ByzReview: Theophanes the Confessor

When the 9^th century Byzantine chronicler George the Synkellos died, having left his grand chronicle of world history incomplete, he bequeathed his books, his notes, and his mission to his friend and fellow holy-man, Theophanes the Confessor. Theophanes carried on George’s work, continuing the chronicle from the accession of Diocletian in the year 284 CE (AM 5777, Anno Mundi  (Year of the World)) down more or less to his own day, ending with the fall of the Byzantine-Roman emperor Michael I Rangabe in 813 CE (AM 6305). It was an immense undertaking, but Theophanes finished what the Synkellos had started, leaving behind one of the most incredible historical sources you could ever read.

                The chronicle of Theophanes covers some five centuries of history, showing the transformation of the Pagan Roman empire into a Christian one, the fall of Sassanian Persia and the rise of the Islamic Caliphate. Theophanes writes about events both political and ecclesiastical, with bishops and emperors looming large in the narrative. Wars, rebellions, plagues and earthquakes feature alongside holy synods and heresies. Being a straight-up continuation of the work of George the Synkellos, Theophanes starts his work with the accession of the Roman emperor Diocletian, and simply works forward from there.

                The beauty of Theophanes’ chronicle is that it demonstrates to us the fallacy of the ‘end’ of the Roman empire and the ‘beginning’ of the Byzantine empire. The disappearance of the empire in the west rather obscures the fact that the Roman empire, which was still just as powerful in the east as ever it had been, continued for a thousand years after the traditionally-accepted ‘Fall of Rome’. The Byzantine civilisation was an indisputable continuation of the ancient Greco-Roman world, proved by the fact that its origins cannot be satisfactorily be pinned down to any one moment in history. The chronicle of Theophanes the confessor takes us right through history from Ancient to Medieval, with no observable break or watershed moment. It’s simply a matter of perspective, and the perspective of the East is a much clearer one than that of the Dark-Age West.

                The historical periods covered by Theophanes can be broken down, according to my own arbitrary opinions, into about six categories:

Diocletian and the Constantinian family (284-363): In which the Roman empire is Christianised.

Valentinians and Theodosians (364-457): Christianity triumphs and the West crumbles.

Leo I, Zeno and Anastasios I (457-518): Fall of the West, wars with Persia and heresies.

Justinian and his successors (518-602): Persian Wars. Africa and Italy reconquered, Maurice’s campaigns.

The Herakleian Dynasty (602-717): The rise of the Islamic Caliphate and the loss of the empire.

The Isaurian Dynasty (717-813): Iconoclasm and the revival of the empire. Empress Eirene.

                When you look at it this way, it’s an awful lot of the world’s history covered in one book. Even if you don’t ever want to read the entirety of Theophanes (a decision for which I will not blame you at all), then you should at least familiarize yourself with this particular segment of world history. The events and developments that occurred during these centuries profoundly shaped the world as we know it. Go ahead and look on Wikipedia or something, like I did.

One of the most recognisable things about Theophanes the Confessor is his method of presentation, for rather than writing one continuous narrative as most ‘historians’ tend to, he instead goes about things in as methodical a way as can be – by writing about history one year at a time. He begins each entry in his chronicle with the number of the year itself – in the Alexandrian Anno Mundi style, in which the world began in about 5500 BCE – and then says briefly which Roman emperor is currently reigning, the regnal year of his (or her) reign, then the regnal year of the Persian ruler (later the Islamic Caliph), and followed by a short list of the regnal years of the various Christian bishops in the Roman empire. Then come the actual meat-and-potatoes of the entry, the writing of what happens in and around that particular year – this can range from a mere sentence, to several long paragraphs. The entry for Justinian’s 7th year, for instance, goes on for some twenty pages in the Mango and Scott edition. In essence, a typical entry from Theophanes (as translated by Cyril Mango and Roger Scott) will look something like this:

                “AM 6012 [AD 519/520]

                Year of the Divine Incarnation 512

                Justin, emperor of the Romans (9 years), 2nd year

                Kabades, emperor of the Persians (30 years), 25th year

                Hormisdas, bishop of Rome (10 years), 7th year

                John, bishop of Constantinople (2 years), 2nd year

                Helias, bishop of Jerusalem (23 years), 9th year

                Dioskoros, bishop of Alexandria (3 years), 3rd year

                Paul, bishop of Antioch (3 years), 1st year

In this year Vitalian was murdered by the Byzantines, who were furious with him because of the many people he had killed at the time of his uprising against Anastasios.

