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The shape of the market: mapping the Book of the Eparch*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2016

Thomas Thomov  and
Annetta Ilieva
Thomas Thomov
Affiliation:
Sofia, Bulgaria
Annetta Ilieva
Affiliation:
Sofia, Bulgaria
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Extract

The perspective of this paper could certainly be judged as somewhat narrow by urban historians of ninth-century Constantinople. For the sake of clarity we should like to stress from the very start that it is the Bulgarian aspect of the problem that interests us. Whatever the answer to the question whether Byzantium was ‘dead or alive’ at the time, for Boris (who forced Bulgaria into Christendom), for his son Symeon (who became Bulgaria’s first tsar), and for Symeon’s son Peter (who took the first Byzantine princess to Veliki Preslav), the empire was certainly very much alive. These three rulers of the first Bulgarian kingdom lived at the time when the renovatio encapsulated by Theoktistos and Theodora in A.D. 843 was taken over by the usurper Basil; when, subsequently, the ascending genos of the dysgenes killer recreated — and at the same time distanced itself from — the broader framework of the Justinianic age; and, finally, when eugenes usurpers triumphed within the already established ‘Macedonian’ universe. Among the three of them, however, only Symeon had the rare opportunity of living in Constantinople, for fourteen years or so — between 872/4 and 887 — and in its First Region at that. Symeon became no Theodoric but what was it that he saw which made him ‘half-Greek’ and could have moulded or influenced some of his policies that led to the establishment of a new empire in the Balkans?

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Articles
Information
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies , Volume 22 , 1998 , pp. 105 - 116
Copyright
Copyright © The Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham 1998

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References

1. From a somewhat different perspective see most recently, Magdalino, P., Constantinople médiévale. Etudes sur l’évolution des structures urbaines (Paris 1996) 49 Google Scholar (=Travaux et Mémoires de Centre de Recherche d’Histoire et de Civilisation de Byzance. College de France. Monographie 9).

2. Shepard, J., ‘Constantinople — Gateway to the North: The Russians’, in Mango, Cyril, Dagron, Gilbert (eds.), Constantinople and its Hinterland: Papers from the Twenty-seventh Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Oxford, April 1993 (Aldershot 1995) 254–5 Google Scholar (=Societyfor the Promotion of Byzantine Studies, Publications 3) (hereafter Constantinople and its Hinterland).

3. See Fig. 1 which is a photocopy of his Abbildung #11 on p. 148 of Dai Eparchenbuch Leons des Weisens, CFHB 33 (Vienna 1991) (hereafter EB).

4. EB, Prolegomena 31–2.

5. Ibidem 21–3. See also the reviews by K.-P. Matschke in BZ 86–7 (1993–4) 145 and by LP. Medvedev in W 54 (1993) 184. It is worth repeating here the well-known fact that Photios also wrote the Eisagoge’s titles on the emperor and the patriarch.

6. EB, Prolegomena, p. 40; also Medvedev in W 54 (1993) 185.

7. One of these sources is to be singled out here due to its controversial dating. While J. Wortley and L. Rydén date the Life of St. Andrew the Fool to various decades of the first half and the middle of the tenth century C. Mango believes that the text was produced ‘approximately between the years 680 and 695’. ‘The Life of St. Andrew the Fool Reconsidered’, in Mango, C., Byzantium and its Image: History and Culture of the Byzantine Empire and its Heritage (London: Var. repr. 1984), no. VIII 309, 310 Google Scholar. On the tenth century sources, including the Book of the Eparch, see most recently Magdalino, Constantinople médiévale, 13–14.

8. While M. McCormick has given preference to Skylitzes’s version that the ritual divestiture of the captive Boris II of Bulgaria was enacted in the Forum of Constantine — against that of Leo the Deacon, placing it in the Great Palace (Eternal Victory: Triumphal Rulership in Late Antiquity, Byzantium, and the Early Medieval West [Cambridge 1986] 174 n. 172 with references), recently G. Prinzing has reconsidered the evidence and suggested a possibility for a different source that Skylitzes might have used. He also paid greater attention to the deposition of the more beautiful and more valuable crown of Boris in Hagia Sophia: ‘Das Bamberger Gunthertuch in neuer Sicht’, BSl 54/1 (1993) 226–7.

