Death at Court

Edited by
Karl-Heinz Spie and Immo Warntjes

2012

Harrassowitz Verlag Wiesbaden

Contents
Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

IX

Karl-Heinz Spie
Introduction Section 1: Medieval West . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Patrick Geary
Death and Funeral of the Carolingians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Gert Melville
Death and Apotheosis at the Burgundian Court.
Some Observations on Philip the Good and Molinets Trosne dhonneur . . . . . . . . . . . .

21

Werner Paravicini
Theatre of Death. The Transfer of the Remnants of Philip the Good
and Isabel of Portugal to Dijon, November 1473February 1474 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

33

Scott Waugh
Royal Deathbed Scenes in Medieval England . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Rita Costa-Gomes
Alfarrobeira: The Death of the Tyrant? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
Hermnia Vasconcelos Vilar
Lineage and Territory: Royal Burial Sites in the Early Portuguese Kingdom . . . . . . . . . 159
Klaus Oschema
The Cruel End of the Favourite. Clandestine Death and Public Retaliation
at Late Medieval Courts in England and France . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
Immo Warntjes
Programmatic Double Burial (Body and Heart) of the European High Nobility,
c.12001400. Its Origin, Geography, and Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
Pauline Yu
Introduction Section 2: Medieval East. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
Claudia Rapp
Death at the Byzantine Court: The Emperor and his Family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267

viii

CONTENTS

Joe Cutter
Threnodic Writings for Royal Women in Early Medieval China:
Honored Consort Xuan of the Liu Song . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

287

Ruby Lal
Recording Death. Invocations from the Early Mughal World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

301

Bernhard Scheid
May the Leaves and Twigs of my Descendants Bloom Forever.
Posthumous Deification among Political Rulers in Pre-Modern Japan . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

321

ObituaryEugene Vance by Stephen G. Nichols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

339

Index by Daniel Frisch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Death at the Byzantine Court: The Emperor and his Family

Claudia Rapp

Introduction
The Byzantine Empire stood and fell with the capital city of Constantinople, from its foundation in 330 to its capture in 1453making it one of the few millennial empires in world
history. During this time, the Empire was ruled by a succession of 94 emperors (and very
rarely, empresses), who held the throne for an average of 12 years. 36 of those lost their
throne in an insurrection, six died on the battlefield. This leaves us with only 52 emperors
(or a little over 44%) who ended their lives peacefully and in full possession of their imperial powers. Many of them died in the imperial palace, a few (especially near the end of the
Empire) in a monastery, and were buried in Constantinople.1
Death was and remains the ultimate boundary, but for the Christian men and women of
Byzantium, it was also the transition from this life to the next. The death of an emperor
offers the opportunity to bring into focus two further sets of boundaries: the boundary between the private and the public in the rituals surrounding the emperors death and burial;
and the boundary between the secular and the sacral in the approach to the emperor in
death. In order to address these issues, it is helpful to ask who was involved in the emperors burial and who was expected to perpetuate his memory in prayer. Was it his family,
members of the court or people representing the state, such as the general populace or soldiers who played a role at his death and funeral? And was his memoria preserved by lay
people, or rather by monks or clergy? This paper seeks to address these questions for the
early and middle Byzantine periods, i.e. from the death of the Emperor Constantine in 337
to the capture of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204.
The city of Constantinople was the center of government and of the church and served
as the backdrop for the enactment of imperial and ecclesiastical rituals. The imperial palace
was located at the very tip of the peninsula on the Bosphorus, at the end point of the central
thoroughfare of the city, the Mese. The palace was an agglomeration of buildings for various functions, built and re-built at different times, including reception rooms for diplomats
and visitors and banqueting halls, such as the Hall of the Nineteen Couches which was also
used during imperial burials. The palace remained the official residence of the emperors
until 1453, although from the twelfth century it was gradually abandoned in favor of the
Blachernae Palace to the northwest of the city center. The Great Palace, as it is generally
known, was closely integrated into the urban fabric: There was no wall to delineate the
palace territory, and the palace area intersected with the public urban space in several key
1

For these statistics, see Ralph-Johannes Lilie, Der Kaiser in der Statistik. Subversive Gedanken zur
angeblichen Allmacht der byzantinischen Kaiser, in Christos Stavrakos (ed.), Hypermachos. Studien
zu Byzantinistik, Armenologie und Georgistik. Festschrift fr Werner Seibt zum 65. Geburtstag
(Wiesbaden 2008), 21133.

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locations: the hippodrome where the emperor joined up to 100.000 spectators to watch the
horse races or to participate in imperial ceremonies; the church of Hagia Sophia, seat of
ecclesiastical power and location of the Patriarchate, where many imperial ceremonies,
including the coronation, took place; and the Chalke Gate, the official entrance hall to the
palace area that connected to the main street, the mese.2 This structure, too, played a role in
the burial of emperors. At its height in the tenth century, the palace was served by 1.000 to
2.000 courtiers, including the imperial troops. These men (and very rarely, women) received their titles, salaries, and official garments directly from the emperor in carefully
scripted ceremonies, such as the one observed by the Italian bishop and ambassador
Luitprand of Cremona during his visit in 968. The courtiers were in attendance before the
emperor at different times of the day, and present at various imperial functions, but at the
end of each daywith the exception of the imperial body guardthey returned to their
residences in the city.3 The city of Constantinople was thus a microcosm of the Empire in
several ways: not only was it a cosmopolitan city that attracted people from all the regions
of the Empire and from abroad who conducted their business or sought their fortune, it was
also the place where imperial power radiated beyond the walls of the palace buildings. The
entire city served as a stage for the universalizing assertion of imperial rule through the
enactment of ceremonies, including burials. On these occasions, the inhabitants of Constantinople were understood to represent the population of the Empire in its entirety.
Death and burial of Constantine the Great
The foundation for all this was laid by the Emperor Constantine, who inaugurated the city
that was to bear his name, Constantinople, on 11 May 330. He built what would later become known as his New Rome for growth, on the foundations of the existing city of
Byzantion that had occupied the promontory since the seventh century BCE: He delineated
the urban territory with a wall, created open spaces along the major streets, adorned the city
center with a new church and built a new imperial residence. Like many Roman emperors
before him, Constantine also made provisions for his death and built a mausoleum. But he
broke with tradition in two important ways: instead of burial in Rome, he preferred to be
buried in his own city; and instead of seeking an association with the pagan gods, he
aligned himself with the new religion of Christianity, even and especially in death.
Our only contemporary source for the emperors death and burial in 337 is Eusebius,
bishop of Caesarea, the administrative capital of Palestine. He was a man of the church and
a theologian long before he wrote the Church History that made him famous among contemporaries and the Life of Constantine whose Christian interpretation of Roman imperial
rulership still poses many riddles to modern scholars. This comes into focus in Eusebius
description of Constantines death and burial, where the author tiptoes around the issue of
the divinity of the emperor.4 In the Roman tradition, the emperors divinity would be articu2
3
4

Cyril A. Mango, The Brazen House. A study of the vestibule of the Imperial Palace of Constantinople
(Copenhagen 1959), does not discuss imperial funerals.
Alexander P. Kazhdan and Michael McCormick, The social world of the Byzantine court, in Henry
Maguire (ed.), Byzantine court culture from 829 to 1204 (Washington 1997), 16798.
For a detailed analysis of Eusebius description of Constantines funeral and its significance for
imperial ideology, see Gilbert Dagron, Emperor and priest: the imperial office in Byzantium (Cambridge 2003), 13543.

