The evidence of ‘barbarian’ potentates’ interest in forging
marriageties with ladies of the imperial Byzantine house or, more generally, with court ladies in the generations spanning the year 1000 is fairly full in comparison with that for preceding eras. Allowance must, of course, be made for the vagaries of source survival and it is likely that numerous earlier negotiations concerning marriage-ties or formal betrothals came to nothing and have left no trace in our extant sources. But for a stray allusion by Nicholas Mystikos we would be unaware of the betrothal of a daughter of Leo VI to Louis III of Provence.1 And the specific provision made by Constantine VII for coping with proposals of marriage to senior members of the imperial house from the ‘infidel and dishonourable peoples of the north’ implies that such requests had actually been made by the likes of the Rus, Hungarians and Khazars in the decades before c. 950.2 Nonetheless, the apparent constellation of negotiations and actual marriages in the generations that followed is not just a mirage conjured up by more abundant sources. The Greek and Latin narratives for the period are not, in fact, especially full and their limitations are hardly offset by the light which the Rus Primary Chronicle begins to cast from that time forth. 2 JONATHAN SHEPARD In many ways, the flurry of negotiations reflects the empire’s standing among neighbouring elites at the end of the first millennium. This owed much to the military offensives that imperial forces had sustained to a degree not seen for centuries. But our sketch will also present the cluster of marriage-ties around that time as a measure of change in the world around Byzantium. New political formations were emerging and their leaders sought to define their status in apposition to older, well-established, seats of authority. Their quest for recognition and symbols of respect from the basileus was sometimes backed up by threats and outright hostilities. Moreover the marriages took place against a background of major internal rebellion. They reflect the brittleness of the imperial order at the very time of the expansion of Byzantium’s armed forces, spectacular territorial gains and renewed aura of triumphalism. At the same time Byzantium’s rich political culture and Christian aura appealed to new elites still finding their way to their own rituals of rulership, especially Christian overlordship. Byzantine notions of the heavenly benediction conferred upon progeny conceived ‘in the Purple’ seem to have fallen upon receptive ground beyond the empire’s borders.3 For those seeking to reserve hegemonial status for themselves and their offspring, visual symbols of authority that were at once imposing, readily recognizable and, in their lack of particular local or familial affiliations, ‘neutral’ were of the utmost political value. A lady ‘from the palace of the Augustus’, bringing with her ‘countless wealth in treasures’,4 was a status symbol in herself for a ruler eager to distinguish himself and his offspring from other members of his kin or nobility. The extent to which brides such as Theophano and Anna affected the political scenario and cultural life of their host countries specifically because they were ‘Byzantine’ is hard to evaluate. Even so, there are grounds for associating the presence of Theophano and Anna with certain cultural and religious developments in, respectively, the German-speaking and Rus lands. The princesses could act as catalysts for tendencies already under way, even when not delib- 3 See G. Dagron, “Nés dans la Pourpre”, TM 12 (1994), 130–7, 140–1; Liudprand of Cremona, Antapodosis, IV. 18, in Opera Omnia, ed. P. Chiesa, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis 156 (Turnhout, 1998), 107; W. Ohnsorge, “Das Mitkaisertum in der abendländischen Geschichte des früheren Mittelalters”, repr. in his Abendland und Byzanz (Darmstadt, 1979), 271–2. 4 Vita Mahtildis antiquior, 15, ed. B. Schütte, Die Lebensbeschreibungen der Königin Mathilde, MGH SS in usum schol. 