9. Leo the Deacon, History 10.2 (Bonn 1828) 163 line 6. See M. McCormick for a comment on that new ‘manner in which contemporaries perceived’ ‘the physical location of the ceremony’: Eternal Victory, 185–6. In a note to us, however, C. Mango expressed his belief that Leo’s expression here ‘is simply a bit of classicism and does not refer to the market as such’.

10. Theoph. cont., 339 lines 1–6. English transi, by Mango, C., ‘The Development of Constantinople as an Urban Centre’, in The 17th International Byzantine Congress: Major Papers (New York 1986) 131.Google Scholar

11. Porphyrogenitus, Constantine VII, De Ceremoniis aulae byzantinae, 2 vols., I (Bonn 1829–30) 502 Google Scholar lines 2f.

12. Koder, Johannes, ‘Fresh Vegetables for the Capital’, in Constanintople and its Hinterland, 52–3 Google Scholar. Indeed, some time ago the Theodosian walls still stood in open countryside. Only in the last forty years have they been swallowed by the megalopolis. We owe this remark to Peter Baird.

13. See Fig. 2 for one of the ‘venues’ for fruits in the Artopoleia: Vita S. Andreae Sali, PG 111 cols. 712B & C, 713D.

14. EB 15.4. See also Koder, Johannes, ‘Epangelmata schetika me ton episitismo sto Eparchiko Biblio’, in Praktika tou A’ Diethnous symposiou He kathemerine zoe sto Byzantio: Tomes kai synecheies sten hellenistike kai rhomaike paradose, 15–17 Google Scholar Septembriou 1988 (Athens 1989) 368.

15. EB, 21.3 & 8 (on the bothroi); Constantinople in the Early Eighth Century: The Parastaseis Syntomoi Chronikai, trans. A. Cameron and J. Herrin (Leiden 1984) 187, 222, 225 (on the bakeries, with references). See also Mango, C., Le développement urbain de Constantinople (IVe-VIIe siècles) (Paris 2 1992) 57.Google Scholar

16. McCormick, Eternal Victory 218 with references.

17. On the distance see Mango, ‘Development’, 123.

18. EB, 16.2 & 3 (on the choiremporoi) and 15.5 (on the probatemporoi). See also Mango, Développement 57.

19. Sjuzjumov, M. Ia., Vizantijskaya kniga Eparcha (Moscow 1962) 232 Google Scholar with references (in Russian).

20. EB, 17.1. On this location see Dagron, G., ‘Poissons, pêcheurs et poissonniers de Constantinople’, in Constantinople and its Hinterland, 70 Google Scholar. He also assumes that the Fish Market was identical with the late byzantine Basilike Market, but is hesitant about the identification of the Basilike Gate either as Ispigas/Cubahkapi and Ayasmakapi or as Perama/Bahkpazar kapisi. See below n. 24.

21. In a metropolis the size of Constantinople it was quite probable that was not the sole and even the central Bread Market. At the same time, it seems that the one just mentioned was very popular and its name gradually acquired the meaning of a byword. See Berger, A., Untersuchungen zu den Patria Konstantinupoleos (Bonn 1988) 312–3.Google Scholar

22. McCormick, , Eternal Victory 215, 219 Google Scholar; Mango, , Développement 31, 55.Google Scholar

23. Vita S. Andreae Sali, cols. 648C, 657B, 708C.

24. EB, 9.6 on the Bulgarian importers of honey. It should be noted that from the seventh century onward the ratio of meat, lamb in particular, in the Byzantine diet increased at the expense of bread. But while until recently the Meat Market was thought to have been generally in the same area — to the south of the Forum Tauri, in the vicinity of the Armenian Patriarchate at Kumkapi (on which see Janin, R. (Constantinople byzantin [Paris 1964] 379–80 Google Scholar with references) — now it seems that the so-called stoa tou Makellou behind the Forum of Constantine and the Leomakellon were not identical. The first mention of a Lemomacellium — possibly later corrupted to Leomacellium — is in the Chronicon Paschale, 284–628 AD (Liverpool 1989) 57–6 n. 186, referring to the slaughter of many Goths in AD400, but no location is given. A correction of Janin’s thesis now in A. Berger ‘Zur Topographie der Ufergegend am Goldenen Horn in der byzantinischen Zeit’, Istanbuler Mitteilungen 45 (1995) 152–55 and the map on p. 151; idem, Untersuchungen, 515–6 and the map on p. 197. As a result of his etymological research concerning the word macellum he locates the Leomakellon besides the Golden Horn, to the northwest and quite near to the Basilike Gate (Unkapam kapi, called also porta platea or piazza); whence, he assumes that the Leomakellon was identical with the Basilike Market (i.e. the Fish Market). In other words, it seems clear that meat and fish were sold in one and the same place. In support of this idea, it is interesting to note that in Harpers’ Latin Dictionary 1091 (Revised, enlarged and great parts rewritten by Ch. Lewis and Ch. Short [New York 1879]) macellum has the meaning of ‘meat-market, provision-market (where meat, fish and vegetables were sold)’. The same explanation may be found in Latin-Bulgarian Dictionary 358 (ed. by M. Voinov, A. Milev [Sofia 1937]).