Death at the Byzantine Court

269

lated at the moment of his funeral. Ever since the death of Augustus, when an eaglethe
bird of Jupiterwas seen emerging from the funerary pyre, most Roman emperors were
honored posthumously by apotheosis, deification. The deceased emperors joined the immortal gods, were referred to as divus, and received divine honors at altars and temples set
up in their name. The last emperor to be deified, although he was a Christian, was Jovian in
the year 364.5
Eusebius uses characteristically effusive and florid language to convey the impression
that Constantine gained immortality. He achieves this in a careful balancing act that avoids
bowing to the Greco-Roman concept of apotheosis, while at the same time stretching to
their limit concepts and expressions acceptable within a Christian framework.6 Constantine,
we are told, experienced his final illness while leading a campaign against the Sasanian
Persians. He had to abandon his plan to seek baptism, like Jesus had done, in the River
Jordan, and instead received it in a church in Nicomedia, 100 km east of Constantinople.
Like all neophytes, he then donned white linen garmentsthe same clothing as was customary for burial. He received a last visit from his highest military officials, then made
testamentary arrangements, granting an annual donation to the inhabitants of Constantinople, and parceling out the empire among his three surviving sons. Constantine died mid-day
on the feast of Pentecost, which is given significance by Eusebius interpretive comment as
the celebration of the ascension into Heaven of the universal Saviour and the descent of
the Holy Spirit upon mankind. In typically obtuse language, he adds: about the time of
the midday sun the Emperor was taken up to his God; he bequeathed to mortals what was
akin to them, but he himself, with that part of him which is the souls intelligence and love
of God, was united to his God.7 No last words here, no final prayer, but the immediate
ascent of Constantines immortal soul.
This may have been a quiet death, but it was not an entirely private one. Eusebius reports that even in his last moments, Constantine was attended by spearmen and his bodyguard who now began with the lament: tearing their garments, falling to the ground, hitting
their heads, and uttering cries of sorrow and grief. But beyond this immediate circle, discipline was observed around the deceased emperor, as the rest of the soldiery came in respectful order to pay their last respects. This is in stark contrast to the people in the city,
who were running wildly, each expressing his grief and sorrow as a personal loss.
We see here the soldiers in Constantines immediate entourage acting as if they were
part of the emperors household. They took the role usually assigned to women: they were
present at his deathbed and performed the ritual lament. The citizens of Constantinople are
also accorded an important role. It is they, and not Constantines family, nor any representatives of Christianity, who are expected to retain the departed emperor in good

6
7

Eutropius 10.18.2 (ed. by Karl Santini, Eutropii Breviarium ab urbe condita (Leipzig 1979), 71):
inter Divos relatus est. On the funeral of Christian emperors in the fourth century, see Stefan
Rebenich, Vom dreizehnten Gott zum dreizehnten Apostel? Der tote Kaiser in der Sptantike, in
Heinrich Schlange-Schningen (ed.), Konstantin und das Christentum (Darmstadt 2007), 21644.
Dagron, Emperor and priest, 138 characterizes this as an imperial Christian apotheosis.
Eusebius, Vita Constantini IV 64.1 (ed. by Friedhelm Winkelmann, Eusebius Werke. ber das Leben
des Kaisers Konstantin (Berlin 1975), 1467; English trans. by Averil Cameron and Stuart G. Hall,
Eusebius, Life of Constantine (Oxford 1999), 1789).

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memory. For this reason, Constantine made provisions for the distribution of donations of
coins every year on the anniversary of his death.
Eusebius narration continues with the laying out of Constantines body in a golden coffin draped in purple, which was taken to Constantinople. There, the coffin was placed on a
podium in the largest chamber of the imperial palace, adorned with the diadem and purple
robe to denote his imperial status. Candles in golden candlesticks threw a warm glowing
light, while an honor guard kept watch day and night.
There was no crisis of transition, Eusebius insists. Even in death, the emperor was able
to maintain strict order and to retain the loyal service of his officers. He was mourned by an
ever-widening circle of people.
The commanders of the whole army, the comites and all the ruling class, who were
bound by law to pay homage to the Emperor first, making no change in their usual
routine, filed past at the required times and saluted the Emperor on the bier with
genuflections after his death in the same way as when he was alive. After these chief
persons the members of the Senate and all those of official rank came and did the
same, and after them crowds of people of all classes with their wives and children
came to look.8
Beyond the imperial staff and office holders, we cannot observe any personal ties of gratitude and obligation, the people who pay their last respects exhibit merely curiosity and
gawking.
This curious daily ritual of homage before the coffin may have gone on for quite a long
time. Constantine died on 22 May. On 2 August, a law was issued in his name, and only on
September 9, his sons were announced as his successors.9 Some time within these months
(the exact date is unknown), Constantine was buried by his middle son Constantius II, who
would soon outpace his two surviving brothers to claim the throne for himself alone. He
had rushed to Constantinople from campaigning in the East so that he could lead the funerary procession from the imperial palace to the mausoleum that Constantine had built. The
cortge was a heavily protected military affair, preceded by detachments of the army in
military gear while the coffin was surrounded by spearmen and heavily armed infantry. As
the closest relative, Constantius then presumably assisted with the deposition of the coffin
in its final resting place. No further family members are mentioned by Eusebius. It seems
that even in this ceremonial public aspect of the emperors final departure, Constantines
closest personal associates were the military, just as they had been in the privacy of his
residence at the time of his death.
It was only at this moment that the Christian element took over, as the priests entered
the building, followed by a huge crowd of believers, to perform the usual prayers.
Constantius, who was not yet baptized, was not among them. He had left the mausoleum
along with the military train, after the deposition of his fathers body. Eusebius muchquoted passage about the architectural layout of Constantines burial place offers clues to
8
9

Eusebius, Vita Constantini IV 67.1 (Winkelmann, ber das Leben des Kaisers Konstantin, 148;
Cameron and Hall, Life of Constantine, 17980).
Codex Theodosianus XIII 4.2 (ed. by Theodor Mommsen and Paul M. Meyer, Codex Theodosianus
(Berlin 1905), 779). See Dagron, Emperor and priest, 137 n. 36.

Death at the Byzantine Court

271

the perception of the imperial role. He explains that Constantine was favored by God since
he was able to share the monument of the apostles and to participate in the prayers of the
saints.
God showed his favour towards his servant also in this [] that he was accorded
the place he earnestly desired alongside the monument to the Apostles and is numbered among the people of God, having divine rights and mystic liturgies bestowed
upon it, and enjoying participation in sacred prayers, he himself even after death
holding on to imperial power.10
As Averil Cameron and Stuart Hall observe in their commentary on this passage: the dead
Emperors apotheosis comes near to becoming a Christian resurrection.11
The location of Constantines mausoleum was well chosen: on one of the hills of Constantinople, at the site now occupied by the Fatih Camii, alongside the northern branch of
the Mese street that leads out of the city.12 This was an ideal setup for a processional route
that connected the periphery with the center of the capital and traversed the whole city
along major public places. Again, Eusebius is our best source. Like everything Constantine
built in Constantinople, the site was created with a view to future expansion. A huge precinct was enclosed with porticoes, and next to them were imperial houses, baths, and lamp
stores and a great many other buildings suitably furnished for the custodians of the place.13
In the reconstruction by Cyril Mango, Constantine created his mausoleum as an octagonal
structure that would have housed his sarcophagus at the east end, opposite from the entrance, while each of the six niches on either side held two sarcophagi (which were cenotaphs) for a total of thirteen tombs. As Eusebius passage suggests, Constantine designed
this arrangement with a very clear expectation in mind: He wanted to profit from the prayers that were said on behalf of the apostles. In other words, he charged the Christian clergy
with continuing his memoria, although they had played only a minor supporting role during
his funeral. In equal measure, he expected the citizens of Constantinople to celebrate the
anniversary of his death, by instituting an annual feast, including financial donations.
Whether the image that the recently baptized emperor wished to project in the conception of his burial site was as an equal to the apostles (isapostolos) or equal to Christ
(isochristos) remains a much-debated topic among scholars. Even Constantines descendants may have considered the implicit message in this arrangement as going too far:
Constantius II, his son and successor and the orchestrator of his burial, built a cruciform
church next to it, where the cenotaphs of the Apostles where transferred and gradually filled
10
11

12

13

Eusebius, Vita Constantini IV 71.2 (Winkelmann, ber das Leben des Kaisers Konstantin, 14950;
Cameron and Hall, Life of Constantine, 181, slightly altered).
Cameron and Hall, Life of Constantine, 348. See also the perceptive comments by Sabine G.
MacComick, Art and ceremony in Late Antiquity (Berkeley 1981), 11521, on the nexus between
Constantines continued reign in death and the legitimacy of the succession to his rule.
On the building and its history, see Wolfgang Mller-Wiener, Bildlexikon zur Topographie Istanbuls
(Tbingen 1977), 40511; Raymond Janin, La gographie ecclsiastique de l'Empire byzantin, I: Le
sige de Constantinople et le patriarchat oecumnique, tom. 3: Les glises et les monastres (2nd ed.
Paris 1969), 4150.
Eusebius, Vita Constantini IV 59 (Winkelmann, ber das Leben des Kaisers Konstantin, 144; Cameron and Hall, Life of Constantine, 176, slightly altered).