66 (Hanover, 1994), 140–1. MARRIAGES TOWARDS THE MILLENNIUM 3 erately bringing about change, and they may well have remained in close enough contact with the Byzantine palace to enjoy favoured access to its products.5 Their effect, direct or indirect, on their respective host cultures has perhaps been underestimated. The number of diplomatic exchanges about imperial or ‘courtly’ marriages recorded for the generation or so leading up to 1000 is greater than that recorded for earlier periods, but not strikingly so, while the quantity actually contracted is modest. Exchanges between Otto I and Nikephoros II began with Otto’s bid in 967 for the hand of a Porphyrogenita for his son, whom he had already designated heir and co-emperor, the twelve-year-old Otto II. The proposal presented by Otto’s Venetian envoy was followed by Liudprand’s journey to Constantinople to fetch the girl, bring about the marriage and thereby end the hostilities that had broken out in the meanwhile. 6 After the failure of Liudprand’s mission and another bout of military conflict in Southern Italy, a third embassy was sent by Otto in 970–1 to negotiate peace and at the same time reach a marriageagreement. The envoys, among whom Liudprand himself may well have figured, returned together with a bride for Otto II. She was ‘not the maiden sought after’, that is, a Porphyrogenita, but Theophano Skleraina, a niece-by-marriage of the newly acceded emperor, John Tzimiskes.7 Some sixteen years later, the newly installed king of the 5 A significant, albeit not precise, analogy is provided by Maria Lekapena, who brought many household goods with her to the Bulgarian court, and who reportedly ‘often’ returned to Constantinople in the early years of her marriage: Theophanes Continuatus, ed. I. Bekker (Bonn, 1838), 422; J. Shepard, “A Marriage too Far? Maria Lekapena and Peter of Bulgaria”, in A. Davids (ed.), The Empress Theophano. Byzantium and the West at the Turn of the First Millennium (Cambridge, 1995), 135. 6 Liudprand has Nikephoros say that ‘we were friends and were thinking to enter into an indissoluble partnership (societas) by means of a marriage-tie’, that is, the marriage between the Porphyrogenita and Otto II agreed with Dominicus: Legatio, 6, 7, 31, 36, in Opera Omnia, ed. Chiesa (above, n. 3) (Turnhout, 1998), 190, 200–01, 202. While highlighting the written restrictions upon his authority to negotiate, Liudprand indicates in verses that he had journeyed east ‘for love of peace’ ( pacis profectus amore): Legatio, 26, 35, 57, pp. 198, 202, 213, line 951. See also R. Macrides, “Dynastic Marriages and Political Kinship”, in J. Shepard and S. Franklin (eds.), Byzantine Diplomacy (Aldershot, 1992), 273–6; D. Nerlich, Diplomatische Gesandtschaften zwischen Ost- und Westkaisern 756–1002 (Bern, 1999), 58–9, 128, 299–300; W. Brandes, “Liudprand von Cremona (Legatio cap. 39–41)”, BZ 93 (2000), 437–9. 7 Thietmar of Merseburg, Chronicon, ed. R. Holtzmann, MGH SS, n.s. 9 (Berlin, 1935), 56. Liudprand’s participation in the third embassy was considered likely by K. Leyser, “Ends and Means in Liudprand of Cremona”, in J. Howard-Johnston (ed.), Byzantium and the West c. 850–c. 1200 (Amsterdam, 1988), 120–1. The ancestry of Theophano has been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt: see G. Wolf, “Wer 4 JONATHAN SHEPARD West Franks, Hugh Capet, had a letter directed to Basil II and Constantine VIII, requesting a ‘daughter of the holy empire’ for his only son, Robert, ‘himself, too, a king’, soon after Robert had been anointed as such in December 987.8 Around the same time, at the other end of Europe, Prince Vladimir of Rus was engaged in exchanges that culminated in his marriage to Anna Porphyrogenita and, presumably, his repudiation of Rogneda of Polotsk, earlier described by the Rus Primary Chronicle as having been taken to wife by him.9 Then, from the mid-990s, Otto III sent a total of three embassies in quest of a bride and, at last, the third embassy returned in the opening months of 1002, bringing a daughter of Constantine VIII Porphyrogenitus. 