The Past and Present Society

Byzantium: A Friendly Society?

Author(s): M. E. Mullett
Source: Past & Present, No. 118 (Feb., 1988), pp. 3-24
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Past and Present Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/650829
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 BYZANTIUM: A FRIENDLY SOCIETY?*
The student of the medieval west has no difficulty when asked about
concepts of friendship. He or she can go direct to a great mass of
friendship writing in letters, sermons and prayers and, in particular,
to works on friendship which have been described by a recent critic
as "the systematic treatises on Christianfriendship which the Fathers
despite the richness and fluency of references to the subject had failed
to provide".' Ailred of Rievaulx revised his De spirituali amicitia
between 1164 and 1167, and Peter of Blois wrote his De christiana
amicitiain the 1190s.2 By then the floodgates were open; it has rightly
* This study is based on a
paper commissioned for the Seventeenth Spring Sym-
posium of Byzantine Studies in Birmingham, March 1983. It was written in the
legendary "favourable academic atmosphere" of Dumbarton Oaks. I have to thank
Oliver Nicholson, Marie Taylor Davis and Roger Scott for their help during the
writing and Peter Topping, Ruth Macrides, George Huxley and Judith Herrin for
their comments on later drafts. As usual Anthony Bryer and Michael McGann
stimulated and improved; my greatest debt is to Alexander Kazhdan for his generous
and encouraging disagreement.
J. McEvoy, "Notes on the Prologue of St. Aelred of Rievaulx's 'De Spirituali
Amicitia', with a Translation", Traditio, xxxvii (1981), pp. 396-411. For letters, see,
for example, the collections of St. Anselm, St. Bernard, Peter the Venerable and Peter
of Blois; and J. Leclercq, "L'amitie dans les lettres au moyen age", Revue du moyen
age latin, i (1949), pp. 391-410; sermons, for example, Bernard, Sermo 26 in Cant.
(Patrologiaecursus completus, ed. J.-P. Migne, series latina [hereafterP.L.], clxxxiii,
Paris, 1879), cols. 903-12. Anselm's prayer for his friends, in S. AnselmiCantuarensis
archiepiscopioperaomnia, ed. F. S. Schmitt, 6 vols. (Edinburgh, 1946-61), iii, pp. 71-2;
trans. B. Ward, S.L.G., as ThePrayersandMeditationsofSt. Anselm(Harmondsworth,
1973), pp. 212-15. See A. M. Fiske, "The Survival and Development of the Ancient
Concept of Friendship in the Early Middle Ages" (Fordham Univ. Ph.D. thesis,
1955), published as, for example, A. M. Fiske, "St. Anselm and Friendship", Studia
Monastica, iii (1961), pp. 259-90; A. M. Fiske, Friends and Friendshipin the Monastic
Tradition(Cidoc Cuaderno, li, Cuernavaca, 1970); an excellent short treatment in C.
Morris, The Discovery of the Individual, 1050-1200 (Church History Outlines, v,
London, 1972), esp. ch. 5, pp. 96 ff.; and two forthcoming studies, of amicitia by J.
McEvoy and of friendship in the monastic experience by B. P. McGuire.
2 The
major treatises of the twelfth century are as follows: c. 1120: William of St.
Thierry, De natura et dignitateamoris, ed. and trans. in M. M. Davy, Deux traitesde
l'amourde Dieu (Paris, 1953), pp. 70-137; ed. S. Ceglar, S. D. B., forthcoming; trans.
G. Webb and A. Walker (Mowbrays Fleur de Lys Series of Spiritual Classics, x,
London, 1956); trans. T. X. Davis (Cistercian Fathers, xxx, Kalamazoo, 1981). 1118-
40: Hugh of St. Victor, De laude caritatis (P.L., clxxvi, Paris, 1854), cols. 969-76;
trans. A Religious of C.S.M.V., The Divine Love (Mowbrays Fleur de Lys Series of
Spiritual Classics, ix, London, 1956). 1142+: Ailred of Rievaulx, Speculumcaritatis
(P.L., cxcv, Paris, 1855), cols. 505-620; ed. A. Hoste (Corpus christianorumcontinu-
atio medievalis, i, Turnhout, 1971), pp. 1-278; trans. G. Webb and A. Walker as The
(cont. on p. 4)
4 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 118

been said that friendship was fashionablein the twelfth-centurywest.3

These treatises are inspired by a slow assimilation of the writings of
Cicero, St. Augustine and Cassian on friendship and present a Chris-
tian friendship conceived in the cloister but available to all.
But students of Byzantine friendship have no such major treatises
to go to.4 They must grub around in the columns of chronicles and
riddles, letters and ascetic catecheses. And what they find is not the
gentle world of Canterburyunder Anselm or Rievaulx under Ailred.
This is not for scholarly neglect of the topic; while anthropologists
who study friendship tend to bemoan the fact that theirs is a relatively
neglected aspect of anthropology,5 the currently received view of
Byzantium as a friendless society is based on a great deal of recent
scholarly interest.
In fact Byzantine friendship has lately become almost a burning
issue, thanks to the researches of Alexander Kazhdan as well as the
contributions of Tinnefeld and Ljubarskij6to our understanding of
(n. 2 cont.)
Mirror of Charity: The SpeculumCaritatis of St. Aelred of Rievaulx (London, 1962);
trans. E. Connor (Cistercian Fathers, xvii, Kalamazoo, forthcoming). Early 1140s,
revised 1164-7: Ailred of Rievaulx, De spiritualiamicitia, ed. J. Dubois (Bibliotheque
de spiritualite medievale, Paris and Bruges, 1948); trans. H. Talbot (London, 1942);
M. E. Laker (Cistercian Fathers, v, Kalamazoo, 1977). 1190s: Peter of Blois, De
christianaamicitia, ed. and trans. M. M. Davy as Un traite d'amourdu douziemesiecle
(Paris, 1932).
3 A.
Morey and C. N. L. Brooke, Gilbert Foliot and his Letters (Cambridge,
1965), p. 13: "Friendship, like letter-writing, was fashionable among twelfth-century
churchmen".
4 A minor
exception is the opoiosdei einai tousdoulouseis touskuriouskai touskurious
eis tousdoulousof Theodore Lascaris to which Michael Angold drew my attention. See
E. Lappa-Zizicas, "Un traite inedit de Theodore II Lascaris", Actes du VIe congres
internationald'etudesbyzantines,2 vols. (Paris, 1950), i, pp. 119-26; and now for an
edition, L. Tartaglia, "L'opusculo de subjectorum in principem officiis di Teodor II
Lascaris", Diptycha, ii (1981), pp. 187-209. It is clear in its almost legalistic treatment
of reciprocal duties and rights between philos (the doulosor slave in question) and (the
kuriosor lord) emperor (described by Svoronos in terms of a contract) that it is a long
way from the western treatises referred to here. See N. Svoronos, "Le serment de
fidelite a l'empereur byzantin et sa signification constitutionelle", Revue des etudes
byzantines, ix (1951), p. 138. See also J. Verpeaux, "Les oikeioi: notes d'histoire
institutionelle et sociale", Revue des etudes byzantines,xxiii (1965), p. 91.
5 Y. A. Cohen, "Patterns of Friendship", in his Social Structureand Personality:A
Casebook(New York, 1961), p. 351; R. Paine, "In Search of Friendship: An Explora-
tory Analysis in Middle-Class Culture", Man, new ser., iv (1969), p. 505; R. Brain,
Friends and Lovers (London, 1976), p. 12. In fact both anthropologists dissatisfied
with structural functionalism and sociologists of the Chicago symbolic interactionist
school have converged on the study of friendship since the mid-1970s. I am deeply
grateful to Amanda Shanks for first pointing me in their direction.
6 F. Tinnefeld, "Freundschaft in den Briefen des Michael Psellos: Theorie und

Wirklichkeit", Jahrbuchfiir osterreichischen byzantinistischenGesellschaft,xxii (1973),

pp. 151-68; J. N. Ljubarskij, Michail Psell Lichnost' i tvorcestvo[Michael Psellos:
(cont. on p. 5)
 BYZANTIUM: A FRIENDLY SOCIETY? 5