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CLAUDIA RAPP

with real relics, beginning with those of Timothy, Andrew, and Luke in the late 350s. Constantines mausoleumnow deprived of its original complete identification with the apostles, although still in proximity to their relics in their new resting place in the adjacent
churchbecame the burial chapel for his family. The tomb of his mother Helena was there,
and so were those of Theodosius I and later emperors up to Anastasius I in 518.14
Constatines successors
Eventually, Constantines mausoleum could not accommodate any further burials so that in
the early sixth century, Justinian built a mausoleum in the same complex that was to be
associated with his name. At his burial in 565, Sophia, the wife of his nephew and successor Justin II, gave the order to decorate the catafalque on the bier with a purple cloak embroidered in gold and encrusted with gemstones. It showed Justinian triumphant over barbarians, Vandals and Italy. Considering the workmanship required for the creation of an
object of this magnitude, this must have been a premeditated move, intended to display
female family loyalty in conjunction with imperial victoriousness. Corippus, who reports
this detail in his poem in praise of Justin II, further notes:The energetic Sophia ordered
this to be made so that the time of death might take to the imperial tomb a royal funeral
procession adorned with his own triumphs.15 This is one of the few instances where a
woman of the imperial household is recorded as active at an emperors death and funeral
outside the confines of the imperial bedchamber. The entire site of the Holy Apostles remained the burial place of most of the emperors and their wives, sometimes also their sons
and daughters, from the time of Constantine until 1028.16
Constantines death and burial shows a pattern that would repeat itself under his successors:17 1) the rituals surrounding imperial death retain a strongly familial character, yet also
acknowledge the public aspect of his rule; 2) burial occurs at a distance from the palace and
it is in this spatial interstice that we can observe the public aspects of the emperors final
departure. Constantines true innovation, inspired by his newly adopted Christian faith,
however, was not carried on by his successors: the idea that the emperor would enjoy immortality through his association with the apostles.
The sacrality of the emperor was limited by his mortality. It was, in the final analysis,
only borrowed on Gods time, not attached to his person in life, let alone to his body in
death. In later centuries, there is some scattered evidence for rituals that function as a me14

15
16
17

On the history of the sarcophagi made of porphyry, a red granite stone from Egypt, and on the possible identification of some of the imperial sarcophagi in Constantinople, including that of Constantine,
see now Neslihan Asutay-Effenberger and Arne Effenberger, Die Porphyrsarkophage der
ostrmischen Kaiser. Versuch einer Bestandserfassung, Zeitbestimmung und Zuordnung (Wiesbaden
2006), esp. 529.
Corippus, In laudem Iustini Augusti minoris libri IV I 290 (ed. and trans. by Averil Cameron, Flavius
Cresconius Corippus, In laudem Iustini Augusti minoris libri IV (London 1976), 93).
Philip Grierson, The tombs and obits of the Byzantine emperors (3371042), Dumbarton Oaks
Papers 16 (1962), 363: 34.
On the death of emperors, see Phaidon Koukoules, Ta kata ten taphen ton Byzantinon basileon,
Epeteris Hetaireias Byzantinon Spoudon 16 (1939), 5278; Franz Tinnefeld, Rituelle und politische
Aspekte des Herrschertodes im spten Byzanz, in Lothar Kolmer (ed.), Der Tod des Mchtigen. Kult
und Kultur des Todes sptmittelalterlicher Herrscher (Paderborn 1997), 21728; Patricia KarlinHayter, Ladieu lempereur, Byzantion 61 (1991), 11255.

Death at the Byzantine Court

273

mento mori, in the same way that victorious Roman generals are reputed to have had such
sobering reminders whispered in their ear during triumphal processions to celebrate a major
military victory. According to the 7th-century Life of John the Almsgiver, the emperor was
asked during the coronation ceremonies to select the marble for his tomb.18 In the tenth
century, a Muslim traveler to Constantinople, Harun ibn-Yahya, observed a ritual with
similar meaning during the imperial procession on Ash Wednesday, when the emperor
walked on foot, holding a golden box. Every few steps, an official shouted: Be mindful of
death, and the emperor opened the box, looked at the dust it contained, kissed it and shed
tears.19 The fact that in his death the emperor had finally met his maker was made poignantly clear during the funerary ritual recorded in the tenth century (which I will mention
again below), when he is told: Go forth, emperor. The emperor of emperors and the lord of
lords calls you. And in the fifteenth century, Archbishop Symeon of Thessalonike explains
in his short treatise On Burial that emperors may not be buried in the sanctuary of a church,
as this is the space reserved for the priests who serve at the altar. The three appropriate
places for imperial burials in churches, he remarks, would be either in the narthex, or along
the sides, or just in front of the chancel screen. Because even they are laypeople, although
they have been anointed as emperors. They have only been entrusted with rulership in this
worldly realm.20
The Dqqm"qh"Egtgoqpkgu
The richest documentation for the Byzantine court, including imperial deaths, stems from
the middle Byzantine period, during the nearly five centuries of recovery that followed the
severe losses of territory that the Empire had incurred as a result of the Arab conquests of
the 640s. One document that greatly enriches our understanding of imperial rituals in Byzantium is the Book of Ceremonies. It was compiled at the behest of the Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos (905959), as part of his encyclopedic effort to cherry-pick and
condense various kinds of knowledge with the aim of bottling it into authoritative texts.21
The Book of Ceremonies contains protocols of actual ceremonies that had been performed
at various moments since the fifth century. It was to be of use to the Master of Ceremonies
who was expected to adapt these ceremonies in his own planning of imperial occasions.22
Imperial ceremonies are much more than celebrations of specific occasions, such as
births, marriages, coronations, or funerals. Each time they are performed, they enact the
elevated nature of imperial rule that transcends historical circumstance. In the perceptive
18

19
20
21
22

Leontios of Neapolis, Life of John the Almsgiver 19 (ed. by Heinrich Gelzer, Leontios von Neapolis
Leben des heiligen Johannes des Barmherzigen, Erzbischofs von Alexandrien (Freiburg 1893), 367).
See Otto Treitinger, Die ostrmische Kaiser- und Reichsidee nach ihrer Gestaltung im hfischen Zeremoniell (Jena 1938, repr. Darmstadt 1956), 1479, on Vergnglichkeitssymbolik.
Harun ibn-Yahya, quoted in Treitinger, Ostrmische Kaiser- und Reichsidee, 148.
Symeon of Thessalonike, De ordine sepulturae (PG 155, 677).
On the challenges of interpreting the evidence of Byzantine rituals, see Michael McCormick, Analyzing imperial ceremonies, Jahrbuch der sterreichischen Byzantinistik 35 (1985), 120.
Appended to the Book of Ceremonies in some manuscripts was a list of imperial burials in the Church
of the Holy Apostles; Grierson, Tombs and obits, 78. On the literary patronage of Constantine VII
Porphyrogennetos, see Ihor Sevcenko, Re-reading Constantine Porphyrogenitus, in Jonathan Shepard and Simon Franklin (eds.), Byzantine diplomacy. Papers from the twenty-fourth spring symposium of Byzantine studies, Cambridge, March 1990 (Aldershot 1992), 16795.