10 Unfortunately her intended bridegroom had died on January 23 or 24, 1002 and the Porphyrogenita ‘went back to her homeland with all her attendants’.11 At the lowlier level of regimes nominally subordinate to the empire, John Orseolo, the son of Doge Peter II of Venice, was married to Maria Argyropoulina, a member of a family well-connected with the court, in 1005–06. This marriage was contracted in response to pressure from the Byzantine emperors. Basil II and his brother are represented as speeding on the ‘day of union’ by arranging for the patriarch to conduct the wedding in a palace chapel and the two emperors played a prominent role in the wedding festivities. They placed golden crowns over the heads of bride and groom and led them to a hall where for three days they acted as ‘fellow banqueters at table’, eventually dismissing each guest with gifts.12 war Theophanu?”, in A. von Euw and P. Schreiner (eds.), Kaiserin Theophanu. Begegnung des Ostens und Westens um die Wende des ersten Jahrtausends, II (Cologne, 1991), 385–6; O. Kresten, “Byzantinistische Epilegomena zur Frage: wer war Theophano?”, ibid., 403–10; Nerlich, Gesandtschaften, 59–60, 302. 8 Gerbert d’Aurillac, Correspondance, ed. and trans. P. Riché and J.P. Callu, I (Paris, 1993), 268–71. 9 The Rus Primary Chronicle clearly represents Vladimir as initiating the proposal that he should marry the emperors’ sister, although the precise course of events is obscure: Povest’ Vremennykh Let, ed. V.P. Adrianova-Peretts and D.S. Likhachev (St Petersburg, 1996), 36, 37, 50; S. Franklin and J. Shepard, The Emergence of Rus 750–1200 (London, 1996), 161–3. 10 Nerlich, Gesandtschaften, 62–3, 303–05. 11 Landulph, Historia Mediolanensis, II. 18, ed. A. Cutolo, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, 4.2 (1942), 53; Nerlich, Gesandtschaften, 305. 12 John the Deacon, Cronaca Veneziana, in Cronache Veneziane Antichissime, ed. G. Monticolo (Rome, 1890), 167–8. Basil’s zeal for sealing this knot had much to do with the spiritual bonds with the Orseolos that Henry II had just tightened through sponsoring the confirmation of another of the Doge’s sons, who became his namesake: MARRIAGES TOWARDS THE MILLENNIUM 5 With the exception of the Venetian match and a bid to marry Basil and Constantine themselves to Bulgarian princesses at a time of crisis in 969,13 the initiative for all these matches came from outsiders and this is noteworthy in itself. For the rounds of marriage negotiations between Byzantium and major western leaders in the preceding two centuries give the impression that the first move came from the eastern emperor. One may highlight a few examples with the aid of Daniel Nerlich’s full and systematic study. In 765 Constantine V took the initiative in seeking Pippin’s daughter, Gisela, as the bride for his son and heir, Leo (IV), and subsequently it was Leo and Empress Irene who sought the hand of Charlemagne’s daughter, Rotruda, for their son, Constantine (VI).14 Something of a pattern emerges in the exchanges between the mid-ninth and the mid- tenth century, the period when Muslim sea-raids loosened Byzantium’s hold over the Central Mediterranean, while simultaneously impinging upon Frankish royal dominance even over the southern coastline of Francia. Several attempts were made by the basileus to secure by marital bonds a military alliance with a Frankish emperor or, in default of such an emperor, a potentate disposing of significant force majeure. The Muslims were the prime target of the intended operations, but there were occasions when a martial northern ally was of use in distracting or overawing Lombard princes ensconced in Salerno and Benevento. Once Sicily ceased to offer a safe base for Byzantine fleets and armed forces, there was need of counterweights against the Lombards. Their further incursions could make a mockery of the emperor’s residual claims to dominion in Italy. It is worth considering east-west exchanges between the mid- ninth and the mid-tenth century in slightly more detail. In 841–2 Theophilos reportedly ‘promised’ his daughter as bride for the son and heir of Emperor Lothar, Louis II.15 The rationale of his demarche to the K. Leyser, “The Tenth Century in Byzantine-Western Relationships”, in D. Baker (ed.), Relations between East and West in the Middle Ages (Edinburgh, 1973), 31–2. See also J.-F. Vannier, Familles byzantines. Les Argyroi (IX–XII siècles), Byzantina Sorbonensia 1 (Paris, 1975), 43–4. 13 See