Psellos's concept of philia.7 First, in his article on Symeon the New

Theologian (d. 1022) in his book on Byzantine culture from the ninth
to the twelfth century, and recently in Peopleand Power in Byzantium,
Kazhdan puts forward a developing view of friendship in Byzantine
society.8 "The salient features of the social behaviour of Kekau-
menos", he notes, "were his avoidance of social life and his fear of
friendship".9 This he sees as typical of Byzantine perceptions, and
describes the views of Kekaumenos (d. 1078) and Symeon the New
Theologian on friendship as a "traditional ethical concept"10which
was to be challenged by the more welcoming views of Psellos (d.
?1078) and Eustathios (d. 1195-8/9). And finally, in his recent work
on twelfth-century literature he states that "although the praise of
friendship was commonplace among the ancients it is not a standard
topos in Byzantine literature".11 And he fits this fear of friendship
into his overall view of Byzantine society as loose-knit with very few
horizontal or vertical ties as compared with the medieval west. "The
(n. 6 cont.)
Personalityand Creativity](Moscow,1978);J. N. Ljubarskij,"Psellv. otnosheniya
s. sovremennikami"[Psellos on Attitudesto ContemporaryEvents], Palestinskii
forherhelpwith
Sbornik,xxiii (1971),pp. 125-43.I mustthankNataliaTeteriatnikov
these works. See also now M. J. Angold, TheByzantineEmpire, 1025-1204: A Political
History(Londonand New York, 1984), pp. 80-1; E. Patlagean,"Byzantiumin the
Tenth and Eleventh Centuries", in P. Veyne (ed.), A Historyof Private Life, i: From
PaganRometo Byzantium(Cambridge,Mass., and London,1987),pp. 613-15.
wordin ByzantineGreekfor friendship,and
7 Philia I take to be the commonest

devoidof the contrastbetweenerosandagape,but see J. Boswell,Christianity,

Social
Toleranceand Homosexuality:Gay People in WesternEuropefrom the Beginningof the
ChristianEra to the FourteenthCentury(Chicago and London, 1980) on the problems
of such distinctions.Boswell'sinterpretation,while not unproblematic,casts, for
example,freshlighton Morris'sproblem(Discovery of theIndividual,p. 96):"modern
readersof the lettersof Anselmof Canterburyand the poemsof JaufreRudelhave
sometimesconcludedthat the monkwas in love with his friendand the poet not in
lovewith his lady".I havelargelyside-steppedthe issuein this article,thoughI hope
to takeit up in a studyof the detectionof relationshipin Byzantineliterarytexts. In
anycasethe wholequestionof eroticexpressionin Byzantiumis in needof assessment
followingthe publicationof H.-G. Beck, Byzantinisches Erotikon(Munich,1986).
8 A. P. Kazhdan,"Predvaritel'nie zamechanija o mirovozzrenii vizantijskogomis-
tikax-xi vv. Simeona"[Preliminary Observations on the Weltanschauung of Symeon,
ByzantineMysticof the Tenthto EleventhCentury],Byzantinoslavica, xxviii(1967),
pp. 19-20;A. P. Kazhdan,ByzanzundseineKultur,trans.G. Janka(Berlin,1968),
pp. 118-19,174;A. P. Kazhdan(withG. Constable),PeopleandPowerin Byzantium:
An Introductionto Moder Byzantine Studies (Washington, 1982), pp. 26 ff. Cf. now
A. P. Kazhdan and A. W. Epstein, Change in Byzantine Culturein the Eleventh and
(Berkeleyand Los Angeles, 1985),pp. 208, 132.
TwelfthCenturies
9 Kazhdan, People and Power in Byzantium, p. 28.
10Ibid.
11 A. P. Kazhdan and S. Franklin, Studies on Byzantine Literatureof the Eleventh
and TwelfthCentury(Cambridgeand Paris, 1984),p. 172. I am gratefulto Kazhdan
for allowingme to readthis workin typescript.
6 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 118
one form of association that flourished in Byzantium", he argues,
"was the family".12
Kazhdan's is an attractive view which accords well, for example,
with recent characterizations of the ethos of Byzantine literary so-
ciety13 and will not surprise the student of modern Greek anthro-
pology. This is John Campbell's characterization of the Sarakat-
sanaioi: "Families not connected by kinship or marriage are related
through institutions of mutual hostility and competition, and unre-
lated families view one another at all times with intense distrust".14
Kekaumenos, who notes that many good men have come to a sticky
end through friendship, losing their money, their lives and even their
souls,15 would, one feels, have been happy among the Sarakat-
sanaioi - or at least equally miserable. But it may be questioned
whether Kazhdan's is not too sweeping a view to be applied to the
whole of Byzantine society, metropolitanand provincial, over the full
span of its existence.
Certainly we should be careful not to exaggerate the case against
friendship. No one, surely, would claim that there were no extra-
familial links in Byzantine society.16 Religious confraternities,17
guilds,18 the people not connected by blood who are commemorated
in typika (monastic foundation charters) or formed parts of house-
holds19indicate that the family was not the whole story. On the other
hand, we should not play down its immense importance. "Patronage
12
Kazhdan, People and Power in Byzantium, p. 32.
13I. Sevcenko, "Society and Intellectual Life in the Fourteenth Century", in M.
Berza and E. Stanescu (eds.), Actes du XIV congresinternationald'etudesbyzantines,3
vols. (Bucharest, 1974), i, pp. 69-92; P. Magdalino, "Byzantine Snobbery", in M. J.
Angold (ed.), The Byzantine Aristocracy,IX to XIII Centuries(British Archaeological
Reports, International Series, ccxxi, Oxford, 1984), pp. 58-78.
14 J. K.
Campbell, Honour, Family and Patronage:A Study of Institutionsand Moral
Values in a GreekMountain Community(New York and Oxford, 1964), p. v.
15 Kekaumenos, Strategikon, #118, ed. B. Wassilewsky and V. Jernstedt (St.
Petersburg, 1896), p. 50. But cf. the strictures of Giovanni Morelli and Leon Battista
Alberti quoted by R. F. E. Weissman, Ritual Brotherhoodin RenaissanceFlorence
(New York and London, 1982), p. 30, in a chapter where he brilliantly demonstrates
the centralityof friendship alongside kin and neighbourhood in late medieval Florence.
16 It should be
pointed out that Kazhdan agrees that it is a matter of nuances: "If
someone launches an attack against the thesis of non-existence of extra-familylinks in
Byzantium, he will waste his time and efforts".
17 J. Nesbitt and J. Wiita, "A Confraternityof the Comnenian Era",
Byzantinische
Zeitschrift,lxviii (1975), pp. 360-84.
18 S. Vryonis, "Byzantine Demokratia and the Guilds in the Eleventh Century",
DumbartonOaks Papers, xvii (1963), pp. 287-314.
19 See R. Morris, "The Byzantine Aristocracy and the Monasteries", in Angold
(ed.), Byzantine Aristocracy,pp. 112-37; P. Magdalino, "The Byzantine Aristocratic
Oikos", ibid., pp. 92-111. I am indebted to John Nesbitt for advice on this point.
 BYZANTIUM: A FRIENDLY SOCIETY? 7

often borrows the language of kinship and also utilises the links of
kin", wrote Gellner,20and this seems very true of Byzantium. The use
of kinship terms to designate other relationships-paterpneumatikos,
adelphosfor an acquaintance or colleague, uios for a pupil or anepsios
for an ex-pupil - all are encountered in Byzantine sources and have
to be decoded.21 Ahrweiler suddenly realizes why Psellos had so
many nephews - they were the sons of people he addressed as
adelphos.22The process of adoption,23and in particularthe operation
of ritual kinship,24the major social link outside the family, also points
to this fact. The word koumbarosis late Byzantine if not later,
but there are also earlier occasional references in the sources to
paranymphoiand nympheutai, who appear to fill something of the
same function. In modern Greek society, the koumbaros-figureis a
close friend, combining the duties of best man and godfather, at least
to the first child.25 He replaces the natural parents at baptism and
20 E.
Gellner, "Patrons and Clients", in E. Gellner and J. Waterbury(eds.), Patrons
and Clients in MediterraneanSocieties (London, 1977), at p. 1. An obvious example is
among the Bangwa, where patron and client address one another as "father" and
"child" respectively: see Brain, Friends and Lovers, p. 115. Ruth Macrides points
me to two thirteenth-century examples of emperors officially designating friends as
"brother": this is almost a title from which the friend obtains benefits. Demetrios
Tornikes, mesazon of John III Batatzes, referred to as the emperor's brother in
prostagmata:see F. Miklosich and J. Miller, Acta et DiplomataGraecaMediiAevi Sacra
et Profana, iv (Vienna, 1871), iv, 41, 247; George Pachymeres, MichaelPalaiologos, i.
21, ed. I. Bekker (Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae [hereafter C.S.H.B.],
Bonn, 1835), i, p. 64.14-17, claims that Tornikes's sons received considerable prestige
frotn the fact that their father had been called "brother" by the Emperor John. There
is also the George Mouzalon and Theodore II Lascaris philia. Theodore calls him
autadelphosin letters, and the lemma to a treatise dedicated to Mouzalon states that
"he deemed him worthy to be called his brother".
21
Spiritual father, brother, son, nephew respectively. Cf. the explanation of the
use of kinship terms as "part of a tradition of erotic address between men which has
no standard terms of relations": Boswell, Christianity,Social Toleranceand Homosexu-
ality, p. 193.
22 H.
Ahrweiler, "Recherches sur le societe byzantin au XIe siecle: nouvelles
hierarchies et nouvelles solidarites", Travaux et Memoires,vi (1976), p. 109.
23 R. Macrides,
"Adoption and Sponsorship among the Byzantine Aristocracy"
(paper given to the Sixteenth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Edinburgh,
1982).
24 E.
Patlagean, "Christianisation et parentes rituelles: le domaine de Byzance",
Annales E.S.C., xxxiii (1978), pp. 625-36. For the use of the language of kinship to
describe relationships formed through baptismal sponsorship and the importance of
friendship as a basis for entering into such relationships, see R. Macrides, "The
Byzantine Godfather", Byzantine and Mod. GreekStudies, forthcoming.
25 On the options available, see S. W. Mintz and E. R. Wolf, "An
Analysis of
Ritual Co-Parenthood (compadrazgo)", South WestJl. Anthropology,vi (1950), pp.
341-65. Byzantine society in the eleventh century, a period of rapid social change,
might be a good test case of their typology: they would expect that compadrazgo
mechanisms multiplied to meet the acceleratedrate of change. As a corrective to over-
(cont. on p. 8)
8 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 118