25. On that side of the treaties see Shepard, ‘Constantinople — Gateway to the North’, 255. On the location see Mango, ‘Development’, 130 and Développement 57; also Patria 11.64 in Scriptores originum Constantinopolitanarum, ed. T. Preger, 2 vols., II (Leipzig 1901–07) 185 lines 3–14.

26. EB, 9.6.

27. Oikonomidès, Nicolas, ‘Quelques boutiques de Constantinople au Xe s.: prix, loyers, imposition (Cod. Patmiacus 171)’, DOP 16 (1972) 345 Google Scholar line 6.

28. Ibidem, 347 line 17; EB, 8.1.

29. Mango (‘Development’, 130) calls it Constantinople’s ‘main retail centre’.

30. Mango, C., ‘Constantine’s Porphyry Column and the Chapel of St. Constantine’, in idem, Studies on Constantinople (Aldershot, Var. 1993), no. IV, 106 n. 2.Google Scholar

31. Theoph. Cont, 420 lines 13–6; EB, 6.13. See also Theophanes, Chronographia, ed. C. de Boor, 2 vols., I (Leipzig 1883–5) 487–8, esp. 487 lines 31–2. Inferring from the EB, 5.2 and Oikonomidès, op. cit., 346 lines 23–4, could we suggest that the Émbolos mentioned in the Book is that of the Forum?

32. It was even possible to purchase liturgical vessels there as is evident from the anonymous narrative on the ‘good deeds’ of the emperor Theophilos, a text compiled under Basil I: Regel, W., ed., Analecta Byzantino-Russica (St. Petersburg 1891)Google Scholar 42 lines 13–8 and p. xiii on the dating.

33. See above, p. 108; Mango, ‘The Life of St. Andrew the Fool’, 302–3; idem, ‘Development’, 131.

34. McCormick, Eternal Victory 215–6.

35. We have tried our best to solve the puzzle regarding the location of the argyroprateia portico — in the north or in the south section of the colonnaded Regìa (basic texts: Chronicon Paschale (Bonn 1832) 623 lines 6–9 and Theophanes, 184 lines 14–7). Since the latter mention it in the singular, obviously it was a single portico. See Downey, G., ‘Imperial Building Records in Malallas’, BZ 38/1 (1938), 308 Google Scholar. But while the Paschal Chronicle seems to imply that during the Nika riot the flames engulfed buildings located on both sides of the Mese, the portico of the silversmiths’ shops included, Theophanes’s text clearly speaks of the portico and the palace of Lausos as if they were in a row. The controversy has found its place in Abbildung no. 263 (on p. 232) and on p. 269 of W. Müllier-Wiener’s magisterial Bildlexikon zur Topographie Istanbuls: Byzantion — Konstantinoupolis — Istanbul bis zum Beginn des 17. Jahrhunderts (Tübingen 1977).

36. See Fig. 2; also Koder, Johannes, ‘Die Drogisten und ihre Waren im Eparchenbuch (EB, 10.1)’, in Antichnaya drevnost i srednie veka 26 (1992) 234.Google Scholar

37. EB, 10.1.

38. Henderson, J. and Mango, M. Mundell, ‘Glass at Medieval Constantinople: Preliminary Scientific Evidence’, in Constantinople and its Hinterland, 346.Google Scholar

39. Mason, R.B. and Mango, M. Mundell, ‘Glazed “Tiles of Nicomedia”, in Bythinia, , Constantinople, and Elsewhere’, in Constantinople and its Hinterland, 322.Google Scholar