SOURCE: In Anna Comnena. Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1972, 186 p.

[In the following excerpt, Dalven discusses Anna's intellectual pursuits and education, the factions in her father's court, and evaluates her importance as an historian.]

Her Early Life at Court

For from childhood, from eight years upwards, I was brought up with the Queen, and as she conceived a warm affection for me she confided all her secrets to me. (Alexiad, III, 1, p. 72)

The queen referred to in the above quotation is Maria of Alania, mother of Constantine Ducas, Anna's seven-yearold royal cousin, to whom she was officially betrothed soon after her birth. As was the custom of the time, the princess was immediately placed in the care of her fiancé's mother, the twice-married exotically lovely Queen Maria, daughter of Iranian nomads, who was still living in the "Upper" palace, also called Boucoleon, with her son. After Alexios's succession to the throne, Empress Irene and Queen Maria shared in Anna's upbringing for the first eight years of her life.

The author of the Alexiad recalls those early years in her life with nostalgia, sorrow, and compassion, for the woman whom she was taught to regard as her future mother-inlaw. The beauty and personality of Queen Maria must surely have been a delightful change for Anna, imperially indoctrinated by her grandmother in an atmosphere that had "somewhat the appearance of a holy monastery" (III, 8, 1, p. 86).

But this divinely happy environment of great expectations for Anna as a future empress and as the wife of her royal second cousin lasted only until she was nine years old. In 1092, Constantine Ducas lost his imperial status to her brother John, and she herself lost her rights of succession. This was Anna's first traumatic experience, which, judging from later events, never healed. Her second traumatic experience followed on the heels of the first, when she was removed from the care of Queen Maria and returned to the care of her father. Had Anna's relationship with her intended mother-in-law continued unbroken, our blue-stocking historian might have lost some of the bitterness and hatred she felt for her brother John. Her third traumatic experience came three years later. Anna was eleven years old when Constantine died. She

sincerely felt the loss of her first fiancé; it is difficult to understand why she says nothing of any illness or of the causes of his death.

Reliving those early years and once again envisioning Queen Maria, whose beauty and confidences had warmed Anna's heart, and recalling her handsome first fiancé, our porphyrogenete exudes in her writing the happiness of an impressionable little girl living in the best of all possible worlds. After that, life in the court for the regally-oriented Anna, who had all the makings of an empress, was stripped of that early fairy-tale glamor. "I was only eight years old when my misfortunes began," she explains as she contemplates sadly the loss of these early, carefree, joyful years.

Her Education and Training

I was not ignorant of letters, for I carried my study of Greek to the highest pitch, and was also not unpracticed in rhetoric; I perused the works of Aristotle and the dialogues of Plato carefully, and enriched my mind by the "quaternion" of learning.¹ (Alexiad, Preface, I, p. 1)

Nowhere in the Alexiad do we get a more three-dimensional portrait of Anna than when she is writing of her father's contribution to learning and the advancement of education. In a very real sense, her greatest identity with the subject of her history is in their mutual dedication to intellectual, religious, and cultural pursuits. For Anna, education made the man even more than noble birth.

Anna focuses sharply her father's contribution in this field of Byzantine life from the moment he ascended the throne. He encouraged those who were inclined to learning, but "bade them prefer the study of sacred writings to Greek literature" (V, 9, p. 136).