cannot marry into the family. The reciprocal use of the institution in
modern Greek and Cypriot society to obtain a protector and extend
one's influence in a village may also be paralleledin Byzantium: Peter
Loizos notes that "nationalpoliticians took trouble to baptise children
in Kalo village"; we note that when Michael III went slumming it in
the house of the poor woman he met on emerging from the bath-
house, we are told that he had baptized her son.26 Then again,
although friendship may be defined as "those supra- and extra-kin
relationships and bonds which are entered into voluntarily and/or are
culturally recognised",27there can be friendships between kinsmen:
Eustathios made it clear that close relatives can also be true friends
and should not be neglected.28 Monodies written by brother for
brother often pack a greater charge of emotion than anything else in
Byzantine literature.29And what are we to make of the relationship
of bright nephew and episcopal uncle which was so successful in
placing rhetors in jobs in Constantinople in the twelfth century, men
(n. 25 cont.)
hasty identification of ritual kinship with patronage, M. Gilsenan, "Against Patron-
Client Relations", in Gellner and Waterbury (eds.), Patrons and Clients, pp. 167-83;
similarly of the confusion of ritual kinship with friendship, K. O. L. Burridge,
"Friendship in Tangu", Oceania, xxvii (1957), p. 187. Koumbarosis not attested in
Greek before the fourteenth century and appearsto be derived from the Italiancompare.
It remains to be seen whether this means that the full compadrazgo relationship
including sponsorship of the first child in baptism was not an original feature of the
institution in Greece: see R. Macrides, forthcoming.
26 P. Loizos, "Politics and
Patronage in a Cypriot Village, 1920-1970", in Gellner
and Waterbury (eds.), Patrons and Clients, pp. 115-35, at p. 127; Symeon Magister,
Chronographia,De Michaele et Theodora, xvii, ed. I. Bekker (C.S.H.B., Bonn, 1838),
p. 660.
27
Cohen, "Patterns of Friendship", p. 352, but see below, n. 59, for a less self-
confident attempt at definition.
28 Eustathios of Thessalonike, Commentarii ad HomeriIliadempertinentes,ii, ed. M.
van der Valk (Leiden, 1976), p. 95.5-7; see Kazhdan and Franklin, StudiesonByzantine
Literature,p. 176. George Huxley reminds me that Aristotle regardedthe family as an
instance of philia: NicomacheanEthics, VIII.i.3 (1155a); VIII.viii.3 (1159a); VIII.ix.2
(1159b); VIII.x.4 (1160b); VIII.xii.8 (1161b); VIII.xiv.4 (1163b); IX.ii.7-9 (1155a);
EudemianEthics, VII.iii.1-5 (1241,1,b.); viii (1242a); x.1 (1242a); x.7 (1242a). Note
S. Wallman, "Kinship, A-Kinship, Anti-Kinship: Variations in the Logic of Kinship
Situations", in E. Leyton (ed.), The Compact: Selected Dimensions of Friendship
(Newfoundland Social and Economic Papers, iii, Newfoundland, 1974), p. 115: "it is
mistaken to suppose that relationships between kin are necessarily kin relations".
29 For example, Theophylact of Ochrid for his brother Demetrios, ed. P. Gautier,
Revue des etudes byzantines,xxi (1963), pp. 171-5; re-ed. in Theophylacted'Achride:
discours,traites,poesies(C.S.H.B., xvi/1, Thessalonika, 1980), pp. 368-77; for others,
Christopherof Mitylene on his brotherJohn, Isidore Meles on his brotherConstantine,
Nikephoros Basilakes on his brother Constantine, Michael Choniates on his brother
Niketas, all reminiscent of Gregory of Nazianzos's oration on his brother Kaisarion;
see my "Theophylact through his Letters: The Two Worlds of an Exile-Bishop"
(Univ. of Birmingham Ph.D. thesis, 1981), pp. 423 ff.
 BYZANTIUM: A FRIENDLY SOCIETY? 9

like Theodore Prodromos, Michael o tou Thessalonikes, possibly

Eustathios and the Choniates brothers? This is a clear example of a
pattern of patronage (if not of instrumental friendship) - and it is
certainly not extra-kin.30So relationships we would normally define
as friendship or patronage either may be multiplex and include blood
relationship or may be described in terms of blood tie. But that does
not mean that extra-kin relationships did not exist and were not as
important a social glue as kinship itself.
The other side of the picture is clear: Byzantine intellectuals never
lost the classical heritage of philosophical discussions of friendship.31
The rediscovery of Cicero's De amicitia could have no parallel in the
east where the views of Plato and Aristotle, not to say Gregory of
Nazianzos and Maximos the Confessor, were widely available.32And
in the Byzantine letter at least, the praise of friendship was a standard
topos. As I have previously observed,33 the letter had been linked
with friendship from a very early stage of its history: "The letter
as a genre", wrote Jean Darrouzes, "is essentially concerned with
friendship".34 Letters are full of friendly sentiment, of expressions
of the abstract idea of friendship and of the relationship of the letter
to friendship. Letters maintained or even created friendships; some
letter-friends had never met. "A friendship without letters", wrote
Leo of Synnada, "is a lamp without oil".35 Much of the imagery
used to express friendship is culled from very ancient sources: the
30 Niketas o tou
Serron, Michael o tou Anchialou, possibly George Tornikes should
be added to the list: see J. Darrouzes, Documents inedits d'ecclesiologiebyzantine
(Archives de l'orient chretien, x, Paris, 1966), p. 56; L. Stiernon, "Notes de prosopo-
graphie et de titulature byzantine", Revue des etudes byzantines,xxi (1963), p. 185;
V. Tiftixoglu, "Gruppenbildungen innerhalb des Konstantinopolitanischen Klerus
wahrend die Komnenenzeit", Byzantinische Zeitschrift, lxii (1969), p. 34. On the
relation of mother's brother and sister's son in a non-kin situation, see Mintz and
Wolf, "Analysis of Ritual Co-Parenthood", p. 9.
31 The best recent study is by J.-C. Fraisse, Philia: la notion d'amitie dans la

philosophieantique(Paris, 1974), replacing L. Dugas, L'amitieantiqued'apresles moeurs

populaires et les thories des philosophes (Paris, 1894); K. Treu, "Freundschaft",
Reallexikonfur Antike und Christentum,viii (1972), cols. 418-34.
32
Gregory of Nazianzos, Or. 11 (Patrologiae cursus completus, ed. J.-P. Migne,
series graeca [hereafter P.G.], xxxv, Paris, 1886), cols. 831-42; Maximos Confessor,
Kephalaia Theologika,vi, peri philon kai philadelphias(P.G., xci, Paris, 1865), cols.
753-64.
33 M. E.
Mullett, "The Classical Tradition in the Byzantine Letter", in M. E.
Mullett and R. Scott (eds.), Byzantiumand the ClassicalTradition(Birmingham, 1981),
pp. 75-93, esp. pp. 79 ff.
34 J. Darrouzes, Epistoliersbyzantinsdu xe siecle
(Paris, 1960), p. 48.
35 Leo of
Synnada, ep. 34 (from Stephen of Nicomedeia), ed. Darrouzes, ibid., p.
192; cf. Michael Psellos, ep. S.14, ed. K. N. Sathas, in MesaionikeBibliotheke,7 vols.
(Paris and Venice, 1876), v, pp. 253-4.
10 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 11 8

