Emperor and Priest: The Imperial Office in Byzantium (review)

Teachers of Byzantine History will be grateful to Cambridge University Press for providing an English translation of Gilbert Dagron's Empereur et prêtre (1996). It is always a pleasure when one can place on the assigned or suggested reading list a volume which derives from one of the top researchers in the field. Professor Dagron is a philologist of the first rank, a scholar who is able to summon and bring to bear on a problem a wide range of sources. He is a humanist in the best sense of the term. He can think and he can communicate his ideas in an organized fashion and with stylistic grace. Reading Dagron is not like sledge-hammering your way through the turgid prose of one of Ostrogorsky's textbook chapters. The volume is aptly titled. The author focuses on a political question of major significance to anyone interested in church-state relations in Byzantium. Constantine the Great had intervened in church affairs, and Dagron has set himself the task of reviewing relationships from that time onward between the emperor, the bishops, and the patriarch. The discussion involves traditions, such as the Donation of Constantine, known events in which the emperor shaped ecclesiastical policy or the patriarch opposed imperial actions, and ceremony, in which imperial acts reflect sacerdotal functions. There is a particularly fine chapter on theoretical considerations advanced by the canonists regarding the emperor's right to enter the sanctuary and, like bishops, to cense and bless with the triple candle. The student is well served by the fact that the author translates relevant passages from the canonists' commentaries. There is one odd lapse, however, in discussion about imperial influence on ecclesiastical offices. One does not find any mention of the tradition of Justinian establishing the tribunal of the ekdikeion at St. Sophia, an association which is made emphatically on seals of the ekklesiekdikoi, where Justinian is shown with the Virgin holding a model of the Great Church. In a preliminary chapter the author describes the nuts and bolts of imperial rule and attempts to answer what many students would like to know: how did one become emperor, how did one remain emperor, how did one attempt to pass on rule, and what constituted legitimacy? The only criticism which I offer regarding this section is the following. The author refers to succession on the basis of heredity and notes the principle of dynastic succession implied in the representation of dead ancestors on coins, in particular the mint emissions of the successors of Leo III. It is suggested that when coin evidence is used it would be a good idea to illustrate the coins cited. Indeed, this is also an instance where the visual range of the evidence could be expanded by the inclusion of dated seals. Such objects struck during the reign of Constantine V, for example, show Constantine V and Leo IV on one side, and the dead emperor Leo III, on the other side.