Her estimation of the importance of education is further highlighted in her evaluation of the several personages who helped or hindered the advancement of learning during her father's reign. Her keenest admiration is for Michael Psellos, widely recognized for his encyclopedic learning; Psellos was thoroughly acquainted with Greek and Chaldean literature and had grown famous in his time for his wisdom (V, 8, p. 133). When she writes of Euthymios Zygabenos, whom her father had commissioned to write Dogmatic Panoply in order to explain all heresies, she considers it essential for the reader to know that Zygabenos was not only the best authority on ecclesiastical dogma but that he had "pursued his grammatical studies very far, and was not unversed in rhetoric" (XV, 9, p. 415). Anna, who was not untrained in mathematics, discusses geometry with Diogenes because his knowledge of the subject was so keen he could feel "the figures made in solid material (or in relief). For by feeling these all over with his hands he gained comprehension of all the theorems and figures of geometry" (IX, 10, 2, p. 233). So strongly does Anna feel about the importance of teachers and formal education that she actually believes that the lack of formal schooling was a basic cause of the heresy that was mushrooming all over Byzantium during her father's reign. In her judgment, Leo, bishop of Chalcedon, who voted against her father's appropriation of unused church treasures to help finance the war, "was incapable of making a precise statement with conviction as he was absolutely untrained in the science of reasoning" (V, 2, p. 119). In the case of Italos, she relates his heretical teaching to the fact that "this man had not studied very much under learned professors…. he was never able to plumb the depths of philosophy for he was of such a boorish and barbarous disposition that he could not endure teachers even when learning from them" (V, 8, p. 133). Although she admits that Nilos, another heretic, had studied the writings of the saints very closely, yet she feels that he went astray about the meaning of the writings because he had never learned the art of reasoning. "He was quite uninitiated into Hellenic culture," she writes, "and never even had a teacher who might from the start have explained to him the deep meanings of the Divine writings" (X, 1, p. 235).

Although Anna's evaluation of these men appears limited, it cannot be denied that she was well trained to recognize the difference between the dilettante and the true intellectual. Aside from the abundant classical and biblical allusions strewn familiarly throughout her history, which in themselves testify to Anna's erudition, we have the testimony of three Byzantine contemporary writers who recognized Anna's superior intellect and her culture. In his poem on the "Death of Theodora" (Anna's daughterin-law), Theodore Prodromos calls Anna "Porphyrogenite Caesarissa Kyra Anna Dukaina and a shoot of the Ducas stem," and again "wise Anna, absolute intellect, home of the graces."² In the Epithalamium by the same author, he calls Anna "Fourth Grace" and "Tenth Muse."³ Zonaras, who wrote his Epitome Historion about the same time Anna wrote her Alexiad, goes so far as to say that Anna surpassed the education of her literary husband because of her keenness of mind and her association with learned men. "His wife pursued education in letters not less, if not more than himself and had a tongue that atticized accurately and a keenest mind towards the height of theorems."⁴ Nicetas Chionates, another contemporary historian, whose History of John Comnenos is a primary source for the reign of Anna's brother, Emperor John II, refers to Anna as "the Caesarissa Anna who had received the broadest education and was versed in all the sciences and in philosophy."⁵ Georgios Tornikes speaks of Anna as "a woman who had attained the highest summit of wisdom, both secular and divine, manifesting around her the grandeur of a celestial intelligence."⁶

Once her tutors had "hellenized the tongue" of their precocious pupil in reading, writing, and grammar, they advanced her to the study of the classics, rhetoric, science, philosophy, and the "quaternion" of learning …. In Anna's grief-stricken awareness that the poets no longer receive even secondary attention, she reveals the depth of her own learning when she writes:

I myself spent so much time over the same things. And when I was released from that childish teaching and betook myself to the study of rhetoric and touched on philosophy and in between these sciences turned to the poets and historians, by means of these I polished the roughness of my speech, then with the aid of rhetoric I felt that the highly complex complications of grammatical parsing were to be condemned. (XV, 7, pp. 411-12)

Anna refers here to the science of schedography which Psellos had restored but which Anna seems to have hated. It was the art of minute grammatical analysis and parsing, a didactive method used to interpret unusual grammatical forms, rare words, and the like, in ancient or religious texts, which gave greater importance to the grammar than it did to the literature.⁷

In her discussion of those subjects which occupied the attention of our historian, there is no evidence that Anna had any interest in Latin. Indeed, she goes to some trouble to justify her occasional use of the names of the Normans. "Let no one find fault with me," she writes, "for introducing these barbaric names which are a stain on the style of my history; for not even Homer disdained to mention Boetians and certain barbarian islands for the sake of accuracy in his history" (X, 8, p. 254). It would certainly seem that Anna cared little about Latin, if she knew any at all.

In the Alexiad, written in "atticizing" Greek, Anna never refers specifically to any formal school education; there are no girls' schools mentioned anywhere in Byzantine history. "Of the facilities for female education we know nothing," writes Runciman.⁸ One can assume, therefore, that Anna was educated by private tutors as all children of royalty were at that time.