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CLAUDIA RAPP

words of Otto Treitinger, ceremonies represent the vollzogene and vollziehende

Transzendierung of imperial power.23 This extended symbolic importance also applies to
those who participate in the ceremonies. They are much more than individuals who hold a
specific office or rank, or the delegates of the demes, i.e. the Blues or the Greens, citizen
bodies named after the horse-racing support teams that were their origin. Their participation
signals and affirms the importance that is accorded to the group they represent. In other
words, they were recognized as an integral and essential component in the dialogic relation
between affirmation and acceptance of imperial power.24 In the context of imperial deaths,
it is therefore of great importance to investigate which groups or institutions were permitted
to participate in the rituals of final departure from the world and who were the people expected to carry on the deceased emperors commemoration.
A large section of Book I of the Book of Ceremonies is dedicated to rituals involving the
imperial family, such as the coronation of emperor and empress, the celebration of the birth
of a successor in the purple room (the porphyra, where Constantine himself had been born),
and the promotion of courtiers to various ranks.25 It is in this context that imperial funerals
are also treated, and the assumption has been made that these ritual prescriptions have been
observed, more or less unchanged, since at least the sixth century.26 In keeping with the
character of this text as a handbook for court officials, the description of the imperial funerary rites begins as the body of the deceased emperor leaves the domestic space of the palace.
Until then, his death would have been much like that of any other layman: attended by
his wife and children, perhaps also physicians, with the obvious assistance of domestic
servants.27 Like laypeople, emperors may have benefited from the visit of a priest who
would have said prayers and perhaps administered the eucharist, but the practice of last
unction was unknown in Byzantium. Immediately after death, the closest relative had the
duty and honor to close the eyes and mouth. Then the quiet would be broken by the lament.
This was a terrifying moment, when the women loosed or even cut their hair, tore open
their garments to beat their bare breasts and made loud, shrieking noises to express their
grief. Eventually, the body would be washed and then wrapped in a light linen cloth and
placed on a bier. At this moment, the public part of death began. In a private household,

23
24
25

26

27

Treitinger, Ostrmische Kaiser- und Reichsidee, 153.

On this complex issue, see Hans-Georg Beck, Senat und Volk von Konstantinopel. Probleme der
byzantinischen Verfassungsgeschichte (Munich 1966).
De ceremoniis aulae Byzantinae I 60 (ed. by Johann J. Reiske, Constantini Porphyrogeniti
imperatoris de cerimoniis aulae Byzantinae libri duo Graece et Latine, 2 vols. (Bonn 18291830), i
2756). See also the insightful interpretation of this ritual by Treitinger, Ostrmische Kaiser- und
Reichsidee, 1557.
See Averil Camerons discussion of the funeral of the Emperor Justinian, as recorded in the Latin
panegyric by Corippus on his successor, Justin II. Here, too, the movement begins with a private
moment of the nephew in the presence of his deceased predecessor before the funerary cortge begins; Cameron, Flavius Cresconius Corippus, 17982.
For a good overview of the rituals surrounding death, see Nicholas Constas, Death and dying in
Byzantium, in Derek Krueger (ed.), Byzantine Christianity (Minneapolis 2006), 12445; Phaidon
Koukoules, Byzantinon nekrika ethima, Epeteris Hetaireias Byzantinon Spoudon 16 (1940), 380;
more general is George T. Dennis, Death in Byzantium, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 55 (2001), 17.

Death at the Byzantine Court

275

neighbors and visitors would come to pay their final respects, before the body was carried
to its burial.
The passage in the Book of Ceremonies begins at just this moment of transition from a
small private setting to ever-widening public view when the dead emperor was carried out
on a golden litter in full imperial regalia, dressed in a golden tunic and wearing a crown.28
The litter was then placed in the Hall of the Nineteen Couches, the imperial banqueting hall
which was large enough to accommodate up to 228 guests.29 This was one of the larger
halls within the palace area and designed to allow for the easy movement of throngs of
people. Now the clergy of the patriarchal church of Hagia Sophia, as well as all the men of
senatorial rank came in, festively dressed, while chanting. Two men were in charge of orchestrating the ceremony, the praepositus sacri cubiculi or Grand Chamberlain, and the
Master of Ceremonies. At a signal of the Chamberlain, the latter intoned three times: Go
forth, Emperor. The Emperor of Emperors and Lord of Lords calls you. It was a poignant
moment, as if the emperor was resisting his fate and needed prodding. This formula, which
appeals to the Byzantine taste for word play and paradox, allowed the imperial officials to
maintain the fiction that it was the emperor who moved on out of his own volition, rather
than being carried by others.
From the Hall of the Nineteen Couches, the body of the emperor was carried to the
Chalke where, we are told, the customary rites are performed. The Chalke has already
been mentioned as the large entrance that served as a ceremonial axis between the city and
the palace area. Again, the Go forth was repeated three times. Then the body was carried
out by the imperial senior sword bearers to the site of the funeral, where psalms were
chanted. The Go forth was chanted as before, followed by the command Take down the
crown from your head. Again, the emperor was addressed directly, as if he were still alive.
It would have been presumptuous for any one of his subjects to approach him without permission. After this command, the praepositus removed the crown and replaced it with a
different head-covering that was composed of individual pieces and purple silk, before
placing the body in the tomb.30
Death and burial of Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos
So much for the official instructions in the Book of Ceremonies. In keeping with its purpose
as providing stage instructions for the Master of Ceremonies, it is focused on the imperial
courtiers and their movements. We are in the fortunate position to be able to compare these
instructions with the narration of the death in 959 of none other than the instigator of the
Book of Ceremonies, Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos. It is preserved in the so-called
chronicle of Theophanes Continuatus of the tenth century, which has been shown to be
based on a patchwork of different sources subjected to more or less thorough revision.31
Although not entirely identical, these two accounts, one prescriptive, the other descriptive,

28
29
30
31

Byzantium did not possess anything analogous to Reichsinsignien. Various crowns were available for
ritual use at any given moment. In rare instances, they could also be given away as diplomatic gifts.
Kazhdan and McCormick, The social world of the Byzantine court, 16797, 176.
The Greek word is sementeinon, which Reiske reads as a borrowing from the Latin segmentium.
Theophanes Continuatus VI 513 (ed. by Immanuel Bekker, Theophanes Continuatus, Ioannes
Cameniata, Symeon Magister, Georgius Monachus (Bonn 1838), 4668).

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CLAUDIA RAPP

are remarkably similar. For this reason, it has been suggested that they should be attributed
to the same redactor, Basil Lekapenos, who appears in the chronicle as the intimate associate of the emperor.32 In the chroniclers account, the focus shifts to the inside of the palace
and we see the imperial family in action. At the beginning of this narration, the emperor
was very much the driving force. As he felt his end approaching, he undertook a journey to
Mount Olympus in Bithynia, a famous settlement of monks 300 km east of the capital, in
order to profit from their prayers. His illness deteriorated on his return, and as soon as he
reached Constantinople, he called his son Romanos II, who had been co-emperor for the
last 14 years, and designated him as his successor. Next we see the Empress Helen spring
into action as she directed the entire imperial household. Together with her children, Basil
the parakoimomenos (the emperors personal butler, literally the one who sleeps next to
him) and the male domestic servants (cubicularii), they pour out around the emperors
bed where he lay struggling and in pain. They intoned a loud lament and drenched his bed
with their tears. The narrator calls these tears vain and useless, unable to prevent his
death. At the very end, there was the appearance of choirs of monks, martyrs, and hierarchs
(i.e. clergy), who entrusted his all-holy spirit to the hands of angels. It is not clear whether these are actual clergy who were summoned to the palace or whether we are meant to
imagine, along with the delirious emperor, a heavenly host coming to assist him, which is
more likely. Now the body was moved from the familial sphere of the imperial bedchamber
to the more visible area of the imperial palace. It is from this point onwards that the narration in Theophanes Continuatus closely parallels the instructions in the Book of Ceremonies. The body was brought to the Hall of the Nineteen Couches, which Constantine himself had restored,33 then to the Chalke. There, we are told, he received the last kiss by the
patriarch and priests, and also by magistri, patricii, and all the men of senatorial ranka
detail that is absent from the Book of Ceremonies. This is the only time that the chronicler
unambiguously reports the involvement of representatives of the church.
From here, in Theophanes Continuatus description, the dead emperor crossed the next
boundary, from the palace into the public eye of the city. The narrator underlines the significance of this transition by his choice of words, explaining that Constantine VIIs body was
removed from the imperial house, as if the palace were no different from a private residence. Once the ceremoniarius had intoned Go forth, the emperor was carried on a golden bier, surrounded by spear-bearers, onto the main street and all the way to the Church of
the Holy Apostles, preceded by all the senators who were intoning the appropriate chants.
This procession was a great public spectacle, accompanied by large crowds and watched by
bystanders.
In Theophanes Continuatus description as well as in the Book of Ceremonies, Constantine VIIs actual burial at the Church of the Holy Apostles did not involve any clergy.34 It
remained a family affair and a matter of the imperial household. At the burial site, it was
32

