koin¦‚ sundiaskeyÛmeqa kaª
gnws»meqa, t©v –x ‰p†ntwn tän prÛhn t‡ ëRwma©wn skptra pareilhf»twn, u¬¼n ›cwn
‰rm»dion e«v ˆrcžn, toÓton m•n parebl”yato, gambr¼n d• ˆnqe©leto. e« d” pote kaª toi»nde ti
xumb”bhken, oÉ n»mon, å gÅnai, t¼ sp†nion ¡ghs»meqa. –p’ –moª d• kaª m†la kapur¼n gel†seie
t¼ PanrÛmaion, kaª tän frenän kriqe©hn ˆpopesÛn, e« tŸn basile©an oÉk –painetäv e«lh-
fÛv, ˆll’ a¯masin ¾mogenän kaª meq»doiv Cristianän ˆfistam”naiv qesmän, desan taÅthv
ˆfeik”nai di†docon, t¼n m•n –x ½sfÅov ˆpopemya©mhn, t¼n d• Maked»na e«soikisa©mhn. All
translations are my own unless otherwise stated.
 Choniates, John ..

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 I Twelfth-century contexts
languidness stopped [Nikephoros] Bryennios from taking in hand the
attempt on the Empire and compelled him to remain in place, forgetting
his agreements, and extinguishing the hot desire of the conspirators.”
Choniates relates that the conspirators were only temporarily deprived
of their property and that Anna and John were reconciled. Choniates
includes a gratuitously sexual appraisal of Anna’s disappointment:
It is said that the Kaisarina Anna was so disgusted with her husband’s frivolity
that she considered herself as suffering something terrible and blamed nature most
of all. Nature was placed under a grave indictment on the grounds that Anna’s
genitals were spread wide and hollowed whereas Bryennios had the long member
and was balled.
The term translated as “frivolity” also refers to passive anal penetration
while “nature” is a euphemism for female genitals. With Choniates’s
pornographic depiction of Anna’s frustration with her womanhood, his
use of gender inversion to disparage the Komnenoi becomes patent.
Nikephoros becomes a weakling in this narrative through his marriage
to an ambitious woman as much as through his failure to attack John. The
analytic goal of Choniates’s history was to explain what went wrong with
the Roman Empire that led to the Latin conquest. By portraying Alexios’s
court as a locus of gender inversion and unnatural power relations, Choni-
ates undermined the good standing and reputation of those who founded
the dynasty. In Choniates’s narrative, the story of John’s accession is sordid
and full of perverse characters: men who let women rule them, women who
want to rule, women who egg their husbands on to murder. The whole
 Choniates, John .–: t†ca d’ ‹n kaª nukt¼v –p”qento meq’ Âplwn tän fonourgän aÉl-
izom”n t basile± kat‡ t¼ mikr¼n Špoqen tän cersa©wn pulän ¬ppžlaton Filop†tion,
dÛroiv prodiafqe©rantev ‰dro±v t¼n –pª tän e«s»dwn tv p»lewv, e« mŸ t¼ e«wq¼v Ëp»n-
wqron kaª calar¼n pr¼v basile©av –p©qesin tv –gceiržsewv ›pause t¼n Bru”nnion, aÉt»n
te m”nein kat‡ cÛran parabi†san tän xunqhkän laq»menon, kaª katasb”san t¼ qerm¼n tän
sunelq»ntwn fr»nhma.
 Choniates, John .–.
 Choniates, John .–: Âte kaª l”getai tŸn kais†rissan *nnan pr¼v t¼ caÓnon toÓ taÅthv
ˆndr¼v duscera©nousan Þv p†scousan dein‡ diapr©esqai kaª t¦‚ fÅsei t‡ poll‡ –pim”m-
fesqai, Ëp’ a«t©an tiqe±san oÉcª mikr‡n Þv aÉt¦‚ m•n diascoÓsan t¼ Šrqron kaª –gkoil†nasan,
t d• Bruenn© t¼ m»rion ˆpote©nasan kaª sfairÛsasan.
I thank Anthony Kaldellis for calling my attention to the error in Magoulias’s translation. Magou-
lias’s mistranslation has entered the literature: Malamut, Alexis Ier Comnène, ; Dion Smythe,
“Middle Byzantine Family Values and Anna Komnene’s Alexiad,” in Byzantine Women: Varieties
of Experience 800–1200, ed. Lynda Garland (Aldershot: Ashgate, ), . Quandahl and Jarratt
discuss the text of Magoulias’s translation while acknowledging that it does not reflect Choni-
ates’s meaning: Ellen Quandahl and Susan C. Jarratt, “‘To Recall Him . . . Will be a Subject of
Lamentation’: Anna Comnena as Rhetorical Historiographer,” Rhetorica ,  (): .
 caÓnon: Henderson, Maculate Muse, , fÅsiv: John J. Winkler, The Constraints of Desire: The
Anthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece (New York: Routledge, ), –.

