Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Preface
- 1 Varangians and their origins
- 2 The army and navy of the High Byzantine Empire
- 3 Norse and Russian forces in the Byzantine army to the death of Romanos III
- 4 Haraldr Sigurðarson and his period as a Varangian in Constantinople, 1034–1043
- 5 The Varangians between 1042 and 1081
- 6 Varangians during the period 1081–1204
- 7 The ghost of the regiment: Varangian evidences 1204–1453
- 8 The Emperor, his Court, his guards and his city
- 9 Some individual Norse and English Varangians and travellers to Byzantium
- 10 Runic inscriptions concerning Varangians
- Select bibliography
- Index
7 - The ghost of the regiment: Varangian evidences 1204–1453
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Preface
- 1 Varangians and their origins
- 2 The army and navy of the High Byzantine Empire
- 3 Norse and Russian forces in the Byzantine army to the death of Romanos III
- 4 Haraldr Sigurðarson and his period as a Varangian in Constantinople, 1034–1043
- 5 The Varangians between 1042 and 1081
- 6 Varangians during the period 1081–1204
- 7 The ghost of the regiment: Varangian evidences 1204–1453
- 8 The Emperor, his Court, his guards and his city
- 9 Some individual Norse and English Varangians and travellers to Byzantium
- 10 Runic inscriptions concerning Varangians
- Select bibliography
- Index
Summary
This chapter is both brief and fragmentary, for such few evidences as can be garnered about the service of Englishmen, Scandinavians or others in the Varangian guards of the Lascarides and Palaeologi, as well as serving the puppets of the shadowy Latin Empire in Constantinople, are far too uncertain and infrequent to give any sort of coherent picture.
Of Constantinople itself, after the Latins had ravaged their fill, we have a remark by Robert of Clari which merits some note, as it may refer to the eventual fate of the last Varangians of the old Empire. He states that on the day after Alexius V fled the City, ‘priests and clerics in their habits – these were Englishmen, Danes and men of other nations’, had come to the Latins in procession and begged for mercy, saying that the Greeks were fled and that only poor folk were left within the City. This must be an error; of course there is no denying that English and Danish priests may have been in Byzantium, but in view of the religious chasm that had opened between the Latin and Greek churches, these can hardly have been numerous – at most one or two chaplains of each nationality for the troops in the Imperial mercenary force.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Varangians of Byzantium , pp. 167 - 176Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1979