                On the death of John the Cappadocian, bishop of Constantinople, Epiphanios, who was a presbyter of the same church and a synkellos, was ordained on 25 February. Likewise on the death of Hormisdas of Rome, John succeeded to the bishopric.

                In the same year the Blue faction rioted, creating disturbances in all the cities and causing stonings and many murders. They even attacked the authorities. This evil disorder arose in Antioch and from there spread to all [other] cities and lasted for five years. They killed with their swords the Greens whom they encountered, going up and murdering even those who were hiding at home. The authorities did not dare impose penalties for the murders. This went on until the sixth year of the pious Justin.”

                                [Excerpt from Mango and Scott translation, 1997, pg.252-253]

                Interesting, I know. Theophanes is not the most literary of writers, as you can probably tell, simply presenting us with bland statements and facts about what was going on where and at what time. We get very little sense of the writer’s personality or opinions, other than that he was an Orthodox Roman. Generally he is at the mercy of his own sources, for pretty much the entire chronicle is a cut-and-paste compilation of other writers’ work – the most he will ever do is paraphrase some other historian, and assign a group of events to a particular year. As such, most of Theophanes’ chronicle supplies information than can still be found in the works of more authoritative and useful historians. This is with the exception of the last third of the book, which deals with the history of the Herakleian and Isaurian dynasties. For these two centuries very few other narrative sources exist, so if you’re keen on the rise of the Caliphate, Iconoclasm or the empress Eirene (who is amazing, by the way), then be prepared to thank Theophanes and his chronicle.

                But mayhaps we should be wary before we thank Theophanes himself. There is a certain amount of scholarly debate over how much work Theophanes himself actually put into the chronicle that bears his name. After all, he claims in his own preface that he was merely finishing the work started by George the Synkellos, and how much of this chronicle was actually written by George is a matter of argument. This is not an academic article, so I shall refrain from trying to contribute to this argument. All I will say, however, is that I think George the Synkellos was largely responsible for the creation of this chronicle, even if he may not have had an active hand in writing it – while it would not exist if Theophanes the Confessor hadn’t finished the work that George had started. George had a grand vision, while Theophanes brought the project to a completion and, as such, it now justifiably bears his name. What we ought to do is never forget that this is just one half of a vast work of universal history, created by a partnership between two Byzantine religious intellectuals who wrote a systematic account of world events from the mythological Creation to their own days in the aftermath of the Isaurian Iconoclasm. It was an impressive undertaking, and I have had the privilege of reading it in its entirety.

                Of all the Byzantine and broader European chronicles out there, the ultra-synoptic nature of Theophanes might make this particular source more easily accessible than others. Each year is laid out as clear and proper as can be, and thus you can track down individual rulers, events and oecumenical councils and find Theophanes’ take on the matter. Now however would be a good time to emphasise that inaccuracies in dating often creep into the work, so this particular primary source cannot be considered an absolute, perfect authority on the events and chronology it pertains to report. Yet despite this, as a grand history of the Roman empire in transformation, and of the Mediterranean in the first millennium, it is a most useful and wonderful thing. As an attempt by a couple of medieval minds to codify and organise history, it is even more remarkable. Anyone who has even a passing interest in Byzantium will find this book essential reading.

Bibliozantium 2

Theophanis: Chronographia. In two Volumes. J. Classen (ed.) Bonn (1839 and 1841)

Theophanis Chronographia. C. de Boor (ed). Leipzig (1883)

The Chronicle of Theophanes – Anni mundi 6095-6305 (A.D. 602-813). trans. H. Turtledove. Philadelphia. (1982)

The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor – Byzantine and Near Eastern History AD 284-813. trans. C. Mango and R. Scott. Oxford. (1997)

                                [A short explanation of this bibliography: The 1839 J. Classen edition is a full Greek-text version of the chronicle as prepared for the Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae, which has the advantage of being freely available on Google Books, but the disadvantage of being unreadable to anyone who cannot understand ancient Greek or Latin. There is a better edition, prepared a few decades later by Carl Gotthard de Boor, and likewise this is freely available on the internet but is only in Greek. The 1982 H. Turtledove edition is a partial translation of the Chronicle into English, covering only the last third of the chronicle (the years 602-813), while the 1997 Mango and Scott edition translates the entire text, from Diocletian to Michael I. The Mango and Scott edition is by far the best, being more complete, more scholarly and more recent, but it is much more difficult to get a hold of. Turtledove, while being criticised by Mango for being ‘highly inaccurate’, is at least cheaply available on Amazon and has footnotes which are less bewildering and more helpful for the newcomer].