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 Politics and the house of Komnenos 
story is rife with sexualized vocabulary. It makes for a gripping and fitting
opening chapter for his story of the Empire’s decline. Because the story fits
his thirteenth-century purposes so well, however, we must be cautious in
accepting it as evidence for the events of .
The account of the anonymous Edessan chronicler is more violent and
spare than either Zonaras or Choniates. The anonymous casts Irene as
supporting her son-in-law over John, leading to enmity between the two
men. The main event of the story is John’s assault on the walls of the palace
and subsequent violent plunder of the imperial treasure. The anonymous
says that once in power John exiled his brother-in-law and sent his mother
to a monastery. Anna is not mentioned.
Anna Komnene’s Alexiad does not mention any attempted coup but
makes a strong case for Anna and her mother and sisters behaving appro-
priately at the time of her father’s death and casts John’s actions to secure
the succession as power-hungry and lacking in filial sentiment. The Alexiad
systematically builds in emotional intensity throughout Book XV moving
toward Alexios’s death. In Anna’s history Alexios is surrounded by his
wife and three daughters who minister to him with increasing grief. Anna’s
account shows Anna and Irene acting in their proper gender roles and has
John improperly concerned with politics at the hour of his father’s death.
Nikephoros plays no role whatsoever in Anna’s version of the succession
story. Anna employed the same standard ideas of proper gender roles as
Choniates, but used them to opposite effect.
Overall, modern historians have preferred to synthesize Zonaras and
Choniates while ignoring Anna – her eye-witness notwithstanding. Stan-
dard modern accounts of the event hold that Irene and Anna together were
the active impetus for the coup which failed because of Nikephoros’s loss of
nerve. The women were then forced into monastic retirement. Choniates’s
story is heavily represented in this synthesis. Choniates is the only source
that implicates Anna in the coup, when he describes her frustration as a
means of disparaging Nikephoros. Nikephoros similarly appears as failing
to pursue power only in Choniates’s story. In the others he does not figure.
Zonaras has Irene as the instigator and Anna, who is never named, only
figures as the wife of Nikephoros.
The standard view combines those elements from Zonaras’s and Cho-
niates’s histories that appeal to modern sensibilities. Modern historians
 Anonymi Auctoris Chronicon ad A.C. 1234 Pertinens, .
 Margaret Mullett, “Alexios I Komnenos and Imperial Renewal,” in New Constantines: The Rhythm of
Imperial Renewal in Byzantium, 4th–13th Centuries, ed. Paul Magdalino (Aldershot: Ashgate, ),
.

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 I Twelfth-century contexts
conceive of this as ‘Anna’s coup’ because they are interested in women’s
authority and attracted to Anna’s mystique as a great medieval woman
writer. In valorizing the perceived efforts of Anna and Irene to take power,
modern historians have given the texts a meaning that runs opposite to
what appears to have been the authors’ intent. Cultural changes in ideals
of womanhood have complicated our reading of these histories. On the
other hand, cultural continuities regarding negative associations with pas-
sive men persist into the modern era with sufficient force that Nikephoros
is now generally regarded as a wimpy intellectual because he chose not to
murder his brother-in-law.
It is likely that there was some internal palatial dissension at the time
of Alexios’s death. Tornikes’s funeral oration indicates that some people
regarded Anna and John as rivals but strongly insists upon her proper
behavior. There is no reason to think the stories in Zonaras and Choniates
had no basis in at least rumor and gossip. The attempts against John cannot
have been particularly threatening, however, because they apparently had
no significant consequences for the participants. Zonaras does not say
what John decided to do about Irene, Anna, and Nikephoros once he had
become emperor. Choniates says that property was temporarily seized but
that Anna and John were soon reconciled. Irene retired to the convent she
founded sometime after her husband’s death, but we do not have reason
to associate her retirement with John’s displeasure. Anna may have joined
her mother in monastic retirement only after Nikephoros’s death. Anna
was tonsured shortly before she died. Nikephoros remained at court and
ended his life while in military service.
Whether Nikephoros wrote his history before or after John’s accession
must remain a subject of speculation. We do not know how much of it
he left unfinished or even how much of what he did write we have. The
narrative breaks off unfinished in . Since it seems that Nikephoros
was born sometime in the late s or early s, it is unlikely that he
began to write much before around . Jeffreys plausibly speculates that
a period of “enforced leisure” after Anna and Irene’s unsuccessful coup in
Nikephoros’s name could have provided the opportunity for Nikephoros
to engage in serious literary activity and possibly write his history. We