We get an inkling of Anna's independence of mind from the funeral oration, delivered by Georgios Tornikes, sometime after her death. Tornikes explains that Anna was trained in virtue by her parents, but not in secular culture. They allowed her to study science and literature, so long as it could be related to the divine and contribute to her moral education; her parents were strongly opposed to Anna's study of grammar and poetry which could not be Christianized, and was morally neutral. Tornikes justifies her parents' opposition to secular culture because "they suspected it of being insidious, and because the absence of culture in her parents threw into relief the genius of their daughter."⁹ It is all the more remarkable to read that at the age of thirteen, Anna outwitted her parents and took lessons in grammar from one of the palace eunuchs without the knowledge of her parents. Later, her mother consented to her study of grammar.¹⁰

From what Anna herself reveals to us of her intellectual pursuits, her three lifelong interests were the classics, highly popularized by the Comneni; the Bible, which took priority over all other studies in Byzantine Greece; and medicine, for which Anna had unusual aptitude. She was uniquely dedicated to broad intellectual and cultural pursuits throughout her life; in the main, however, it is her extensive and intensive learning in these three areas which molded her moral precepts, her philosophy of life, and her approach to history.

Her most thorough education was in the classics, which Anna quotes with enviable familiarity. From Anna's direct statement quoted at the beginning of this section, we learn that she perused the works of Aristotle and the dialogues of Plato, from whose works she learned "the very essence of Hellenism." According to Buckler, who made a detailed study of Anna's literary allusions in her own scholarly work, Anna Comnena, our Greek princess has nine references to Aristotle and his teaching, eleven to Plato and his followers, forty-seven to the Iliad, seven to the Odyssey, ten to both, and two which are composite. Buckler believes that on the whole Anna quotes Homer with greater accuracy than the Bible.¹¹

In an interesting analysis on Anna's classical learning, Radislav Katicic asserts that Anna's epic spirit arises from the mentality of the great feudal lords of Byzantium. "The classic rhetoric in the Alexiad," writes Katicic, "vibrates genuine epic impulse, but it is an extreme personal epic disposition…. The epic character of Anna's writing does not arise either from an oratorical construction of the word, or from a narrative character of the work, but from an inner disposition and the manner of thought of the writer."¹² It would seem, then, that Anna's epic spirit is not humanistic; rather, it is a Byzantine Christianized adaptation of the pagan epic of ancient Greece.

Tornikes analyzed Anna's Byzantine Christianized approach to the classics somewhat differently. According to Tornikes, Anna tempered the wisdom of the ancients with the wisdom inspired by God. Anna refused to accept Aristotle's theory that the universe had no beginning, thus reducing the world to automatism. For Anna the Good is the essence, and the One is identified with Being, who is God, the principal creator of all things. Anna does not accept Aristotle's theory of entelechy, which states that everything in the world has its own end, that it has its own potential, and that when it reaches its potential it reaches its perfect completeness or entelechy. According to Aristotle's doctrine of entelechy the soul of man dies and our universe is therefore withdrawn from Providence. For Anna the soul is divine, immortal and incorruptible. Tornikes states that he often discussed philosophy with Anna.¹³

In keeping with the intensity which the Byzantines felt about their religion, especially demonstrated by Alexios, who gave priority to theology and the sacred writings over all other studies during his reign, it would seem that Anna was more deeply concerned about the practices of religion than the other two areas of her greatest interest. Certainly, she is unusually knowledgeable on the subject when she is discussing heresy. Her many observations on the nature and behavior of people, the events of her father's reign, and even the topography of the land which her father selects strategically for his encampments, and which she often describes, are colored in a measure by her sense of piety which actually sets the tone of her book and predominates throughout. Her sense of forgiveness, her kindness, her philanthropy are all rooted in her upbringing as a devout Greek Orthodox Christian. Although her battle scenes are spectacularly replete with the goriest details, she criticizes generals who "rejoice in blood," and who "ever welcome fighting rather than peace." She admires men who are generous and are ever ready to give; "true liberality," she writes, "is not as a rule judged by the quantity of money supplied, but is weighed by the spirit of the giver" (II, 4, p. 52). She admires "men of firm disposition who can fix their mind on the matter before them and overlook disturbances" (II, 9, p. 63). She detests oath-breaking.