33
34

Basil was also the bastard son of Romanos I Lekapenos, who had acted as a regent during the infancy
of Constantine VII; Jeffrey M. Featherstone, Theophanes Continuatus VI and De Ceremoniis I. 96,
Byzantinische Zeitschrift 104 (2011), 11523.
Theophanes Continuatus VI 20 (Bekker, Theophanes Continuatus, 44950).
He was buried in the Holy Apostles complex, in the mausoleum of Constantine, which had been reactivated as an imperial burial chapel by his grandfather Basil I, the founder of the Macedonian dynasty; Grierson, Tombs and obits, 27.

Death at the Byzantine Court

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the emperors personal attendant, Basil the Parakoimomenos, who took over. With his
own handsas is customary for the deadhe takes his all-holy body and winds him in a
burial shroud in the manner of Lazarus. Encapsulated in this sentence are the two aspects
present in the emperors death: Although his body may be all-holy, death is the great
equalizer and his single hope is that of any Christian: to participate in the resurrection of all
mankind that Jesus had demonstrated by raising Lazarus from the dead. Constantine VII
was then deposited into the prepared sarcophagus and tomb, and buried next to his father
Leo VI, as a sign of his unity and love for his father even beyond death.35
The Holy Apostles site that had originally been founded by Constantine the Great remained an important place for imperial burials, both in reality and in the pious imagination
of posterity. In retrospect, the 12th-century Byzantine historian Zonaras christianized the
funeral of Jovian, the successor of Julian Apostate. According to the 4th-century author
Eutropios, Jovian had been received among the gods, in apotheosis, like his staunchly
pagan predecessor, yet Zonaras claimed that he had been buried together with his wife in
the Holy Apostles.36
The Macedonian dynasty to which Constantine VII belonged strengthened their associations with the Holy Apostles site as a way to underline their legitimacy. This was necessary
because Constantines grandfather and founder of the dynasty, Basil I, had come to the
throne by irregular means in 867, after the murder of his erstwhile benefactor and predecessor, Michael III. Leo VI (887912), Basils son and Constantines father, had instituted the
custom of prayers to be held at the tomb of Constantine the Great on the second day of
Easter by the emperor and the patriarch.37 Constantine VII himself celebrated the annual
feast in commemoration of Constantine the Great and his construction of the Holy Apostles
by praying at the tombs of his ancestors, those of his grandfather Basil I, his father Leo, and
Leos first wife Theophano (who was not Constantines mother: he was the offspring of
Leos fourth liaison, with Zoe Karbonopsina, born in the porphyry bedchamber of the palace before his parents were married), as well as that of Constantine the Great.38 The first
Christian emperor may have wished to benefit from the commemoration of the apostles
when he built his mausoleum. Six centuries later, Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos in his
turn would have expected to profit from his association with his illustrious namesake and
distant predecessor in office when he anticipated his burial in the same location. Dynastic
considerations dictated that the preservation of pious memory of predecessors in the imperial office became the same as that of ancestors: a family affair, although distinguished by
the participation of the patriarch.

35

36

37
38

For the use of the color purple by the emperor in rituals of coronation, promotions, and in imperial
funerals, see Elisabeth Pilz, Middle Byzantine court costume, in Maguire, Byzantine court culture,
3951: 50.
For Eutropius, see n. 5 above; Ioannes Zonaras, Epitomae Historiarum XIII 14 (ed. by Moritz Pinder
and Theodor Bttner-Wobst, Ioannis Zonarae Epitomae Historiarum, 3 vols. (Bonn 18411897), iii
72.157).
De ceremoniis aulae Byzantinae I 10 (Reiske, Constantini Porphyrogeniti imperatoris de cerimoniis
aulae Byzantinae, i 767).
De ceremoniis aulae Byzantinae II 6 (Reiske, Constantini Porphyrogeniti imperatoris de cerimoniis
aulae Byzantinae, i 5325).

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CLAUDIA RAPP

The family model was strong. Already in the ninth century, as Judith Herrin has shown,
imperial women such as Irene or Theodora took great care to bring together the remains of
deceased family members at the same funerary site that was also designated for future generations, so that the celebration of the memoria of each individual at the same time served
as an affirmation of dynastic claims.39 It was with the same intentions that the regent for
Constantine VII, Romanos I Lekapenos (920944), transformed the Myrelaion palace by
adding a monastery where first his wife and later he himself, as well as many other family
members, were buried, although we are not informed what provisions he made for their
commemoration.40
Death and burial of Basil II
Constantine VIIs grandson, Basil II (ob. 1025), made a very conscious break with tradition. He had achieved a spectacular victory against the Bulgarian Kingdom under Tsar
Samuel, which earned him the later epithet of Bulgar-Slayer. In this spirit, he composed
his own epitaph in verse:
Other past emperors
previously designated for themselves other burial places.
But I Basil, born in the purple chamber,
place my tomb on the site of the Hebdomon [Palace]
and take sabbaths rest from the endless toils
which I fulfilled in wars and which I endured.
For nobody saw my spear at rest,
from when the Emperor of Heaven called me
to the rulership of this great empire on earth,
but I kept vigilant through the whole span of my life
guarding the children of New Rome
marching bravely to the West,
and as far as the very frontiers of the East.
The Persians and Scythians bear witness to this
and along with them Abasgos, Ismael, Araps, Iber.
And now, good man, looking upon this tomb
reward it with prayers in return for my campaigns.41
Basil II did not marry, nor did he produce any offspring. All his efforts were directed to
being a soldier and to protecting the empire. This inscription evokes the restlessness of the
deceased emperors toil on behalf of the Empire on several levels: first, and most obvious39
40
41

Judith Herrin, Moving bones: Evidence for political burials from medieval Constantinople, in Vincent Droche (ed.), Mlanges Gilbert Dagron (Paris 2002), 28794.
Theophanes Continuatus VI 9, ll. 811 (Bekker, Theophanes Continuatus, 408); cf. VI 10, ll. 23
(Bekker, Theophanes Continuatus, 404). Janin, glises et monastres, 3514.
Paul Stephenson, The legend of Basil the Bulgar-Slayer (Cambridge 2003), 49 and 1267, for the
marble sarcophagus (now lost) that may have served as his tomb; idem, The tomb of Basil II, in
Lars M. Hoffmann and Anuscha Monchizadeh (eds.), Zwischen Polis, Provinz und Peripherie.
Beitrge zur byzantinischen Geschichte und Kultur (Wiesbaden 2005), 22737: 2301.