 The idea of Anna’s immediate retirement comes from her description of her internal exile in the
Alexiad at ... Anna’s self-proclaimed isolation is contradicted to some extent by her ongoing
lively intellectual work. Robert Browning, “An Unpublished Funeral Oration on Anna Comnena,”
Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society  (): –.
 Demetrios I. Polemis, The Doukai: a Contribution to Byzantine Prosopography (London: Athlone,
), –, Basile Skoulatos, Les personnages byzantins de l’Alexiade: analyse prosopographique et
synthèse (Louvain: Bureau du recueil College Erasme, ), –.
 Jeffreys, “Nikephoros Bryennios Reconsidered,” –.

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 Politics and the house of Komnenos 
have however no call to think he was so deeply busy with other work that
he could not have written this history at other times as well. The history as
we have it is hardly monumental. I have known too many good historians
to leave half-finished books on their desks for decades at a time to think
that the unfinished nature of the text means that Nikephoros had pen in
hand in the last months of his life.
Nikephoros’s historical writing was described by his wife, Anna
Komnene, in the prologue to her history of her father’s reign, the Alexiad.
She wrote that her mother, Irene, had commissioned Nikephoros to com-
pose a history of Alexios’s reign and that Nikephoros was able to complete
the first part of the work, from the reign of Romanos Diogenes through
that of Nikephoros Botaneiates. In the preface to the Material for History
Nikephoros addresses a wise woman who had commissioned a history of
Alexios, presumably Irene Doukaina. While there is no conclusive proof
that the text we know as the Material for History is the history said to have
been written by Nikephoros Bryennios, it matches Anna’s description well
enough to proceed on that assumption.
To gain any traction on the dating of the text, we need to reflect on the
political messages in the history and speculate about possible contexts of
composition. Since working out the meanings of the text is the subject of
the core of the present book, the discussion of possible political contexts
in Part III is more satisfying. Here the task is to lay out the various possible
scenarios for the political context. One key result of the close reading of the
text with immediate significance for the political context of composition
is the understanding that Nikephoros’s history contains veiled criticism
of Alexios and marked valorization of Bryennios the Elder. While the
argument for the negative reading of Alexios will unfold over the core
section of the present book, in thinking about possible political contexts
of composition we need to address its fundamental plausibility.
Alexios Komnenos was the logical person to blame for the blinding
of Nikephoros’s grandfather, Bryennios the Elder, a fact unlikely to have
been forgotten by Bryennios’s descendants. There is very little reason to
doubt that if Alexios had failed to defeat Bryennios’s rebellion, Nikephoros
would have become emperor. In addition to dealing the Bryennios family
one dramatic and devastating blow in , Alexios effectively reduced

 Komnene, P..
 P..–, On Irene’s literary patronage see Margaret Mullett, “Aristocracy and Patronage in the
Literary Circles of Comnenian Constantinople,” in The Byzantine Aristocracy: IX–XIII Centuries,
ed. Michael Angold (Oxford: British Archeological Reports, ), –.
 Reinsch outlines evidence for Nikephoros’s loyalty to his grandfather: Reinsch, “O Nikephoros
Vryennios,” –.

