Middle Byzantine Period (717-1071)
Aleksandar Jovanović
Byzantine Officials on the Emperors and the People of Rome
The Roman Empire was split into two independent states: Western and Eastern Roman Empires, the latter of which was governed from Constantinople. The Western Roman state succumbed to Germanic and other groups in 476 CE that, through a series of violent and peaceful migrations, established their independent states in the lands of the empire. The Eastern Roman Empire survived for another thousand years, continuing the legacy of Classical Roman institutions that legitimized the imperial office through the maintenance of public consensus, especially in the capital city of Constantinople and in the armies. However, with the rise of the Islamic empires of the Umayyads and the Abbasids, the Romans lost much of their territory in West Asia and North Africa; the core of the empire became Asia Minor, as well as the European regions of Thrace and Greece, while the northern part of the Balkan Peninsula was lost over the course of the 6th and 7th centuries to the Slavs and Bulgarians who established their own state formations there.
The loss of territories, as well as the need to wage wars on two fronts so close to Constantinople, came as a shock to the Romans, who had to restructure their administration by merging civilian and military rule in single offices held by public servants. The period from the early 8th to the late 9th centuries also saw some soul-searching done by the prominent generals of the eastern armies, some of whom became the emperors of the Romans with the support of their troops and the people of Constantinople. These emperors continued to practice their imperial prerogatives and interfere with the affairs of the church. Their ideas about the ways in which worship should be done, however, found opposition with many church officials and the conflict within the church dominated the empire’s religious landscape for about two centuries. This period of theological dispute over whether icons should be worshiped or considered idolatry brought about the rise of the first woman who held the position of emperor of the Romans. The excerpt from Theophanes’ Chronicle addresses the rise and fall of empresses Irene, who blinded her own son in order to continue to rule the empire, which she had already ruled as a regent during her son’s minority.
After the crisis caused by the banishment of icons (iconoclasm), the empire entered a period of economic and territorial expansion in the 10th and 11th centuries, which also brought about the rise of urban communities throughout the empire, as well as a noticeable population growth in Constantinople. The changes caused by these expansions led to the growth of bureaucracy in the capital, as well as in the provinces, and service in the imperial government became the best way for one’s family to ennoble themselves. Thus, unlike in Western Europe where hereditary nobility was well-entrenched by this point