Aristophanes myth in Plato's Symposium,the idea of an allos ego, the

uniomystica.36 The early Christianidea of friendship in Christaffected
writers,37 and there is a very strong impression in many Byzantine
writers of the author's appreciation of his friends as people as well as
embodiments of ideas.
But is this commitment to friendship in the epistolary literature
simply the icing on the cake of learning? Have concepts rooted in the
Athens of Plato and Aristotle any real meaning for the Byzantium of
Kekaumenos? Are they simply the artificial conceits of a literary
freemasonry?In what follows I propose to reflect on the role ofphilia
in Byzantine society in general, not just on the exalted heights
occupied by Psellos and his friends. And like Kazhdan I shall take
careful note of the sayings of writers who could by no stretch of the
imagination be thought of as part of the intellectual elite: Symeon the
New Theologian would have been profoundly insulted to be so
described, and no one has yet called Kekaumenos an intellectual.38
Admittedly it is easy to find examples of bad friendships in most
periods of Byzantine history: the schadenfreudeof Philaretos's Job's
comforters;39the wonderful description of how the boon companion
36 Another
self; the mystical union. See G. Karlsson, Ideologieet ceremonialdans
l'epistolographiebyzantine(Studia GraecaUppsaliensia, iii, Uppsala, 1962), ch. 38, pp.
58-60.
37 For the
largely negative biblical attitude to friendship, see Treu, "Freundschaft",
but note the much more positive attitudes of early Fathers: for example, M. A.
McNamara, Friendshipin St. Augustine(Freiburg, 1958); A. M. Fiske, "St. Augustine
and Friendship", Monastic Studies, ii (1964), pp. 127-35; V. Nolte, Augustins
Freundschaftidealin seinenBriefen (Wiirzburg, 1939); P. Brown, Augustineof Hippo:
A Biography(London, 1967), ch. 6, pp. 61-4; P. Fabre, S. Paulin de Nole et l'amitie
chretienne (Paris, 1949). Paulinus reorganized his entire circle of friends on his
conversion. K. Treu, "Philia und Agape: Zur Terminologie der Freundschaft bei
Basilios u. Gregor von Nazianz", Studi Classici, iii (1961), pp. 421-7. For patristic
friendship in practice , see now R. Van Dam, "Emperor, Bishops and Friends in Late
Antique Cappadocia", Jl. TheologicalStudies, new ser., xxxvii (1986), pp. 53-76.
38 This is a generally held view: for example, I. Sevcenko, "ConstantinopleViewed
from the Eastern Provinces in the Middle Byzantine Period", in I. Sevcenko and
F. E. Sysyn (eds.), Eucharisterion:Essays Presented to Omeljan Pritsak (Harvard
Ukrainian Studies, iii/iv, pt. 2, Cambridge, Mass., 1979-80), p. 727: "the mind it
reveals was free of the constraintsand pitfalls of the court and practicallyunencumbered
by the burden of the classical literary tradition", but two qualificationsare necessary:
one that it is dangerous to underestimate Kekaumenos's rhetoricity, second that the
concept of the intellectual in Byzantium is overdue for refinement; see, however,
Sevcenko's definition in "Society and Intellectual Life in the Fourteenth Century", p.
69.
39 Niketas, Bios kai Politeia tou en agiois patros emonPhilaretoutou Eleemonos,ed.
and French trans. M. H. Fourmy and M. Leroy, Byzantion, ix (1934), pp. 115-17,
but note the good friend, the official, who "out of respect for their long-standing
friendship" gave him four mules with forty modioi of wheat (p. 133).
 BYZANTIUM: A FRIENDLY SOCIETY? 11
Basil leaves the emperor's table "as if for some naturalfunction" and
heads instead for the imperial bedchamber and usurpation;40the sad
story of the affection lavished on the actor by Constantine IX and the
disappointment it caused him41- clearly these "models of friendship
are precious and rare but the friendship of models is not". Malalas
tells us the story of Eudokia and the apple. A poor man presented
Theodosius II with "a Phrygian apple of enormous size, so big as to
defy description". The emperor paid the man, sent the apple to his
wife, who sent it to the magister Paulinos "since he was a friend of
the emperor", and he, not knowing it had come from the emperor
in the first place, presented it to him. All hell broke loose: Eudokia
claimed she had eaten the apple, Theodosius suspected she was in
love with Paulinus - and had him executed. Ultimately a bad
friendship, but clearly a friendship: we are told that Theodosius had
promoted Paulinus through all the ranks, because he was his friend,
matchmaker for his marriage and table companion.42 We begin to
see what it means to be a friend in Byzantium.
But the classic warning is Kekaumenos's advice on entertaining a
friend (he must be easily the worst friend in history):
If you have a friend from elsewhere who comes to the town where you live, do not
put him up in your house, but let him stay somewhere else and send him what he
needs - it's better like that. If he stays in your house, let me tell you what
unpleasantnesses will occur. First, your wife, your daughter and your daughter-in-
law will not be able to leave their rooms to set the house to rights. If it so happens
that they have to come out, your friend will make himself loudly obvious and hang
on them with his eyes. If he gets the chance he will make a pass at your wife, look
at her with immodest eyes and misuse her if possible. In any case, on departure he
40 Leo
Grammaticus, Chronographia,ed. I. Bekker (C.S.H.B., Bonn, 1842), pp.
250-1.
41 Michael
Psellos, Chronographia,vi.139-55, ed. E. Renauld, ii (Paris, 1928), pp.
38-48. This represents an interesting case: both this and the previous episode have
suggestions of homoeroticism. There is no reason to doubt that homosexual relations
and relationships existed in Byzantium: see P. Koukoules, Byzantionbioskaipolitismos,
vi (Athens, 1955), pp. 505-39. What is interesting here is that the commentator's
disapprobation is entirely concerned with the lack of reciprocity involved and in the
friendship as non-functioning.The erotic (or non-erotic) quality of the relationship is
not viewed as significant.
42 John
Malalas, Chronographia,xiv, ed. L. Dindorf (C.S.H.B., Bonn, 1831), pp.
356-8. It is possible that the shock waves of the story may have involved incest, since
Paulinus was mesanta to gamo (go-between, sponsor) for the imperial couple. I owe
this example and much helpful discussion of the ideas in this paper to Roger Scott.
The category "friend of the emperor", already notable in early imperial Rome (see F.
Millar, The Emperorin the Roman World(London and New York, 1977), pp. 110-22),
turns up fairly frequently in early Byzantine sources (for example, ParastaseisSyntomoi
Chronikai, xli, ed. A. Cameron and J. Herrin, in Constantinoplein the Early Eighth
Century:Introduction,Translationand Commentary(Columbia Studies in the Classical
Tradition, x, Leiden, 1984), p. 112.15), almost as if it were a title: see n. 19 above.
12 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 118
will boast of such unholiness. And even if he doesn't say it himself your enemy will
throw it at your face in battle.43
This surely is the heart of the matter: Kekaumenos is not afraid of
friendship in the abstract; he is afraid of what bad friends do to you.
And one thing that they do to you is gossip. One is reminded of the
power of gossip in the Euboian village Juliet Du Boulay writes about,
but there it is clear that gossip has a consolidating and confirming
function in the small community of the village.44 In the looser
structure of Kekaumenos's world, gossip is an unmitigated evil: a
bad friend and a snake are just the same: out of the mouth of both
of them comes poison.45
Byzantine writers in fact rarely talk about philia; they talk about
philoi; Kekaumenos spends a great deal of time telling his readers
whom not to choose for a friend. Many strategoi (military com-
manders) have suffered from people they thought were friends. An
old enemy does not become a new friend. In time of revolt a few
friends around you are useful.46Manuel Karantenos-Sarantenossums
up the difference between a good friend and a bad friend:
The good friend is mobile bliss,
The bad one a walking disaster.47
We can flesh this out from other sources: good friends keep faith,
provide support, ignore slander, hate the people you hate; bad friends
gossip, eat you out of house and home, seduce your wife, flatter
you and behave hypocritically. Psellos's letter to the nephews of
Keroullariosgives them good advice on how to keep friendships alive,
and Eustathios wrote a whole sermon on what to do when your
friends fall out with each other.48 An examination of attitudes to
43 Kekaumenos, #101, ed. Wassilewsky and Jernstedt, pp. 42-3. Patricia Karlin-
Hayter first drew my attention to the punchline of this story.
44 J. Du
Boulay, Portraitof a GreekMountain Village (Oxford, 1974), pp. 205, 210-
13. Perhaps the best parallel is again with the Sarakatsanaioi,where gossip is feared
and hated: Campbell, Honour, Family and Patronage, pp. 312-15. Certainly among
other communities, for example the Tangu of New Guinea, the chief function of a
friend is to raise the prestige of his friend by gossip: Burridge, "Friendship in Tangu",
p. 180. On the etymology of the word (=godsib), see Mintz and Wolf, "Analysis of
Ritual Co-Parenthood", p. 341; Brain, Friends and Lovers, ch. 4, "Gossips and
Godchildren".
45 Kekaumenos, #145, p. 61.
46 Kekaumenos, #168, p. 64.
47 Manuel Karantenos-Sarantenos, poem 4, ed. U. Criscuolo, "Altri inediti di
Manuele Karanteno o Saranteno", Epeteris tes Etaireias Byzantinon Spoudon, xliv
(1979-80), p. 162. I have reversed the order of the lines in translation.
48 Michael Psellos, ep. S.208, ed. Sathas, pp. 513-23; Eustathios of Thessalonike,
Commentariiad Homeri Iliadem pertinentes,Esc. Y-II-10, fo. 46: see Kazhdan and
Franklin, Studies on Byzantine Literature,pp. 175 ff.
 BYZANTIUM: A FRIENDLY SOCIETY? 13
friends, friendship and letters of friendship in the near-contemporar-
ies Anselm of Canterbury and Theophylact of Ochrid49reveals that,
despite the fact that Anselm's friendships were famous in his own
day50whereas Theophylact has been characterizedas more interested
in the privileges and possessions of the church,51 the real difference
between them was that for Anselm a supreme aim in life was verus
amor, while for Theophylact what mattered most was an alethinos
philos.52 Anselm's approach is much more idealistic than Theophy-
lact's: he values the idea of friendship rather than the individuals
who practise it or the means by which they do so; Theophylact's is
an essentially practical approach:53he values the means rather than
the ideal and in fact the network rather than the individual. His love
is built on need, mutually understood if not shared, while Anselm's
is a love without need, more perfect, but to his friends at least, less
satisfying.
My explanation of this would be that the Byzantines took a very
practical view of friendship: whether it was the emotional support of
exiled bishops longing to get back to the bright lights of Constanti-
nople54 or Theodore of Stoudios's ready-made resistance movement
so well analysed by Paul Alexander,55 friendships were expected to
work for friends. A friendship was a failure if it failed to serve its
purpose. Throw out a bad friendship, said Kekaumenos, and don't
be afraid if you are slandered for it.56 Ahrweiler saw very clearly57
the social basis of the friendships of the circle of Psellos: his inter-
ventions on behalf of his friends indicate and reinforce his own power
49 See
my "Theophylact through his Letters", Section II, ch. 4, "Letters to
Friends", pp. 270-308.
50 R. W.
Southern, MedievalHumanismand OtherStudies(Oxford, 1970), p. 13.
51 Kazhdan,
Peopleand Powerin Byzantium,p. 28.
52 True love as
against a true friend.
53
George Huxley suggests that this was true also in the ancient world; cf. the
proverb quoted in fr. 15 of Archilochos, in M. L. West, Iambi et elegigraeci,i (Oxford,
1971), p. 7.
54 R.
Browning, "Unpublished Correspondence between Michael Italicus, Arch-
bishop of Philippopolis and Theodore Prodromos", Byzantinobulgarica,i (1962), pp.
279-97; Sevcenko, "Constantinople Viewed from the Eastern Provinces", pp. 738-40;
Mullett, "Classical Tradition in the Byzantine Letter", p. 91; Mullett, "Theophylact
through his Letters", Section IV, ch. 5, "Theophylact's Exile Imagery".
55 P. J.
Alexander, "Religious Persecution and Resistance in the Byzantine Empire
of the Eighth and Ninth Centuries: Methods and Justifications", Speculum,lii (1977),
pp. 238-64.
56 Kekaumenos, #143, pp. 60-1.
57
Ahrweiler, "Recherches sur le societe byzantin", p. 109; cf. also N. Duy6, "Un
haut fonctionnaire byzantin du xie siecle: Basile Maleses", Revue des etudesbyzantines,
xxx (1972), pp. 167 ff.
14 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 118