From her childhood to the completion of her Alexiad, Anna occupied herself "with books and God" (XIV, 7, 3, p. 382). In almost every page of her history there is some mention of Divine Providence. In the Preface she writes of her natural zeal for learning as "gifts which God apportioned to her at birth." When the captured rebel Bryennios passed up an opportunity to kill her father, it was "God was guarding the Comnenos, like a precious object, for a greater dignity, intending by means of him to restore the fortune of the Romans" (I, 6, 5, p. 20). She praises her aunt Theodora, who after her husband's death in battle, "embraced a solitary life and followed an ascetic life most strictly and devoted herself entirely to God" (X, 2, p. 238). When Bohemond sues for peace Alexios does not reject his proposals, despite the many times the Norman had deceived the Emperor, because "divine law of the gospel commands Christians to forgive each other all offences" and because "it is better to be deceived than to offend God and to transgress divine laws" (XIII, 8, 2, p. 343). In the ten-page treaty, which Anna records verbatim, that ended the long-standing enmity between Alexios and Bohemond, our historian remembers to add that the treaty was signed by "the hand of the bishop of Amalfi, most dear to God, who had come to the Emperor as ambassador from the Pope" (XIII, 12, 4, p. 357). When Alexios is arranging his lines and phalanxes in battle array, Anna says that her father "looked upon it as an arrangement directly inspired by God and a marshalling due to the angels" (XV, 3, 2, p. 398).

According to Buckler, Anna has eighty-seven biblical references in the fifteen books of the Alexiad; there are two references to the Apocrypha, forty to the Old Testament, thirteen of which are to the Psalms, and forty-five to the New Testament. Seventeen are allusions to biblical personages.¹⁴

Anna had unusual aptitude for medicine. The Alexiad is amply strewn with her suggestions for home remedies and practical nursing, probably known to many illiterate mothers in Byzantine Greece; however, she shows more than practical nursing experience when she diagnoses the causes of her father's gout and his last illness. She informs us that his gout was caused by an injury to his leg while playing polo, to which her father gave superficial attention; this neglect drew the rheumatics to the injured part, which was worsened by his "immense sea of worries" into which the Franks had engulfed him and left him exhausted.

During her father's last illness, she refers respectfully to the several doctors attending her father as "the disciples of Aesclepios," although she differs from them in their treatment and boldly offers her own diagnosis and treatment to which they listen as if she were a colleague. Anna proudly admits that she was there by order of her mother "to adjudge the physicians' arguments" since not all were in agreement in their diagnosis and treatment of the disease which afflicted her father. She nursed her father diligently with the food which she herself prepared and served to him daily; she watched the movements of her father's pulse and studied his respiration. Her mother often looked steadfastly at her and waited for her "oracular decision as she had been wont to do at other critical moments." It was Anna rather than the doctors who recognized that "the pulse in her father's arteries had finally stopped" (XV, 11, 4 pp. 425-26).

Anna's piety unquestionably imbued her spirit with lofty moral values; she was knowledgeable in many areas of learning; and from the testimony of contemporary writers, we can say that she was truly the most cultured woman of her age. As a distinguished member of the feudal aristocracy, she also reflects some of the superstitions current at the imperial court, which unfortunately mar her objective analysis of her father's reign. For example, although she admits that Alexios attributed comets to natural causes, she justifies his acceptance of the meaning of the appearance of a comet from a vision seen by Basileios, prefect of Byzantium, that foretells the movement of the Franks and their destruction (XII, 4, p. 308). Again, Anna tells us that her uncle, who during their revolt was equally acclaimed emperor by the army, conceded the throne to his brother because of a prophecy once addressed to him by a man near Carpianum (II, 7, p. 60). In her father's battle against Bohemond at Larissa, Anna feels it important to mention that her father was assured of victory through a vision he saw in his sleep which told him that he would conquer (V, 5, p. 127). Anna's use of visions and dreams to explain the history of her subject's reign certainly weakens the objective evaluation which she is so anxious to maintain throughout.

