On 3 November 869, the Roman monk Peter was summoned to the church council then under way in the Hagia Sophia. In the presence of the Byzantine emperor and Roman legates, the man was accused of participating in Photius' synod which, two years before, had deposed Pope Nicholas I. He denied everything. For the historian of Mediterranean communications, his defense is striking: “So am I the only Peter who comes up to this city from Rome? What about the other 10,000 Peters who have come up [here]?” Although Peter may not win points for mathematical precision, his defense assumes a fair crowd of similarly named Romans at Constantinople in 867. The monk's forgotten protest challenges the notion of a ninth-century Mediterranean empty of communications and contacts. Closer scrutiny of the larger group of western pilgrims and envoys deepens that challenge.

Basic facts

Including Amalarius, Marinus, Willibald, and Bernard, I have been able to discern 239 individual envoys or pilgrims who traveled, or who intended to travel from western Europe into the eastern Mediterranean between c. 700 and 900. A majority belonged to an embassy. This hints, again, at the role of social prominence in creating the documentary record.