in society. New men are moving fast on to the rungs of the ladder;
those already established widen their network. Here is no matter of
Platonic metaphysics, but the very power structures of the eleventh
century. Friendship in Byzantium may be more important than
scholars have thought.
There is some evidence that some Byzantines would have agreed.
Certainly in the eleventh century, when there is a certain amount of
interest in the topic, it is seen as absolutely at the core of society.
Again and again in the hymns of Symeon the New Theologian friends
are bracketed with relatives as the essential elements of the outside
world: "You have rescued me from the dreadful and vain world,
from my relatives and friends and illicit pleasures, and have deigned
to place me here as on a mountain"; "and those who have renounced
the world and at the same time all their relatives, friends and com-
panions"; "from my father and brothers, relatives and friends, from
the land of my birth you have closed me off'; "Speak of death, give
air to numerous and necessary reflections useful to your friends just
as to your relations".58Kekaumenos also takes friendship absolutely
for granted in many passages in the Strategikon- where he is not
warning his relatives against believing a toparch'sword or mistrusting
his own ability to keep secrets in his cups, the context of several
warnings against friendship. The very first reference to a friend in
the work shows Kekaumenos in the act of intervening on his behalf-
but not too obviously, lest it be thought that he was doing it only for
gifts. That, he says, harms both yourself and the one you are mediat-
ing for.59 He has strong views on what one should or should not do
for a philos, but that one should do something is not in doubt. Quite
naturally friends creep into the discussion of extraneous matters:
"Your friends and your wife will try to persuade you: 'Take a good
post in local government and then you will be able to look after
yourself, your oikos[household] and your anthropoi[men]' ".60 Theo-
dore Prodromos, in his verse drama Friendshipin Exile,61 saw the
world as regulated by friendship.
58
Symeon the New Theologian, Hymn 49.5-7, ed. J. Koder, iii (Sources
chretiennes, cxcvi, Paris, 1973), p. 146; Hymn 41.240-1, p. 30; Hymn 21.374-7, ii
(Paris, 1971), p. 158; Hymn 56.7-8, iii, p. 272. Cf. also Hymn 14.31, i (Sources
chretiennes, clvi, Paris, 1969), p. 268; Hymn 18.126-7, ii, p. 84; Hymn 20.98-9, ii,
p. 118; Hymn 22.119-20, ii, p. 180; Hymn 56.7-8, iii, p. 274; Kephalaia praktika,
iii. 13, ed. J. Darrouzes (Sources chretiennes, li, Paris, 1957), p. 83; Catecheses,xxx.60-
1, ed. B. Krivocheine, iii (Sources chretiennes, cxiii, Paris, 1965), p. 198.
59 Kekaumenos, #5, p. 3.
60
Kekaumenos, #96, p. 40.
61 Theodore
Prodromos, Epi Apodemoutei philiai (P.G., cxxxiii, Paris, 1864), cols.
1321-32.
 BYZANTIUM: A FRIENDLY SOCIETY? 15
A definition of friendship is not easily achieved.62 Ancient his-
torians at least are aware of the extent of the problem: "The range of
amicitia is vast"63and this is even more true of philia.64The word is
used of alliances between states, of friendship between churches and
of clandestine support in foreign states, and it functions as the
ostensible motivation for the writing of books.65 Military uses are
common: Pollux's Onomastikongives a great string of synonyms for
philia of this kind, starting with symmachia.66And Kazhdan has
shown how in Niketas Choniates the language of friendship most
often reflects the ideology of feudalism.67
In the personal sphere various shades of friendship can be detected.
Psellos thought there were three: the best kind which was only
available to intellectuals, a second-rate "friendliness" rather than
friendship, and a very basic politeness.68 Other writers echo Aris-
totle's distinction of the pleasant, the useful and the good friendship.69
62
E. Schwimmer, "Friendship and Kinship: An Attempt to Relate Two Anthropo-
logical Concepts", in Leyton (ed.), Compact, p. 49.
63 P. A. Brunt, "Amicitia in the Late Roman
Republic", Proc. CambridgePhilol.
Soc., cxci (1965), p. 20.
64 The
range of synonyms looks wider in Latin (affectio, affectus, amor, dilectio,
caritas, desiderium,amicitia) than in Greek (agape, eros,pothos,philia), though it would
be unwise to claim this without a semantic field study. On the relationship between
philia and amicitia, see Fraisse, Philia, pp. 441-5. See the survey of research on the
word philos by K. Strunk, IndogermanischeForschungen,lxxv (1970), pp. 315-22.
65 For alliances between states and churches (both standard uses of philia) see the
dictionaries of Liddell and Scott, and Lampe respectively; for kryptoiphiloi (traitors),
see F. Dvornik, Originsof IntelligenceServices: The AncientNear East, Persia, Greece,
Rome, Byzantium, the Arab MuslimEmpire, the MongolEmpire, China, Muscovy(New
Brunswick, 1974), pp. 146 ff.: I owe this reference to Mike McCormick; excuse for
writing (or continuing) a book: for Theophanes, Chronographia,Prooimion, ed. J.
Classen, i (C.S.H.B., Bonn, 1839), pp. 4-5.
66
Pollux, Onomastikon,s.v. philia. It has not, I think, been noticed that three of
the four most damning comments by Kekaumenos on friends occur in militarycontexts:
the two wonderful stories about the strategos and the toparch, plus the advice not to
accept the gifts of a krites (judge). In context Kekaumenos's strictures are absolutely
consistent with his maintenance of a network of philia.
67 Kazhdan, People and Power in Byzantium, p. 28; Kazhdan and
Franklin, Studies
on Byzantine Literature,p. 109.
68 See
Ljubarskij, Michail Psell, pp. 117-29; Tinnefeld, "Freundschaft in den
Briefen des Michael Psellos", for a full analysis.
69 Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics, VII.ii.9-iv.10
(1236a-9b); Nicomachean Ethics,
VIII.iii.l-iv.5 (1156a-7b); Cicero, De amicitia, vi.22; Clement of Alexandria accepts
the threefold distinction of philian kat'areten, kat'amoiben,kat'edonen(ek sunetheias)
(goodness, utility and pleasure), as does Cassian, CollatioXVI, xiv, ed. M. Petchenig
(Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum [hereafter C.S.E.L.], xiii, Vienna,
1866), pp. 448-9 (caritas, affectio,societas).For analysis of Ailred's types of friendship,
see Fiske, Friendsand Friendship,p. 18/36; see R. Paine, "AnthropologicalApproaches
to Friendship", in Leyton (ed.), Compact, pp. 1-14, for a critique of this influential
approach to friendship.
16 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 118

