MODELS AND DEVELOPMENTS TO 1143

This book has studied the empire of Manuel Komnenos as a series of superimposed transparencies, each representing a different frame of the composite picture in which he appears. The international, geographical, dynastic, governmental, and cultural aspects of his reign have been lifted in turn, bringing us finally face to face with the emperor himself, or rather with the various imperial images left by contemporaries, and primarily by the guardians of Orthodoxy. The fullest surviving portraits are those in the histories of Kinnamos and Chordates, written after Manuel's death; the closest, however, are the few miniature paintings and the numerous rhetorical panegyrics which date from his lifetime. For reasons which were mentioned in the introduction, or which will have become apparent in the course of later chapters, this panegyrical material deserves a chapter to itself. The image it projects has from the beginning affected the historical perception of the man: both the uncritical Kinnamos and the critical Choniates perceived Manuel through a thick, bright haze of rhetorical hyperbole. Tracing the image through the surviving evidence thus offers an opportunity to analyse the kind of source material on which they based their judgements. It also allows us to view the events and policies of the reign as they were presented in official media. In other words, we can review all the themes of the previous chapters as they were represented – or ignored – in the successive stages of Manuel's propaganda.