Byzantine scholars have criticized Anna for upholding her father's use of ruse and trickery to gain a campaign, to win the throne, to combat heresy. She finds praiseworthy her father's "new plan which was by flattery and promise to suborn some of the guards on the walls, and by thus stealing, so to say, their goodwill, to capture the city" (II, 9, p. 63). Anna justifies her father's tactics because to her "it has always seemed best to carry out some wily, yet strategic, move even during the battle itself, whenever one's army is not adequate compared with the strength of one's opponents" (XV, 3, pp. 395-96). Most of all, Anna supports her father's trickery to get Basil the Bogomil to incriminate himself. She tells us that Alexios had invited Basil "on some righteous pretext," even rose from his chair to greet him, sat by him, and shared his table, pretending that he wanted to become his disciple, "to effect his soul's salvation," and thus trapped the Bogomil monk, which led him to the stake (XV, 8, 1, pp. 412-13).

But in evaluating Anna's moral sense, we must keep in mind her position as a member of the landowning, military aristocracy of Byzantium. Her evaluation of her father's deeds naturally reflects the standards of that class. As a Byzantine princess living in the imperial court, Anna was fully aware that other powerful members of the military aristocracy were intriguing for the Byzantine throne. She knew the trickery and ruse used by the foreign enemies of Byzantium battering almost at the very gates of the capital, threatening the very existence of the Greek Empire. It is Important to remember, too, that the fanatic religious zeal of the military aristocracy to combat heresy, was, in a very real sense, a tactical weapon in the hands of its rulers for the perpetuation of feudalism, which Anna was certainly not out to destroy.

In evaluating Anna's education and training which shaped her character and personality, we must also take into account her loss of succession to the throne which altered the course of her life so drastically. The humorless cast of her mind mantling her history can be attributed in some measure to this unfortunate event, which she regarded as a blight on her life. Not tempered by either education or religious training was her lifelong and bitter hatred of her brother and her plot to assassinate him.

Death of her Fiancé Marriage

My lawful husband was the Caesar Nicephoros, a scion of the clan of the Bryennii. (Alexiad, Preface, 3, p. 2)

As has already been stated, Constantine Ducas, Anna's first fiancé, died when she was eleven years old. Early in 1097, when Anna was fourteen years old, she was married to Nicephoros Bryennios, who was three years her senior. Like herself, he too was a member of a powerful military, landowning family, but the Bryennii did not enjoy the same high social status of the Comneni.¹⁵ In the Prologue to her Will, Anna states that she had hoped to remain single and that she married to please her father.¹⁶ She expresses no such opinion in her Alexiad; and from the excessive praise of her husband, it would seem that she was proud to belong to the Bryenni clan.

Most critics agree that Alexios selected Nicephoros Bryennios to be his son-in-law for political reasons; it was a piece of diplomacy on the part of the emperor to appease the partisans of the elder rebel Bryennios, whom he had captured. Anna herself supplies a clue when she writes that, at the time of her father's revolt, all the men from the country towns flocked to Alexios as volunteers and proclaimed him emperor; the only exception were the men of Oresteias, who had an old grudge against him for having captured Bryennios (II, 6, p. 58). It is possible, as Byzantine scholars believe, that Alexios hoped to appease these men through Anna's marriage.

There seems to be a difference of opinion among Byzantine scholars concerning the Bryenni family. Anna herself tells us that the man she married was the grandson of the rebel Bryennios, Great Domestic of the West, from 1068 to 1071, and the son of that Bryennios who once aimed at the throne and had himself done the same and been deprived of his eyes (X, 2, p. 240). Buckler accepts Seger's statement that the son-in-law of Alexios was the son, not the grandson, of Alexios's old enemy and quotes Theophylactos who addressed the ex-rebel as the sympetheros (relative by marriage) of Alexios.¹⁷ Zonaras definitely gives the relationship as that of father and son and adds that the father of Alexios's enemy was also blinded in 1057.¹⁸ According to Henri Grégoire, Buckler and Zonaras are wrong and Anna Comnena is right. Grégoire explains that in 1078, the son of Nicephoros the rebel was about sixteen years of age, and his father, born in 1062, would have been thirty-five years old at the time of Anna's marriage when she was only fifteen; he would have been fifty-four years old in the battle of 1116, the last campaign of Alexios against the Turks.¹⁹ Anna writes that her husband Nicephoros

noticed the battle in the rear, and longed ardently to go to the assistance of the men at the back, but as he did not wish to prove his inexperience or his youth he restrained his raging anger against the barbarians and continued to march on in good order and the same formation. (XV, 5, pp. 402-3)

