Byzantium and beyond: the Medieval Roman Empire and its world through the letters of patriarch Nicholas I Mystikos, 901-925 CE

Abstract

This project uses the approximately 200 extant letters of Patriarch Nicholas I Mystikos (901 – 907, 912 – 925), to form a composite mosaic of the Medieval Roman Empire (i.e., Byzantium) and its world in the early tenth century. From social relationships and the ways gifts sustained them, to efforts to reign in borderland lords in the tenuously held provinces of Southern Italy, to large-scale diplomatic and religious entanglements with Rome and Baghdad, Nicholas’s letters highlight crucial elements of Byzantine society and Constantinople’s relationship with its neighbors. The letters shed light on phenomena like the ethnic “othering” of the Bulgarians in Nicholas’s thinking as well as efforts to spread orthodox Christianity to non-Christian peoples living in the Eastern Black Sea Region. The assemblage and analysis of this corpus not only presents a cogent image of the Eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea in the Early Middle Ages, but also presents challenges to the historiographical idea of the “Byzantine Commonwealth,” discussed in the conclusion.