More useful for our purposes is the anthropologist's distinction

between emotional friendship, instrumental friendship70 and the
"lop-sided friendship"71which we call patronage. "The distinction
between friendship and patronage is hard to draw",72writes P. A.
Brunt, particularlyin societies like Rome under the principate, where
to refer to someone as a client was insulting and to call him an amicus
was not;73 or modern Greece, where even commercial relations may
be envisaged in terms of an exchange of favours among friends.74 It
seems clear that the pure type of emotional friendship practised, for
example, among GuatemalanIndians, where an exclusive pair-bond
is formed and broken by jealousy as a distinctive stage on the way
from childhood to adulthood,75 is not characteristic of Byzantine
friendship. This is not to say that Byzantines did not use their
emotions in their relations of friendship or couch their expressions
of friendship in emotional terms, but it is arguable that instrumental
friendship and patronage were more characteristic.
"Friendship", wrote Campbell, again of the Sarakatsanaioi,"be-
gins when one man accepts a favour from another".76This seems
very much in keeping with the concept of practicalfriendship exam-
ined above. But we should not be surprisedto observe an instrumental
friendship couched in the most idealistic terms of classical friendship-
thinking: it is common in the Mediterraneanfor a person who does
a favour to assert that they need no return, and it is insulting to
suggest otherwise.77 In republican Rome Cicero insisted on the
highest standards of philosophical friendship, but a recent study
identifies the fundamentally instrumental nature of Roman friend-
ship, and indeed suggests that the Romans could hardly conceive of
70 See E. R.
Wolf, "Kinship, Friendship and Patron-Client Relations in Complex
Societies", in M. Banton (ed.), The Social Anthropologyof ComplexSocieties(London,
1966), pp. 1-22; R. Reina, "Patterns of Friendship in a Guatemalan Community",
Amer. Anthropologist,Ixi (1969), pp. 44-50; Cohen, "Patterns of Friendship". See R.
Paine, "In Search of Friendship", Man, new ser., iv (1969), p. 505, for a blurring of
the categories: "Is not all friendship ultimately instrumental?".
71
J. Pitt-Rivers, The People of the Sierra (London, 1954), p. 140.
72 P. A.
Brunt, review of R. P. Saller, Personal Patronageunderthe Early Empire
(Cambridge, 1982), TimesLit. Suppl., 19 Nov. 1982, p. 1276.
73 See the admirable analysis of Saller, Personal Patronage, pp. 8-11.
74 Du Boulay, Portrait of a GreekMountain Village, pp. 218-20; Campbell, Honour,

Family and Patronage, pp. 254 ff.

75 Reina, "Patterns of Friendship", pp. 45-9.
76 Campbell, Honour, Family and Patronage, p. 230; cf. Pitt-Rivers, People of the
Sierra, pp. 138 ff.
77 Campbell, Honour,Family and Patronage,p. 230; Pitt-Rivers, Peopleof theSierra,
pp. 138-9.
 BYZANTIUM: A FRIENDLY SOCIETY? 17

friendship without reciprocal exchange.78And it has been observed,

particularly with respect to patronage, that a relationship which
involves an emotional hold or shared ideals can expect more stability
and enduring reciprocity.79 In other words, it would work better.
A convenient distinction between instrumental friendship and
patronage involves the concept of symmetry. Both instrumental
friendship and patronage involve the reciprocal exchange of goods
and services, both involve a personal relationship of some duration,
but patronage also demands that the two parties are of unequal status
and offer different kinds of goods and services in the exchange.80 In
some societies the distinction between equals and unequals is clear:
Campbell observes that a Sarakatsanclient is described as o anthropos
mou, whereas a villager is o philos mou.81 In Byzantium, although
both words are used, for example by Kekaumenos,82the distinctions
are much harder to grasp. But when John Kamateros complains
about friends because they deprive you of your property, that you
waste all your substance on your friends and that those with friends
deserve our pity, we may well be over the borderlineinto patronage.83

78
Sailer, Personal Patronage, pp. 1-15. Cicero, De amicitia, VIII.26-8, discards
Aristotle's subtype of utility, though in De finibus, I.xx, he accepts the pleasure
principle; George Huxley points out that the importance of guest friendship in Greek
society indicates that they could conceive of friendship without reciprocal exchange.
For interesting insights suggesting that, while in one sense the lack of reciprocity
defuses the potential hostility of the stranger, in another there is an exchange of honour
and complementarity which is its own kind of reciprocity, see J. Pitt-Rivers, "The
Stranger, the Guest and the Hostile Host: Introduction to the Laws of Hospitality",
in J. Peristiany (ed.), Contributionsto MediterraneanSociology(Paris and The Hague,
1968); AnthropologicalQuart., xlvii (1974). For a study which persuasively views
reciprocity as the core of xenia (which in Ancient Greek society is seen as an equivalent
of compadrazgo), see now G. Herman, Ritualized Friendship and the Greek City
(Cambridge, 1987), esp. p. 121: "On the other hand, expectations of reciprocity-
whether immediate or delayed, whether in goods or in services - were built into
almost every single utterance or gesture connected with the institution".
79
On affect, see Wolf, "Kinship, Friendship and Patron-Client Relations", p. 13;
Pitt-Rivers, People of the Sierra, pp. 139-40; and the forthcoming study of Mary Beard
on friendship in Cicero.
80 On reciprocity, see particularly J. Pitt-Rivers, International
Encyclopaediaof the
Social Sciences (New York, 1968), s.v. pseudo-kinship. On asymmetry, see Wolf,
"Kinship, Friendship and Patron-Client Relations", pp. 16 ff.
81
Campbell, Honour, Family and Patronage, p. 233: "man" as against "friend".
82
Notably at #96, p. 40. The use of anthropoiin this passage underlines their
dependent status. See Verpeaux, "Oikeioi", for a discussion of the word in the late
Byzantine period; N. Oikonomides, A Collection of Dated Byzantine Lead Seals
(Washington, 1986), pp. 91,93, 100, for personal seals belonging to persons describing
themselves as anthropoiof the emperor.
83 John Kamateros,
Eisagoge eis Astronomias,1651, 1671-2, ed. L. Weigl (Leipzig
and Berlin, 1908), pp. 52-3.
18 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 118
Psellos tells us that a man who is aprostateutos(lacking a lord/
protector) is a poor man because he has no influential friends. What
influential friends can do is also clear from Psellos: they recommend
a prelate or urge the employment of a notariosor the lightening of a
tax burden on a friend.84 Symeon the New Theologian gives the
game away completely:
Who has never preferred a friend over one more worthy? Who does not strive to
nominate as bishops his friends in order to receive all that will come to him? Who
has never consecrated a bishop because of a request from those of the world, rulers,
friends, the rich and the powerful?85

And Psellos shows how status grows through patronage. Writing to

Basil Maleses, he asks: "Is there a man happier than you, Maleses?
See how you receive from me such requests and supplications as you
would not have dreamt of'.86 This surely is patronage.
And so philos can mean ally, supporter, spy, backer, useful friend,
patron and client. But all were recognizable as participants in a
single relationship, heavily instrumentaland with its own ceremonial.
Friends ate, drank and talked together, stayed in each other's houses,
wrote letters and sent gifts to one another,87and undertookobligations
of ritual kinship with one another.88
And beyond this widely practised ceremonial behaviour, for those
who chose to use it, was the rhetoricallyformulatedlanguageof letter-
friendship, to be used for states and churches as much as for bonds
of personal friendship. The range ofphilia is truly great: as Kazhdan
puts it, "The notion of philia was complicated in eleventh-century
Byzantium: it involved elements both from the classical literaryideal
84 Michael
Psellos, ep. K-D. 69, ed. F. Kurtz and K. Drexl, in Michaelis Pselli
scriptaminora, ii (Milan, 1941), p. 154.
85
Symeon the New Theologian, Hymn 58.171-81, iii, pp. 290-2.
86 Michael
Psellos, ep. K-D.132, p. 154.
87 Cf. the criteria in
J. P. Sutcliffe and B. D. Crabbe, "Incidence and Degrees of
Friendship in Urban and Rural Areas", Social Forces, xlii (1963), p. 61.
88 Here Kekaumenos's second story about the strategosand the toparchis significant

(#74, pp. 27-8). This time each is determined to ensnare the other, each makes an
offer of friendship accompanied by the appropriategift. To gain a further advantage
in maintaining the fiction of friendship, the strategos offers to sponsor the toparch's
son in baptism; seeing his opportunity the toparch invites him to his house for the
christening. The strategos of course is far too fly and they agree to meet on the borders
of Byzantine territory. Each turns up having laid his ambush. Here we see the
ceremonial of friendship exploited for temporarymilitary advantage, but the ceremony
was necessary for the fiction to convince. And perhaps this is the reason, as much as
the concept of the Family of Kings, that the emperor baptizes foreign princes on their
conversion.
 BYZANTIUM: A FRIENDLY SOCIETY? 19
of friendship and the harsh world of reality, where friends were allies
and supporters as much as kindred spirits".89
So in the light of this remark, the following tentative observations
on Byzantine friendship can be offered: 1) Friendship was a wide-
spread and valued (as well as feared) social glue in Byzantium,
perhaps not as central to society as kinship, but a useful parallelnone
the less. 2) Friendships and relationships regarded as friendships
formed a vast spectrum, but in general they were expected to work
to the benefit of the friends, they all had access to a ceremonial of
philia and, among the literati, to an inherited literary vocabulary.
3) (an even more tentative observation) Despite the reassessment
which I have offered of the testimony of Symeon the New Theologian
and Kekaumenos on philia, it may not be fortuitous that it is on these
eleventh-century sources that Kazhdan bases his view. The sudden
rash of discussion of friendship in the eleventh and twelfth centuries
may be some indicator that friendships were seen as not working or,
on the contrary, as vrorking too well. It is easy to imagine why, in
the context of remarkablesocial mobility in the eleventh century, the
philophiloiof Psellos should have exploited the relationship to the full
and why, in the dynastic jockeyings which preceded the inception of
"clan" government under Alexios, friends might seem irrelevant.90
These observations do not take us as far as we would wish. First,
while some kind of patternis clear, it is not clear that firm conclusions
can yet be drawn, and whole areas of friendship in Byzantium are as
yet uncharted: were there drinking-clubs in Byzantium like those in
early Russia or comrades in arms like chivalric Europe? Is it possible
to read back into Byzantium the relationshipsof spiritualbrotherhood
that appear in the folk-songs and clearly flourished under the Tourko-
kratia (Turkish occupation)? How about village friendships and the
friendships of women? And how about the origins of the koumbaros
relationship?91
89 Kazhdan,
People and Power in Byzantium, p. 28.
90 See the collected wisdom of Travaux et Memoires, vi
(1976), esp. articles by
Ahrweiler, Svoronos, Morrisson and Oikonomides; P. Lemerle, Cinq etudessur le xie
siecle byzantin (Paris, 1978). And note the role of friendship as ideology among new
elites generally: "a means of expressing their new and special status; friendships
between members of rising economically superior classes are critical in differentiating
those members from lower strata. Friendship networks with people of the same status
are the main means of confirming this status": Brain, Friends and Lovers, p. 254.
91 For drinking-clubs, see R. E. F. Smith and D. Christian, Bread and Salt: A
SocialandEconomic
Historyof FoodandDrinkin Russia(Cambridge,1984),ch. 3,
pp. 74-105, esp. pp. 79-85; for comrades in arms, see Amis andAmiloun, ed. M. Leach
(Early English Text Soc., London, 1937); Brain, Friendsand Lovers, pp. 27 ff. Neither
(cont. on p. 20)
20 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 118

Secondly, until these observations can be rooted firmly over the

whole time-span of the Byzantine empire, their validity is limited.
The eleventh century may well be a turning-point, but "there were
different times and different groups and accordingly different atti-
tudes towards philia".92
Thirdly, our comprehension of Byzantine friendship will necess-
arily be superficial until we understand thoroughly the workings of
patronage in Byzantine, and particularlyin middle and later Byzan-
tine, society. Despite all the work of the past fifty years on the
Byzantine aristocracy and Byzantine feudalism, our knowledge of
relative social status is patchy in the extreme,93 and this knowledge
is a prerequisite for detection of asymmetricalrelationships. It is easy
to spot candidates for clientage or patronage:the many in the fourth-
century writings of Libanios and Symmachos; Basil and the widow
Danelis in the ninth century; the close relationship of Eustathios
Boilas (will dated 1059) and his doux even after their land dispute.94
But it is quite a different matter to analyse systematically all such
links which appear in the sources.
(n. 91 cont.)
of the recent pioneering studies of Byzantine women (A. Laiou, "The Role of Women
in Byzantine Society", Jahrbuchfur osterreichischen byzantinistischenGesellschaft,xxxi
(1981), pp. 233-60; J. Herrin, "In Search of Byzantine Women: Three Avenues of
Approach", in A. Cameronand A. Kuhrt (eds.), Imagesof WomeninAntiquity(London
and Canberra, 1983), pp. 167-89) considers the question. One might consider this par
for the course: cf. G. B. Ladner in his introduction to Fiske, "Survival and Develop-
ment of the Ancient Concept of Friendship": "The sources tell us surprisingly little
about friendships between nuns or other women"; and C. Du Bois, "The Gratuitous
Act: An Introduction to the Comparative Study of Friendship Patterns", in Leyton
(ed.), Compact, p. 27: "It is noteworthy how consistently all types of friendship . . .
are found to be both empirically and normatively more significant for men than for
women"; but Judith Herrin tells me that there is considerable hagiographic material
so far unnoticed on the friendship of women. And for the koumbarosrelationship, see
n. 25.
92 Private communication of A. P. Kazhdan.
93
The literature is vast. G. Ostrogorsky, Pour l'histoirede la feodalitc byzantine
(Brussels, 1954); Z. V. Udal'cova, "K voprosy o genezise feodalizmav. Vizantii" [On
the Question of the Genesis of Feudalism in Byzantium], Vizantijskieocerki(Moscow,
1971); E. Patlagean, " 'Economie paysanne'et 'feodalite byzantine' ", AnnalesE.S.C.,
xxx (1975), pp. 1371-96, are highlights. One of the few failings of Angold (ed.),
Byzantine Aristocracyis that it fails to grasp this nettle. See, however, Magdalino,
"Oikos", following G. Weiss, Johannes KantakuzenosAristokraat,Staatsman, Kaiser
und Monch in der Gesellschaftsentwicklung von Byzanz im 14. Jahrhundert(Wiesbaden,
1969) (impressive on the following of Kantakuzenos), in a radically new approach.
94 The early Byzantine examples from the sources can be paralleledby archaeological
evidence; Simon Ellis points out that the large audience chambers of early Byzantine
private houses do not outlive the death of the old aristocracy.For Basil and the widow,
see Theophanes Continuatus, v.11, ed. I. Bekker (C.S.H.B., Bonn, 1838), pp. 226
ff.; for Eustathios Boilas, see his will, in Lemerle, Cinq etudes, pp. 20 ff.; and S.
Vryonis, "The Will of a Provincial Magnate, Eustathios Boilas (1059)", Dumbarton
Oaks Papers, xi (1957), pp. 264-6, 272.
 BYZANTIUM: A FRIENDLY SOCIETY? 21

Finally, it is not at all clear that we are as yet methodologically

equipped for such an analysis. It is possible to make some progress
towards devising techniques for detecting relationships between By-
zantine writers and their associates. In certain periods (the twelfth
and the fourteenth centuries)95there is a sufficient amount of literary
and rhetorical evidence, and literary society seems close-knit enough
for us to be able to reconstruct a partial nexus of social relationships.
Once the material has been collected and reduced to diagrammatic
form, various questions may be asked of it.
First,96 we need to know quite simply who knew whom. Sec-
ondly,97 we need to define types of relationship and multiplexity: to
distinguish links of kinship from those of teaching, those of spiritual
parentage from literary parentage, instrumental friendship from per-
sonal patronage. Once we have isolated patronage relationships98we
need to examine how in any given case they were made to work: for
example, it is possible to analyse Theophylact of Ochrid's handling
of the case of the episcopal village of Ekklesiai.99 And finally, we
need to assess the very tricky question of intimacy, an indicator of
the qualitative nature of a relationship.100
These questions are faced also by social anthropologists working
on networks,101and an application of their methods has shown some
profit.102The biggest problem is that of the nature of the sources;
95 In contrast to, say, the eleventh century. For the twelfth, see my "Theophylact
through his Letters", fig. II, pp. 814-47, which I hope to expand into a book on
Comnneneliterary society; for the fourteenth, the groundwork has been done by
Sevcenko, "Society and Intellectual Life in the Fourteenth Century".
96 Cf. J. Boissevain, Friends of Friends: Networks, Manipulators and Coalitions

(Oxford, 1974), fig. 2.1, p. 26.