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 I Twelfth-century contexts
the power and influence of the other aristocratic families throughout his
reign. Nikephoros would have had more than one possible reason to dislike
Alexios. Although he was a fairly high-ranking courtier and the husband
of the princess, Nikephoros very reasonably can be supposed to have been
politically disappointed.
Anna Komnene’s highly laudatory depiction of her father in the Alexiad
may give rise to a natural presupposition that her husband liked Alexios
too. Anna wrote about her great affection for her husband in moving terms.
She may well have been entirely sincere. Affection of a wife for her husband
was a mark of good character however and it is equally possible that Anna
said she loved her husband because that was the emotional relationship
most flattering for a good woman. That it is at least possible for loving
couples to disagree significantly on matters of politics is proven by common
experience. There is no reason a priori to assume that Anna and Nikephoros
had the same evaluation of Alexios’s character and success. As will be shown
in subsequent chapters, the Alexiad and the Material for History can be seen
as engaging in a critical dialogue regarding Alexios’s character.
The evidence for an abortive coup after the death of Alexios, such as it is,
indicates resistance to John. Given the solid material reasons for growing
resentment among the old aristocracy at the increasing centralization of
power and authority in the hands of the Komnenos family over the course
of Alexios’s reign, it is reasonable to expect some courtiers would have
disliked Alexios. Several conspiracies were revealed during Alexios’s reign,
the most dangerous of which aimed to replace Alexios with a descendant
of the eleventh-century aristocracy. That a negative portrait of Alexios
could have circulated in Constantinople should not be surprising.
Interpretations of possible contexts for the composition of a critical
portrait of an emperor depend in turn on judgments of how dangerous
such criticism was, for either the author or the emperor. The criticism of
Alexios in Nikephoros’s history is veiled, but thinly. The criticism is never
overt, but hardly so esoteric or deeply subtle to be truly hidden. I doubt
anyone would have expected that John could have listened to the history
and been too naı̈ve to catch the negative underlay. More likely keeping the
criticism veiled allowed it to be more polite, or at least not so insulting as
to require a response.
Much, but not all, of the negativity depends on hearing the story told
with a conception of classical Roman ideals of masculinity and honor

 The most politically threatening revolts were probably those of Gregory Gabras, Nikephoros Dio-
genes, and Michael Anemas. Cheynet, Pouvoir, –.

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 Politics and the house of Komnenos 
in mind. Therefore various audience members may have perceived it as
more or less critical depending on the degree of their engagement with
classical culture. Assessment of the degree of openness and intensity of the
criticism then depends to some extent on a judgment regarding the depth
of education at court. In the later twelfth-century court, where references
to Plutarch and other classical authors in court rhetorical performances
were routine, the value system that codes Alexios as dishonorable and
un-Roman would have been widely known. If Nikephoros’s criticism was
fairly esoteric in , it might have seemed quite obvious by . Even
in the early twelfth century enough people at court had heard enough
Roman history to be sure that Nikephoros’s history would not have passed
as purely laudatory. Some strands of criticism, such as that which aligns
Alexios’s behavior with that of the Turks, required no classical education.
Several possible basic scenarios for the context of composition then
present themselves. One possibility is that the history was written when
Alexios was alive and that it formed part of Nikephoros’s bid for power
in Alexios’s last months. In this case the criticism of Alexios would work
with the lionization of Bryennios the Elder to make a case for Nikephoros’s
superior qualifications for rule. This scenario would present Nikephoros
as more active in the pursuit of power than he appears in the standard
narrative.
The second half of Nikephoros’s history is more biting in its criticism
than the first half, which contains more cloying overt praise of Alexios.
This observation led Seger to suggest that the first half was written when
Alexios was alive and the second after his death. A third possibility is that
the first half was written shortly after John’s accession, perhaps as an effort
to reassure John that Nikephoros would support the Komnenos regime,
but that as time went on and both John and Nikephoros became more
secure in their relationship, Nikephoros felt free to be more critical. This
case would have Nikephoros writing slowly, or in fits and starts, over a long
period of time.
A fourth possibility is that it was written well after John’s accession at
a time when any attempted coup could be considered safely in the past.
The criticism of Alexios and the valorization of the Bryennios family at
such a point may have been emotionally satisfying but would have carried
little political bite. It is possible that Nikephoros wrote more critically in
later chapters because John’s response to early chapters indicated that there
would be no recriminations to doing so. In this scenario John did not

 Seger, Bryennios, –.

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 I Twelfth-century contexts
need to worry about criticism of his father because such talk was of no
political importance. It is of course possible that John did not mind, or
even enjoyed, hearing his father criticized.
There are certainly other plausible scenarios as well, but they all likely fall
somewhere in the range from an early highly politically significant context
near the end of Alexios’s reign to an almost purely academic context in the
middle of John’s reign. This range of options is offered to the reader as an
aid in contextualizing the analysis which follows and will be revisited in
Part III.

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