Skylitzes

The Byzantine peasantry has been traditionally analyzed through documentary sources and material evidence. This study attempts to complement the existing scholarship on the peasantry by showing how a perception-based, socio-cultural angle can be provided through the utilization of Byzantine narrative sources from the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The peasant voice is completely absent from these sources and, therefore, must be reached through deduction, close-reading and literary analysis techniques. In addition to furnishing us with much direct information on the peasants’ lifestyle, their economic and legal interactions with different actors, as well as their utilization and victimization through military matters, these sources also highlight the elite, educated and also quite urban perception of the peasantry. These narratives contain a delicate blend of marginalizing the peasantry, while also praising and defending them due to the acknowledgement that they are vital in the maintenance of the empire. A strong case is made for the collective importance attributed to the peasantry, through their function as a vast manpower pool for the agrarian economy and military machine; yet, as individuals, they remain obscure and invisible. The relative homogeneity among the selected authors’ views concerning the peasantry, which is also mirrored and enforced by military doctrines, legal documents and imperial orders of the time, indicates that their individual views are part of a broader socio-cultural expression.

Brother-in-law of the sultan of the Great Seljuks Alp Arslan I (1059-1072), Erisgen-Chrysoskoulos was probably the first member of the ruling Seljuk family who changed sides in the Byzantine-Seljuk conflict and became a member of the Byzantine elite. The figure of the Seljuk prince in Byzantine service attracted the attention of two important historiographers: Michael Attaleiates described the appearance of Chrysoskoulos, without mentioning his name. Some five decades later, Nikephoros Bryennios incorporated the figure of Chrysoskoulos in the frame of the Komnenoi “family history” , underlining his loyalty to the father of Alexios I Komnenos, Manuel Komnenos.

The aim of this free communication is to trace the development of the image of Erisgen-Chrysoskoulos in the two Byzantine historical narratives, which were created by different authors in different circumstances. It will seek to understand how the “young man with Scythian eyes” (a characteristic given by Attaleiates) became the “loyal friend of the family” in the work of Bryennios. This will allow me to make some preliminary conclusions about the “adaption” of Seljuk heroes in post-Psellian Byzantine historical narratives.

Three sixteenth-century Skylitzes manuscripts preserve the captions to the illustrations in the famous Madrid BN Vitr. 26-2. They are found to depend exclusively on the Madrid Skylitzes and thus provide no support for the hypothesis that earlier illustrated Skylitzes manuscripts must have existed. Madrid BN 4594 and Vat. Ottobon. gr. 340 are direct copies while Paris. BNF suppl. gr. 305 is an apographon of Ottobon. gr. 340.