97 Ibid., fig. 2.2, p. 29.
98 Ibid.,
fig. 2.5, p. 36.
99 See my "Theophylact through his Letters", Section III, ch. 4, pp. 540-5 and
my paper to the Twentieth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, March 1986,
"Patronage in Action: The Problems of an Eleventh-Century Bishop", in R. Morris
(ed.), Church and People in Byzantium, forthcoming. I hope to publish shortly a
methodological study on detection of relationships in twelfth-century literary texts.
100Cf. Boissevain, Friends of Friends, fig. 2.10, p. 47; E. Bott, Family and Social
Network (London, 1957), pp. 58-9: "the analysis of social networks is only a first step.
It will be necessary to define degrees of intimacy and obligation of the various
relationships".
101See, as well as Boissevain, Friends of Friends, J. Boissevain and J. C. Mitchell,
(eds.), Network Analysis: Studies in Human Interaction(The Hague and Paris, 1973);
J. C. Mitchell (ed.), Social Networks in Urban Situations (Manchester, 1969); M.
Banton (ed.), The Social Anthropologyof ComplexSocieties (A.S.A. Monographs, iv,
London, 1966). S. Leinhardt, Social Networks: A DevelopingParadigm (New York,
1977) is a useful reader.
102 See my forthcoming
"Patronage in Action", for a study of the use of network
in a village in eleventh-century Macedonia; my The Lettersof Theophylactof Ochrid:
Text and Context in Byzantium and Bulgaria, c. 1100 (Birmingham Byzantine Series,
(cont. on p. 22)
22 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 118

our records cannot measure up to field notebooks. Not all of our

sources are of equal value; of middle Byzantine genres103by far the
most useful is the letter. It brings, of course, its own problems -
the illusory charge of intimacy the genre carries with it104 - and not
every Byzantine intellectual has left a letter-collection. But like no
other source a letter-collection can show up like a stain on a micro-
scope slide the social and ceremonial relations of individuals. It is
true that this approach, while particularly useful for analysis of
literary society, throws us back among just that section of society we
have been at pains to avoid. But perhaps we cannot afford such
snobbery: if we accept that writers occupied many positions in
society105and adopt the methods of Kazhdan in what he calls "social
localization"106we may be able to use their evidence none the less.
And to exclude all literary evidence is an impossibility in the study
of Byzantium. On the contrary, it is the student who learns to
penetrate the language and ceremonial of friendship and patronage
who will reach the reality of philia in Byzantium.107
Given this importance of the literary stratum of Byzantine friend-
ship, we should return to our starting-point and ask again why we
have no De spiritualiamicitia in twelfth-century Byzantium. First of
(n. 102 cont.)
ii, London, forthcoming), for a study of one man's patronage network; and (in
progress) a complete network analysis of twelfth-century literary society. This present
article is a necessary methodological preliminary to these studies.
103 Pace Kazhdan and Franklin, Studieson ByzantineLiterature,p. viii, "an author-
even a Byzantine author - deserves to be regarded as an entity, not to be torn to
pieces in the interests of proving the eternal stability of genres", the study of genres
is an essential stage in the decoding of the development of Byzantine rhetorical
literature.
104 Cf. Morey and Brooke, GilbertFoliot and his Letters,p. 13: "A kindly, diplomatic
and charitable man like Peter the Venerable seems to be on terms of close friendship
with everyone in Christendom".
105 A. P. Kazhdan, "Der Mensch in der byzantinischen Literaturgeschichte",

Jahrbuchfur osterreischischen byzantinistischenGesellschaft,xxviii (1979), p. 12; Kazh-

dan, People and Power in Byzantium, pp. 101-3; M. E. Mullett, "Aristocracy and
Patronage in the Literary Circles of Comnenian Constantinople", in Angold (ed.),
Byzantine Aristocracy,pp. 184-7.
106 Kazhdan and Franklin, Studies on Byzantine Literature,p. viii. For a devastat-

ingly thorough example of the technique in action, see "The Social Views of Michael
Attaleiates", ibid., pp. 23-86.
107 I am aware of the difficulties but also of the responsibility; see J. Waterbury,
"An Attempt to Put Patrons and Clients in their Place", in Gellner and Waterbury
(eds.), Patronsand Clients, p. 341: "For the concept of patronageto become something
more than a residual category or a phenomenon so ubiquitous as to deprive it of any
analytic utility, it is important to join the examination of any of its discrete manifes-
tations with that of the general politico-economic context in which it is formed. This
context can 'explain' the characteristicsof patronageratherthan the other way round".
 BYZANTIUM: A FRIENDLY SOCIETY? 23
all, the Greek tradition is more uncompromising on this issue than
the Latin. St. Basil said:
There is but one escape from all this: separation from the world altogether. But
withdrawal from the world does not mean bodily removal from it, but the severance
of the soul from sympathy with the body and the giving up of city, home, personal
possessions, love of friends, property, means of subsistence, business, social relations
and knowledge derived from human teaching, and it also means the readiness to
receive in one's heart the impressions engendered there by divine instruction.108
For Basil as for Symeon the New Theologian friendship was a pillar
of the world. For Cassian, for Anselm and for Ailred a higher,
spiritual kind of friendship was a real possibility. But the Byzantines
were aware of the dangers of monastic friendships.109John Moschos
conveys the inconvenience and atmosphere which might be created
by a tiff between two gerontes in a community,10 and Symeon
indulges himself in a description of "loving brothers", a satireworthy
of Eustathios of Thessalonike or John Tzetzes:111 they invite each
other to their cells, eat a little, drink a little, miss an office, drink a
little more, gossip a little more until they are quite incapable of
penitence and have probably slandered half the monastery.112Sy-
meon's own relationships with Symeon the Studite and with Niketas
Stethatos are not simply an exclusive form of friendship; they are
108
Basil, ep. 2, ed. and trans. R. J. Deferrari (Cambridge, Mass., and London,
1961), i, pp. 10-11; cf. Luke xiv.26, xviii.29. For a contrary interpretation which
derives Cassian's openness to monastic friendship from Evagrius and Basil, see Fiske,
Friends and Friendship, pp. 3/1-2; A. M. Fiske, "The Survival and Development of
the Ancient Concept of Friendship in the Early Middle Ages", Amer.BenedictineRev.,
xif (1961), pp. 190-1.
109The Rule of St. Benedict is silent on this danger, although D. Roby, Aelred of
Rievaulx: Spiritual Friendship(Cistercian Fathers, v, Kalamazoo, 1977), p. 40, argues
that there are indications of a later concern. On the dangers of "particularfriendships",
see B. P. McGuire, "Monastic Friendship and Toleration in Twelfth-Century Cister-
cian Life", in W. J. Sheils (ed.), Monks, Hermitsand the Ascetic Tradition(Studies in
Church History, xxii, London, 1985), pp. 147-60, esp. pp. 148-50, in which, as well
as homosexuality and cliques, he singles out the bonds of the world as causes of that
concern. Many closed societies are similarly wary of personal friendships: see V.
Aubert and 0. Arner, "On the Social Structure of the Ship", Acta Sociologica, iii
(1958), pp. 203 ff.; S. N. Eisenstadt and L. Roniger, Patrons, Clients and Friends:
InterpersonalRelations and the Structure of Trust in Society (Themes in the Social
Sciences, Cambridge, 1984), pp. 286-8.
110Literally "old men", but in standard use for monks, like adelphos,brother: see
R. Maisano, "Sull'uso del termine adelphos nel Prato di Giovanni Mosco", Koinonia,
vi (1982), pp. 147-54. John Moschos, Pratum spirituale,#119 (P.G., lxxxvii.3, Paris,
1863), cols. 3109-12.
11 On anti-clerical satire in the twelfth century, see P. Magdalino, "The Byzantine
Saint in the Twelfth Century", in S. Hackel (ed.), The Byzantine Saint (Studies
Supplementary to Sobornost, v, London, 1981), pp. 51-66.
112
Symeon the New Theologian, Catechesis 4, Peri metanoiaskai katanyxeos,ed.
B. Krivocheine, i (Sources chretiennes, xcvi, Paris, 1963), pp. 334-40.
24 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 118

quite distinct in that the son is totally subordinate to the spiritual

father113and charming Eadmer-like relationships would only have
been a distraction.
But there is one last reason for the difference between Rievaulx
and St. Mamas (or Stoudios) which I think is quite clear in Symeon's
writings. Friendship was too important in the world to be the excited
discovery of a scholarly monastery. It is not a matter of the reading
of Cicero or the reception of Plato and Aristotle, but that friendship
fulfilled a functional role in eastern society for which there was no
place in the west with its formal feudal ties.114Colin Morris makes
a very good case for the political significance of friendship in the
reform movement of the twelfth century,115but this is trivial beside
the part played by friendship in Byzantium. There friendship filled
a gap and gave a "tolerableemotional casing"116 to functionalrelation-
ships spun from necessity, competition and insecurity.
The Queen's Universityof Belfast M. E. Mullett

113 On the nature of the

relationship of spiritual father to spiritual son, see I.
Hausherr, Directionspirituelleen orientautrefois(Orientalia ChristianaAnalecta, cxliv,
Rome, 1955); R. Morris, "The Political Saint of the Eleventh Century", in Hackel
(ed.), Byzantine Saint, pp. 43-50; Rev. H. J. M. Turner, "Spiritual Fatherhood in
Symeon the New Theologian" (Univ. of Manchester Ph.D. thesis, 1985).
114 But see J. Bossy, Christianityin the West, 1400-1700 (Oxford, 1985), esp. ch. 2,
for a perceptive treatment of the part played by friendship and ritual kinship in the
traditional Christianity of late medieval western society.
115 Morris, Discoveryof the Individual, pp. 103-4; I. S. Robinson, "The Friendship
Network of Gregory VII", History, lxiii (1978), pp. 1-22.
116
Wolf, "Kinship, Friendship and Patron-Client Relations", p. 13.