Leo VI and the Transformation of Byzantine Christian Identity: Writings of an Unexpected Emperor by Meredith L. D. Riedel (review)

Leo VI (886–912) is rather notorious for being the only Byzantine emperor to defy canon law by marrying a fourth time. For those who know little else of his reign, it will likely come as a surprise that a new book compellingly argues that Leo went further than any emperor before him to integrate a Christian worldview into the secular machinery of the empire, including its army and legal code. Among other things, and given the scandal of his own marriages, it is ironic that it would be Leo who first decreed that a marriage required an ecclesiastical blessing before it would be recognized by the state. Through a careful analysis of Leo's military manual (the Taktika), his major legal undertakings, and his homilies (yes, homilies), Dr. Meredith Riedel provides a comprehensive assessment of the ways in which this "unexpected" emperor injected his own Orthodox Christian commitments into imperial governance.

Leo VI and the Transformation of Byzantine Identity is Dr. Riedel's first monograph—a revision and expansion of her 2010 Oxford dissertation, which had focused on the underappreciated Christian dimensions of Leo's military manual, the Taktika. The book comprises nine chapters (the introduction and conclusion being numbered as chapters 1 and 9, respectively). Chapters 2–4 analyze the Taktika; chapters 5–6 assess Leo's revisions of and additions to the legal code; chapter 7 examines his homilies; and chapter 8 reconstructs and interprets Leo's conception of the Byzantines as a "chosen people."

Military historians will, of course, be familiar with Leo's Taktika. Although it draws deeply from previous military manuals, especially the Strategikon of the emperor Maurice, Leo's venture is noteworthy for a few reasons (perhaps the most surprising is that Leo was not a soldier and he never commanded an army). For example, the Taktika is the first Roman/Byzantine military treatise to take a serious interest in naval warfare, an aspect that likely reflects the fact that Byzantines were at that time suffering recurring defeats from Arab navies and pirates. For Riedel, however, the most interesting feature of the Taktika is the fact that it is also the first Byzantine military manual to offer a thick description of the Saracens, one that, unlike the descriptions of all other ethnic groups, is framed almost exclusively in terms of religion. Riedel proposes that Leo deliberately employs religion and religious difference to reframe the way that his readers should think about their most dangerous enemy. For Leo, not only is Islam a direct military threat, but the defense of the empire is an explicit defense of Christian faith (43). Riedel describes Leo's depiction of Muslim recruitment practice as a "function of applied theology" and asserts that the emperor believes "that the Byzantines might look to this as a sort of example for solving similar difficulties" (44).

Although the book is neither a study of Byzantine attitudes toward war nor an assessment of Byzantine military strategy, Riedel does make a series of important observations in these matters. Perhaps most importantly, she successfully argues that the Byzantines did not have a functional conception of holy war as we typically understand it. Nevertheless, she observes that the Byzantines after Leo did pursue an explicit "defense of the Christian faith" through the strategic use of violence. For an emperor like Leo, a Christian general should pray and he should know how to fight. But characteristic of Byzantine diplomatic policy and (for Riedel) Byzantine theological commitments, a general should pursue peace above other options.

With respect to his legal reforms and new laws (novellae), Riedel proposes that Leo consistently shows a greater concern for the Christian conceptions of mercy and repentance than did previous legislators. Leo, she avers, is at pains to make Orthodox Christian commitments visible in everyday aspects of Byzantine social and legal life, such as the prohibition against work on Sundays or...