Death at the Byzantine Court

279

ly, in its emphasis on Basils military campaigns and their geographical extent; second, by
drawing attention to Basils very conscious break with tradition in choosing his burial site
(a sarcophagus had already been made for him at the Holy Apostles site, which was later
used by his brother and successor, Constantine VIII); and third, by invoking the prayers not
of family or kin, but of passers-by, including members of the military, who would chance
upon his tomb. This is entirely in line with Basils personal preferences. He was more in
touch with the soldier and the common man than with the niceties of court life.
The location Basil II chose for his burial is significant. The Hebdomon was, as its name
suggests, seven miles distant from the city center, just outside the walls. Located in this
area were the assembly ground for the imperial troops as well as churches of John the
Evangelist and John the Baptist.42 The site offered suitable resonances for an emperor who
prided himself on his military achievements, situated as it was on the main southern thoroughfare out of Constantinople and connected to the Via Egnatia that was built for longdistance movement of the army all the way across the Balkans and on to Rome. Beginning
with the accession of Valens in 364, it was the location for the proclamation of many emperors before their entry into Constantinople. It was also the place where the emperor
would assemble with his troops after a victorious campaign to lead them in triumphal procession through the Golden Gate and into the city. Basil himself had led such a triumph in
1019, after his victory over the Bulgarian kingdom. Unlike his grandfather Constantine VII,
Basil II did not put any stake in the prestigious and tradition-soaked site of the Holy Apostles. His funerary arrangement suggests that he depended on casual visitors and the military
men who would regularly stop in this location, as well as the clergy of the Church of St
John the Evangelist to commemorate him in their prayers.43
The commemoration of the dead under the Komnenian dynasty
Towards the end of the middle Byzantine period there is a surprisingly nonchalant attitude
to the memoria of deceased emperors in church circles. In the Synaxarion of the Church of
Constantinople, a tenth-century compilation that notes the feast days of saints and important anniversaries for the citys history, such as sieges and earthquakes, liturgical
commemorations of emperors and princes play a very minor role, as Philip Grierson has
noted.44 Basil IIs younger brother and successor Constantine VIII (10251028) was the last
emperor to be buried in the Holy Apostles. Interestingly, this was also the time when the
emperors abandoned the Great Palace as a residence in favor of the Blachernae palace on
the northwestern edge of the city. The old palace buildings in the former city center were

42
43

44

For the early history of the site, see Robert Demangel, Contribution la topographie de l'Hebdomon
(Paris 1945).
That strangers should visit the tomb of a deceased emperor is also anticipated in the verse inscription associated with the stone slab that covered the tomb of Manuel I Komnenos (ob. 1180) in the
Pantokrator monastery. It was believed to be the stone on which the body of Christ had lain as it was
being readied for burial. When it was brought from Ephesus to Constantinople 11 years earlier, the
Emperor himself had carried it on his shoulders. See Cyril A. Mango, Notes on Byzantine monuments, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 2324 (19691970), 36975: 3725. The poem begins: Admire
these things as thou seest them, O stranger.
Grierson, Tombs and obits, 17.

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CLAUDIA RAPP

henceforth only used for some ceremonial functions.45 In the twelfth century, Nikolaos
Mesarites recorded a summary list of 18 tombs at the Holy Apostles complex, clearly based
on sketchy information. Rather than lamenting the paucity of his sources, he stated dismissively: concerning the others, why should we care, since their memories are buried
with them in their tombs.46
Those who did care were the family members of emperors, similar to the tendency we
have already observed under the Macedonian emperors and some of their predecessors.
With the Komnenian dynasty in late eleventh century, the dynastic interest in imperial
commemoration becomes firmly associated with monastic foundations.47 The same tendency of a fusion of dynastic interests with the patronage of monasteries, promoted through the
agency of women, has been observed for the German kingdom in the tenth and eleventh
century by Patrick Geary.48 Our information for this period in Byzantine history is greatly
enriched by the monastic foundation charters (typika). Each founder generates her or his
own typikon to define the financial setup and guiding rules for the organization of the new
monastery. They often also explain their motivation for this pious act. The founder of the
dynasty, Alexios I Komnenos (10811118), built the monastery of Christ Philanthropos,
which eventually served as his burial chapel, although it is not clear whether that purpose
was part of the founders intention.49 Alexios himself was known as a great supporter of the
monks as well as for his piety and penitential stance.50 Adjacent to this monastery his wife,
Irene Doukaina Komnena, founded the Convent of the Mother of God Kecharitomene (full
of grace) some time in the first two decades of the twelfth century. Her typikon51 stipulates
that at every celebration of the eucharist, prayers should be said for the remission of the sins
of the emperor, the empress, and members of their family.52 An entire chapter Concerning
different commemorations that must be confirmed annually53 lists the members of her
family, male and female, blood-relations and in-laws, her parents and her offspring who
45
46

47
48
49

50
51
52

53

Grierson, Tombs and obits, 29.

Nikolaos Mesarites, Description of the Church of the Holy Apostles at Constantinople XL 10 (ed. and
trans. by Glanville Downey, Nikolaos Mesarites: Description of the Church of the Holy Apostles at
Constantinople (Philadelphia 1957), 8923).
See the useful summary by Lyn Rodley, The art and architecture of Alexios I Komnenos, in Margaret Mullett and Dion Smythe (eds.), Alexios I Komnenos (Belfast 1996), 33958: 3403.
Patrick J. Geary, Phantoms of remembrance. Memory and oblivion at the end of the first millennium
(Princeton 1994), 4880.
Janin, glises et monastres, 5257. His mother, Anna Dalassena, had founded the Monastery of
Christ Pantepoptes (who sees all), which served as her place of retirement; Janin, glises et
monastres, 5135.
Michael Angold, Alexios I Komnenos: an afterword, in Mullett and Smythe, Alexios I Komnenos,
40816.
Janin, glises et monastres, 18891.
Typikon of Kecharitomene 34 (ed. by Paul Gaultier, Le typikon de la Thotokos Kcharitmn,
Revue des tudes byzantines 43 (1985), 5165: 835; trans. by Robert Jordan in John Thomas and
Angela Constantinides Hero, Byzantine monastic foundation documents: A complete translation of
the surviving founders typika and testaments, 5 vols. (Washington 2000), ii 6878, online at:
http://www.doaks.org/publications/doaks_online_publications/typ000.html).
Typikon of Kecharitomene 71 (Gaultier, Le typikon de la Thotokos Kcharitmn, 11925; trans.
by Robert Jordan in Thomas and Hero, Byzantine monastic foundation documents, ii 7002: quotation
on 700).

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were to benefit from such prayers. These celebrations always involved expensive lighting
of the church, the blessing of additional loaves of bread during the liturgy to be distributed
as charity, and special fare at the table of the monks or nuns. The emperors anniversary
even trumped regular dietary prescriptions for fasting. For it is necessary that the person
who is special among mankind should gain a special commemoration.
With her convent, Irene Doukaina Komnena established a powerful tradition that would
be echoed by her son, John II Komnenos (ruled 11181143), and her daughter, Anna
Komnena (lived 10831153). Together with his wife Eirene-Piroska, the daughter of King
Ladislas of Hungary, John was the founder of the monastery of Christ Pantokrator (the AllRuler).54 The monastery included a hospital famous for its medical training, a home for old
people, and, at some distance, a sanatorium for lepers. Six further monasteries were administratively dependent on it and contributed to its income. It was later converted into a
mosque (Zeyrek Kilise Camii) and still now represents the most important remaining architectural monument of the middle Byzantine period.55 The monastery boasted of an ensemble of three churches. One of them, the church of the Archangel Michael, served as a mortuary chapel for the imperial family. Many members of the Komnenian dynasty and of the
Palaiologan dynasty that succeeded it in the thirteenth century were buried here, including
Johns wife Eirene (ob. 1134). When John died in 1143 in a hunting accident in Cilicia, the
monastery served as a place of confinement for his older son Isaak, until the emperors
younger son and designated successor Manuel had brought the body of his father back to
Constantinople, buried it in his parents foundation and secured the throne for himself.56
John was even more articulate than his mother about the motivations for his foundation.
Johns typikon, dated 1136, requires that during each celebration of the liturgy, our tombs
be censed while the monks sing the trisagiononce while he was still alive, twice after his
death. In addition, he made future provision that a special prayer should be recited for the
deceased emperors:
Remember, Lord, our orthodox rulers and founders who are at rest and pardon for
them every voluntary and involuntary sin committed by them in word or deed or
thought and make them dwell in the places of light, in green places where all pain,
grief, and sorrow have fled away, where the sight of thy face gladdens all thy saints

