Medieval Asia Minor

The Register of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, which contains many valuable documents of the period 1315-1402, is one of the most important sources for the (church) history of this time of renewed Muslim expansion at Byzantium's cost. In this paper it will be analyzed how Islam is being described in those documents in regard to the terminology and the framework of traditional Byzantine polemics. A further topic is the reaction of the Byzantine laymen but also of the lower and high clerics to the Islamic expansion - whether in form of confrontation, collaboration, or even conversion. (The slides for the presentation of the paper are in the talks section of my academia.edu-website).

This paper deals with the diplomatic relations between the Armenian aristocracy (as a whole and as individuals respectively) and the most important neighboring Christian monarch, the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Emperor. The study concentrates on the period from the partition of Greater Armenia (387 AD) between Rome and Persia and the end of the Arsacid rule until the renewal of the Armenian monarchy under the Bagratids. During these centuries characterized by the absence of an Armenian King, foreign powers came to terms on the one hand with individual powerful noblemen, who were appointed to represent the entire Armenia, bearing the title of marzpan, sparapet, patrik and others, while on the other hand they negotiated directly with various aristocratic houses (as they did in former times). Based on contemporaneous Armenian, Greek, and other sources the paper aims to analyze the contents of the covenants between Armenian aristocrats and Byzantine Emperors (declaration of allegiance, bestowal of titles, military assistance, etc.), the diplomatic means and customs (oath, presents, charters – the “diplomatics of diplomacy”), the sources’ terminology and the interpretation of the relations between the Emperor and the Armenian aristocracy given by the sources. The description of these relations in the Armenian sources is consequently compared to the depiction of those of the Armenian aristocrats’ to the Sasanian Great King and the Arab Caliph. In that way, a “Byzantinocentric” interpretation of Armenia’s foreign relations during this period should be avoided, while at the same time efforts are made to detect specific elements of the Armeno-Byzantine political relations in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages.