Theophylact of Ochrid. Reading the Letters of a Byzantine Archbishop by Margaret Mullett (review)

BOOK REVIEWS287 Theophylact of Ochrid. Reading the Letters of a Byzantine Archbishop. By Margaret Mullett. [Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman Monographs, Volume 2.] (Brookfield, Vermont: Variorum, Ashgate Publishing Co. 1997. Pp. xviii, 441. $84.95.) Margaret Mullett feels that there is a need to rescue Byzantine literature from the low esteem in which it is generally held. Why Byzantine literature, unlike Byzantine art, has had such a bad press is rather strange, given that they both display the same basic traits, which can be summed up as "artificiality" in the best sense of the word. Still stranger is the way that the most damaging criticism of Byzantine literature has come from distinguished Byzantinists. Mullett notes that "even the most experienced editors of Byzantine letters are unsure of their value once they are edited" (p. 24), including Paul Gautier, who edited and translated Theophylact's Letters. The position has been reached in Byzantine studies when there is an impressive corpus of new editions of Byzantine letters, but very little in the way of commentary and evaluation. For this reason Mullett's study of Theophylact's Letters is most welcome. Theophylact was born ca. 1050 on the island of Euboea,but was educated at Constantinople, possibly under Michael Psellos. In 1088/89 he was appointed to the archbishopric of Bulgaria, where he remained until his death in 1 126 or soon afterwards. While the Byzantines remembered him as a great exegete, his modern reputation depends far more on his letters and other rhetorical pieces. Most of his letters were edited byJ. Meursius from a single manuscript (Laur. Gr. 59, 12) in the early seventeenth century with others being added in the course of the eighteenth century from other manuscripts. Mullett tells us that Gautier died before he had solved the relationship between the different manuscripts, but cannot herself get any further. For the time being she accepts Gautier's "hypothesis of a single collection, which became separated before the late thirteenth to fourteenth century" (p. 82). The operative word is collection. All we have is a selection of Theophylact's letters—numbering some 135—which cover a period from ca. 1088/89 to ca. 11 10. There is nothing from the last fifteen years or so of his time as archbishop. It is not known on what basis the letters were chosen, though the assumption is that it was on literary and stylistic grounds. Mullett warns us that "Byzantine literature should be regarded as anything but unproblematic" (p. 1). One large problem is the way Byzantinists have latched on to the implications of Cyril Mango's formulation of Byzantine literature as a distorting mirror. It raises serious doubts about the relationship of text and context, thus undermining the historical value of the literary text, while rationalizing a distrust of Byzantine literature. Mullett is well aware that literary criticism long ago dispensed with the need for context, but insists that her book "is not primarily a work of criticism or theory but of cultural history" (p. 2). Therefore, a major concern is to establish a context for Theophylact's Letters . This Mullett does on the basis of "Network theory." The assumption is that 288BOOK REVIEWS an analysis of Theophylact's network of correspondents revealed in his letters will pinpoint his place and influence both in provincial and metropolitan society . It rests on another assumption: that the sample of letters that we have is representative of his epistolary activity. The results obtained are nevertheless impressive. They give a more assured and nuanced account ofTheophylact's relationships and conduct of office than has emerged from earlier sketches. However , they need testing against similar work—still to be done—on other letter collections. Disregarding the misgivings that current literary criticism has about the "author ," Mullett provides a sophisticated and satisfying pen portrait of Theophylact as "Author and Man." Despite some elegantly translated verses and snatches of letters—which catch Theophylact's real literary ability—this book confirms the chasm that separates the modern reader from the imaginative world of the Byzantine elite. Its real value lies elsewhere. Mullett has shown that with patience and skill context can be restored to Byzantine literary texts and with it their...