54

55
56

Vassiliki Dimitropoulou, Imperial women founders and refounders in Komnenian Constantinople,

in Margaret Mullett (ed.), Founders and refounders of Byzantine monasteries (Belfast 2007), 87106:
8990.
Mller-Wiener, Bildlexikon, 20815; Janin, glises et monastres, 51523.
Ioannes Kinnamos, Epitome rerum ab Ioanne et Manuele Comnenis gestarum I 10II 1 (ed. by August Meineke, Ioannis Cinnami Epitome rerum ab Ioanne et Alexio Comnenis gestarum ad fidem
codicis Vaticani (Bonn 1836), 2232; trans. by Charles M. Brand, Deeds of John and Manuel
Comnenus (New York 1976), 2734). Like that of Constantine the Great, this was a death far away
from the capital. Unlike Constantine, John on his deathbed requested the prayers of a monastic holy
man from Pamphylia (not a priest or bishop!), after announcing his choice of successor to the nobles
and generals who were present. Niketas Choniates adds the further detail that the ailing emperor took
communion as it happened to be Easter: Niketas Choniates, Historia 41 (ed. by Jan L. van Dieten,
Nicetae Choniatae Historia (Berlin 1975), 41; trans. by Harry J. Magoulias, O City of Byzantium.
Annals of Niketas Choniates (Detroit 1984), 24). On this emperors reign, see Paul Magdalino, The
empire of Manuel I Komnenos, 11431180 (Cambridge 1993).

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CLAUDIA RAPP

for ever, and grant them thy kingdom and the favor of participating in indescribable
and everlasting benefits and thine eternal and blessed life. For thou are the life and
repose of those who are at rest and to thee be the glory.57
The founder made further demands for daily liturgical commemoration, the continuous
lighting of lamps at his tomb, and the regular distribution of charity for his soul. He was
willing to incur considerable expense: The total expenditure for his commemoration and
that of his wife was to amount up to a third of the revenues from his landed property.58
Annual commemorations of the death of his father, himself, his wife, and his son Alexios
were to involve the patients and staff of the hospital, as well as the inhabitants of the old
age home and the lepers.59 The supplications of the destitute and needy, for whom John
made generous provision, were considered to be especially efficacious in propitiating Christ
on the emperors behalf, as he explains in the concluding prayer of his foundation charter:
Bend thine ear with compassion to the anguished entreaties of our brothers and
grant pardon to our transgressions. Accept those who are the living dead, halfseparated from their bodies and half-dead, as supplicants of thy goodness begging
for thy compassion on our behalf.60
Another set of boundaries is at work here: Desperate and destitute people, at the margins of
society and on the threshold between life and death, are believed to be particularly effective
intercessors with God.61
The sick and needy are elevated to a staatstragende group and charged with a role in the
liturgical commemoration of the deceased emperor that in other instances had been entrusted to family members, citizens who received donations, members of the military, or passers-by. But there is more at play: by declaring his dependence on the prayers of the sick and
destitute, John II Komnenos, the emperor and founder, assumed a penitential stance of selfabasement in perpetuity. As Eleanor Congdon observes:
The extended discussions of the hospital, the leprosia, and the hospice for the aged
must be understood in terms of the emperors desire for commemoration. Every ill57

58
59

60
61

Typikon of Pantokrator 23 (ed. by Paul Gaultier, Le typikon du Christ Sauveur Pantocrator, Revue
des tudes byzantines 32 (1974), 1145: 35; trans. by Robert Jordan in Thomas and Hero, Byzantine
monastic foundation documents, ii 73940, online at: http://www.doaks.org/publications/
doaks_online_publications/typ000.html).
Typikon of Pantokrator 8 (Gaultier, Le typikon du Christ Sauveur Pantocrator, 47; trans. by Jordan
in Thomas and Hero, Byzantine monastic foundation documents, ii 743).
Typikon of Pantokrator 44, 59, 63 (Gaultier, Le typikon du Christ Sauveur Pantocrator, 8991, 109,
1113; trans. by Jordan in Thomas and Hero, Byzantine monastic foundation documents, ii 759, 766,
7678).
Typikon of Pantokrator 71 (Gaultier, Le typikon du Christ Sauveur Pantocrator, 129; trans. by
Jordan in Thomas and Hero, Byzantine monastic foundation documents, ii 773).
The nexus between charitable deeds and the commemoration of the dead had a long tradition in all
areas of Christendom. Aristocrats in 7th- and 8th-centuries Francia granted liberty to certain people in
their testaments with the stipulation that they would participate in the annual commemoration of their
benefactors death: Ingrid Heidrich, Freilassungen als Sicherung des Totengedchtnisses im frhen
Frankenreich, in Uwe Ludwig (ed.), Nomen et fraternitas. Festschrift fr Dieter Geuenich zum 65.
Geburtstag (Berlin 2008), 22133.

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ness that was treated by the doctors of the foundation, every poor old person who
filled out his last days better than he had lived his others, every leper who found
comfort during his affliction, would be counted in heaven as a good deed done at the
behest of John II. Further, these poor people could also add their own prayers for the
founder to those prescribed in the typikon. The emperor could call upon no other
more potent earthly deeds than their intervention to secure his salvation.62
In doing so, John II Komnenos was following in the footsteps of his father. Alexios had
engaged in visible and public acts of penance on more than one occasion, after his violent
takeover of the reins of government, and again after appropriating church property to finance his wars.63 Yet at the same time, his role as monastic founder and benefactor enabled
him to generate healing and to undo the social ills that afflicted his beneficiaries, thereby
creating in his monastery an anticipation of heaven. Alexios devoted daughter Anna elaborates on this notion in her comments on her fathers charitable foundation. With its many
dwellings for adults and children who were handicapped or otherwise in need of assistance,
it truly appeared as a city within a city, she claimed. Although Alexios was unable to offer a
Feeding of the Five Thousand or a Raising of the Paralytic, Anna explains, the emperors
charity is not merely a pious act of imitatio Christi, but also comes close to working a miracle.64 The imperial family of the Komneni thus displayed a new form of piety which emphasized sinfulness and the need for self-abasement. Like many aristocratic founders of
monasteries of the time, they were driven by the anxious desire to secure from their beneficiaries the intercession for their sins while expressing their dependence on the memorialization by the sick and destitute.65
Anna Komnena, the daughter of Irene Doukaina Komnena and Alexios I Komnenos, retired to her mothers convent of Kecharitomene around 1136, after the death of her husband
Nikephoros Bryennios. It was here that, during the last five years of her life until her death
in 1153/54, she composed the Alexiad, a mixture of narrative history, family memoir and
eulogy of her beloved and admired father. The work is written from the perspective of the
emperors oldest child, a woman proud of her erudition, who had on several occasions
harbored hopes of gaining the throne for her spouse.
Anna offers her readers a private viewing of the death of her father. She describes the
desperate efforts of a team of three physicians to give him relief during the final two weeks
of an illness that affected his respiratory tract. Mostly, he was attended by his wife and his
daughters. Anna herself mashed up his food to make it easier for him to swallow, her mother twice gave orders to move his bed to a different part of the palace in the hope of facilitating his breathing. There were also servants who took care of his body (his symptoms in62
63

64

65

Eleanor A. Congdon, Imperial commemoration and ritual in the typikon of the Monastery of Christ
Pantokrator, Revue des tudes byzantines 54 (1999), 16199: 169.
This is noted in conjunction with Alexios foundation of a huge complex for the care of orphans
(orphanotropheion) by Paul Magdalino, Innovations in government, in Mullett and Smythe, Alexios
I Komnenos, 14666: 158.
Anna Komnena, Alexias XV 7 (ed. by Diether R. Reinsch and Athanasios Kambylis, Annae
Comnenae Alexias, 2 vols. (Berlin 2001), i 4815; trans. by Elisabeth A. Dawes, The Alexiad (London 1928), 410).
Michael Angold, Church and society in Byzantium under the Comneni, 10811261 (Cambridge
1995), 265316.

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cluded severe diarrhea). But again, no clergy in the immediate presence of the household.
Religion may have been of vital importance to these pious foundresses and founders, but
the final moments of life were strictly a family matter.66 Alexios wife Irene, we are told,
made still more fervent intercessions to God on his behalf, and had numbers of candles
lighted in every sanctuary and continuous and endless hymns sung, and largess distributed
to the dwellers in every land and on every sea. And all the monks who dwelt on mountains
or in caves or led their solitary life elsewhere she stirred up to making lengthy supplications. And all those who were sick or confined in prison and worn out with suffering she
made very rich by donations and invited them to offer prayers for the Emperor. Here, just
like in Johns typikon, it was not only the clergy in individual churches, but especially the
socially and economically, and indeed physically embattled whose prayers were called
upon.
Anna, who was visibly proud of her medical knowledge, presents herself as the last person to feel her fathers pulse fading. At that moment, the ritual lament began:
The Empress understood what that meant and in absolute despair uttered a sudden
loud, far-reaching shriek. How can I possibly picture the disaster which overtook the
whole world? or how deplore my own condition? the Empress took off her royal veil
and caught hold of a knife and cut off all her hair close to the skin and threw off the
red shoes from her feet and demanded ordinary black sandals. And when she wanted
to change her purple dress for a black garment, no dress could be found at hand. But
the third of my sisters had garments suitable for the time and occasion, as she had already experienced the ills of widowhood, so the Empress took them and dressed herself and put on a plain dark veil on her head. And at this moment the Emperor resigned his holy soul to God, and my sun went down. Persons who were addicted to
emotion sang dirges, beat their breasts and raised their voices to heaven in shrill laments weeping for their benefactor who had provided all things for them.67
It is on this note of personal lament that Anna concludes her history of her fathers reign,
and it is easy to imagine her in her old age as she was writing this in the convent her mother
had founded, with her fathers death over 30 years ago still engraved in her memory.
Annas account of the death of the founder of the Komnenian dynasty is focused on the
emperors deathbed and the role of the women of the imperial household during his final
departure. Two further contemporary authors, Ioannes Zonaras68 and Niketas Choniates,69
66

67
68

Other contemporary authors, although writing from a more distant vantage point in 1154, confirm
that Alexios immediate family rallied around his deathbed in a display of familial unity at a precarious moment of dynastic succession. Their presence was such that it crowded out the servants of the
bedchamber (cubicularii), the emperors immediate associates (hetairoi), and the guardsmen, who
would all have been considered members of the imperial household: Demetrios Tornikes, Eulogy of
Anna Komnena (ed. and trans. by Jean Darrouzs, Georges et Dmtios Troniks, Lettres et discours
(Paris 1970), 267.18269.18).
Anna Komnena, Alexias XV 11.1920 (Reinsch and Kambylis, Annae Comnenae Alexias, i 503;
Dawes, The Alexiad, 426, modified).
Ioannes Zonaras, Epitomae Historiarum XVIII 2830 (ed. Pinder and Bttner-Wobst, Ioannis
Zonarae Epitomae Historiarum, iii 759.1768.33; German trans. Erich Trapp, Militrs und Hflinge
im Ringen um das Kaisertum. Byzantinische Geschichte von 969 bis 1118 nach der Chronik des Johannes Zonaras (Graz 1986), 17884).

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285

tell a more complicated story centered on the same emperors death as a moment of transition in power that was fraught with the potential danger of political unrest.70 Ioannes
Zonaras had been a loyal servant to Alexios I Komnenos, first as the head of the imperial
chancery, later as the head of the imperial bodyguard. Like Anna, he spent the last years of
his life in a monastic retreat where he wrote his world chronicle that ends with the year
1118. Zonaras account is written from the vantage point not of an eyewitness, but of
someone with privileged information. He reports that during the early stage of his final
illness, Alexios was attended by physicians in the eastern part of the Great Palace, but was
later transferred to the Mangana Palace where the better air quality was hoped to ease his
breathing.71 It is there that he died, surrounded by physicians as well as his wife and daughters. His son John, both Zonaras and Choniates continue, anxious to gain the throne for
himself against other strong contenders, paid only the briefest of visits to convince himself
that his father was truly on the threshold of death before springing into action to claim the
succession to the throne. He first secured the support of relatives, military leaders, and
senators, then had himself proclaimed emperor by the clergy of Hagia Sophia. Next he went
to the Great Palace with his ever-increasing entourage of supporters and, through a combination of force and persuasion, managed to gain access to the structure with its staff of
servants and guardsmen. In the telling of these two historians, the private nature of this
emperors death and especially of his burial was a matter of regret. Zonaras remarks that no
servants were present to clean his catafalque, no imperial adornments were at hand to be
placed on his body as it was laid out, and he received no proper burial. Choniates adds that
the funeral procession brought the body for burial to the Monastery of Christ Philanthropos,
which Alexios had built. The occasion was not even attended by his son John, who was so
eager to maintain his new position in charge of the Great Palace that he held on to it, like
an octopus clinging to the rocks. This may well have been one of the moments for which
John II Komnenos later sought atonement by founding the monastery of Christ Pantokrator.
Conclusion
An excellent study by Diether Reinsch examines how the literary depiction of imperial
deaths developed since the Macedonian dynasty.72 He notes, as has also been confirmed
here, a tendency over time to emphasize the common humanity of the emperor, rather than
his sacral character. This is evident especially in elaborate descriptions of the emperors
final illness, which is no longer presented as divine reward or punishment, but simply reported with a detached clinical gaze. By the early ninth century, triumphant Christianity as
championed by Constantine the Great faded. Instead, it was a private and penitential mode
of Christianity that the emperors assumed for themselves. The streamlined administration
of the Roman Empire, which the Byzantines continued to claim as their identity-forming
historical heritage, was but the shadow of a memory. The court was no longer a domain of
69
70
71
72

Niketas Choniates, Historia 48 (van Dieten, Nicetae Choniatae Historia, 48; Magoulias, O City of
Byzantium, 67).
This aspect is treated by Karlin-Hayter, Ladieu lempereur.
Mller-Wiener, Bildlexikon, 1368; Robert Demangel and Ernest Mamboury, Le quartier des Manganes et la premire rgion de Constantinople (Paris 1939), 401.
Diether Reinsch, Der Tod des Kaisers. Beobachtungen zu literarischen Darstellungen des Sterbens
byzantinischer Herrscher, Rechtshistorisches Journal 13 (1994), 24770.

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officials that were independently appointed for a specific task, but was increasingly organized and conceptualized as a family affair, complete with a complex web of expectations
and obligations. From the ninth century onwards, a proliferation of kinship designations
were offered as courtly titles, carefully calibrated to indicate proximity to the emperor.73 It
was no longer the citizens of Constantinople who celebrated the commemoration of the
deceased emperor, as the citys eponymous founder had envisaged, but the family of the
emperor who built monasteries that would allow them to continue to remain in close association with their ancestors even in death.74 Beginning with the Komnenian period in the
eleventh century, the charitable mission of monastic foundations offered the further benefit
of inviting the prayers of those on the margins, the sick and the destitute, believed to be of
special efficacy. What remained throughout all these changes was a focus on Constantinople. What had changed was the nature of the emperor in death. Constantine had claimed to
be equal to Christ or, at the very least, equal to the apostles. The emperors of later centuries
were content to position themselves along with their families in the context of a monastic
setting which offered the anticipation of heaven on earth. Since the time of Constantine, the
distance between the empire on earth and the empire in heaven may have become larger,
but the emperor was still in a position to claim privileged access.

73
74

A good introduction to these issues is Alexander P. Kazhdan and Ann W. Epstein, Change in Byzantine culture in the eleventh and twelfth centuries (Berkeley 1985).
This has also been noted by Karlin-Hayter, Ladieu lempereur.