Introduction Mobility and migration in the early medieval Mediterranean

Abstract

Historians have long acknowledged that mobility is a structuring feature of all societies, quite independent of large-scale migrations. In recent decades, increased attention to global and transcultural history has resulted in a greater interest in the history of networks and entanglements that hold regions and people together, whether across large distances or on a smaller scale. It is the mobility of people, objects, texts and ideas that forms the basis for such connections. While there have been seminal and comprehensive studies on these issues for the medieval west, their exploration for medieval Byzantium has only relatively recently begun to gain momentum.

Vienna, with its established tradition of Byzantine scholarship at the University and the Austrian Academy of Sciences, has been in the forefront of this development. This is due, not least, to the long-standing research on the historical geography of the core regions of the empire pioneered by Johannes Koder in the context of the Tabula Imperii Byzantini, 1 and also thanks to the research of Johannes Preiser-Kapeller on historical network analysis and histories of entanglements and connectivities. 2 The 2015 Wittgenstein-Award of the Austrian Science Fund made it possible to explore ‘Mobility, Microstructures and Personal Agency’ with a large team of scholars, with many publications currently in the pipeline. 3 For Late Antiquity, similar lines of enquiry are being pursued in Tübingen, at the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) Research Group ‘Migration und Mobilität in Spätantike und Frühmittelalter’. 4 These two research hubs have engaged in fruitful dialogue, of which the present volume is one manifestation.

When the editorial board of Early Medieval Europe approached me with the invitation to deliver the EME Lecture at the 2021 International Medieval Congress in Leeds, this was an obvious opportunity to build on this dialogue in order to complement the Vienna expertise on the long history of Byzantium with the Tübingen expertise on Late Antiquity, both Greek and Latin. The five papers assembled here investigate one common theme: Mobility in Byzantium – Questioning the Narratives.

The first paper, ‘Mobility and Migration in Byzantium: Who Gets to Tell the Story?’, is mine and draws on the insights that were gained from the Vienna team’s work on the creation of Mobility and Migration in Byzantium: A Sourcebook. The aim of that book is to represent the broadest possible range of sources: from documentary and legal texts to historical narratives, poetry and fictional representations. The authors of these texts often pursued their own agenda, instrumentalizing their depiction of mobility and migration for their own purposes beyond the event at hand. Authorial focus, along with the requirements of the chosen literary genre, I argue, is also the reason for the different scales of actors that appear in these texts, whether large blurry masses of nameless people, smaller groups with a specific profile, or individuals depicted in high relief.

In ‘Qualifying Mediterranean Connectivity: Byzantium and the Franks during the Seventh Century’, Steffen Patzold and Mischa Meier take aim at the argument of scholars who in recent years have claimed that there was a strong degree of cohesion between the Latin west and the Greek east in the seventh century, especially with regard to economic activities and theological disputes. Revisiting the relevant sources with a critical eye and dismissing some of them as irrelevant or anachronistic, Patzold and Meier emphasize the need to avoid generalizations and blanket statements when the only evidence that holds up under their scrutiny consists of attestations of individual instances.

The next three contributions are by researchers affiliated with the Vienna project mentioned above. Paraskevi Sykopetritou (‘Mobility in Seventh-Century Byzantium: Analysing Emperor Heraclius’ Political Ideology and Propaganda’) also focuses on the seventh century, specifically on Emperor Heraclius. Using mobility as a lens and as a magnifying glass, she elucidates how specific moments in the long and sometimes contested reign of this emperor – the first after many centuries who left the capital to lead the troops on a military campaign against the Sasanians – could be used to convey the image of a perfect monarch, divinely ordained to occupy this role in imitation of biblical models.

Grigory Simeonov (‘In Enemy Hands: The Byzantine Experience of Captivity in the Seventh to Tenth Centuries’) assembles a wide array of sources, both Greek and Arabic, that report on the fate of those who were captured in the context of warfare: unquestionably the harshest form of forced mobility. He shows how different authors represent different aspects of captivity, and what role the social class and gender of the captives play in their treatment while in enemy hands.

The final contribution, by Christodoulos Papavarnavas (‘Saints’ Mobility and Confinement: Deconstructing Byzantine Stories of (Fe)male Ascetics and Monastics’), offers a close reading of two hagiographical narratives, the Life of Mary of Egypt and the Life of Matrona of Perge. The former escapes her sinful life by roaming the desert alone; the latter runs away from her repressive husband in Constantinople, seeking refuge in different urban monasteries. Yet for both of them, mobility has a role that is equally important as confinement for their attainment of sanctity, an aspect that Byzantine hagiographers appreciated, emphasized and employed as a structuring element for their narratives.

Taken together, these articles make fresh contributions to the study of mobility in Late Antiquity and Byzantium by drawing attention to the fact that our written sources are, in the final analysis, literary constructs, and by offering examples of how they may be approached. What emerges is a large array of different narratives that acquire more and richer layers of meaning through careful analysis of their literary dimension. Only through a full understanding of these narratives can historians investigate the importance and role of mobility and migration in the early medieval Byzantine world.