MICHAEL CHONIATES AND THE “BLESSED” GREEKS

Rome, Greece, Scripture, and the history of the Church provided the Byzantines with a diverse source of ideals and potential identities awaiting (re)activation at the right moment, to be excerpted, recombined, and infused with new meaning. In times of crisis, Byzantine writers could turn to aspects of that past for comfort, answers, or models for the future. Some looked to the Bible or the Fathers, others to Greece or Rome. The history of these choices reflects both personal decisions and broad cultural changes that are otherwise difficult to identify in Byzantium, given the relative stability of its representational modes. In the eleventh century, for example, the historian Michael Attaleiates, who had spent his life in law and administration, turned to the pagan Romans of the Republic for explanations and solutions to the empire's decline. Attaleiates had to admit that the pagans had triumphed in their wars despite the fact that they knew nothing of God's word and did not practice Christian virtues. Attaleiates lost his faith in the link between empire and Orthodoxy, and marveled at the magnificence of the ancient Romans. Why could his own countrymen not emulate their virtue?

Attaleiates' Romanocentric response to imperial decline in the eleventh century forms a nice contrast to the Hellenocentric responses to the crisis that terminated the age of the Komnenoi. Soon after the death of Manuel, Byzantium entered another spiral of decline and dissolution.