Anna could not have written about "inexperience or youth" of the older Bryennios. Grégoire concludes that whatever Anna's ignorance on certain subjects may have been, she must naturally have known better than anyone else if her husband was the son or the grandson of the elder Bryennios.²⁰ According to Anna then, Nicephoros, who had plenary jurisdiction over Adrianople in 1094, was the son of that Bryennios who had formerly revolted and was blinded. He was one of the chiefs of the conspiracy of 1067 who put Emperor Isaac on the throne. The Bryennios whom her father captured was the grandfather of the Nicephoros Anna married in 1097.

Married Life

For everything, strength, swiftness, physical beauty, in fact all good qualities of mind and body combined to adorn this man. (Alexiad, VII, 2, p. 170)

Anna's married life lasted forty years; from the many laudatory references to her husband, it must have been a happy marriage. Nicephoros was dedicated to his intellectual wife; she looked up to him as her ideal. He was attractive and had a graceful figure. "To look at him," his wife writes, "or to listen to him was a pure delight…. He was most remarkable in every way." He was a man "who far outshone his contemporaries by his surpassing beauty, his superior intelligence, and his accurate speech" (Preface, 3, p2). She praises her husband for his piety, his humanity, his skill in archery, especially on that Holy Thursday of April 2, 1097. She was a young bride when her father sent her husband out to defend Constantinople against the unforeseen attack of the crusaders camped under the walls of the city (X, 9, p. 259). In that battle, Anna tells us, her "Caesar's bow was in every deed the bow of Apollo" (X, 9, p. 260). He held high positions in her father's campaigns. Anna's father must have been enormously pleased to have a son-in-law like Nicephoros Bryennios.

Highlighting Anna's married life were the intellectual pursuits both had in common. "He read every book and applied himself to every branch of learning (VII, 2, pp. 170-71). "He wrote several excellent monographs even during times of stress and trouble" (Preface, 3, p. 2). She was proud of his writing. According to her, his style had harmony and grace, but what she regarded as his greatest achievement was the history of her father's reign that he had started to write by order of Empress Irene, partly to please his mother-in-law, and partly because his own feelings about Alexios were so deep that he could not allow himself to "pass over his deeds in silence, so that they would perish in the abyss of forgetfulness." However, he modestly admits that his work is not a history but material for a history.²¹ According to his wife, Nicephoros was designated to write the history of her father not only because of his natural gifts but also because of his "accurate understanding of affairs … his knowledge of literature and his varied acquaintance with both native and foreign learning!" (Preface, 4, p. 4). Anna shows her high regard for the partial Hyle Historias her husband had written before his untimely death by referring the reader to it on five different occasions.

What must have added considerable interest to their lives were the polar differences in their dispositions. Nicephoros Bryennios seems to have been a calm person, not nearly as nervous or ambitious as his wife; his calmness of spirit, except for that one instance when her husband failed her in the plot to have her brother assassinated, must surely have soothed her turbulent soul. Anna speaks often of her husband's persuasiveness and his oratory. She is delighted to recall how her father called on him to calm the rebellious Gregory Taronites (XII, 7, p. 316). A short time after her father had honored her husband with the rank of Panhypersebastos, the stubborn Bohemond called on him to serve as moderator between Alexios and himself during the drawing up of their final treaty. Anna must have enjoyed recalling that her husband "took Bohemond by the hand and led him back to the Emperor" (XIII, 11, p. 348). Alexios even called on his son-in-law to stem the tide of heresy at Philippopolis; it was his father-in-law who had trained him in the study of sacred books (XIV, 8, p. 386).

Empress Irene also loved and respected the abilities of her son-in-law, for she called on him whenever she acted as regent for Alexios and needed help, which Zonaras believes is the reason her son John feared him.²² Nicetas Chionates, writing about Irene's preference for Nicephoros as a successor to the throne over her own son John states:

At times she would introduce the name of Bryennios into the discussion, on whom she would lavish all sorts of praise, describing him as most capable in getting things done and as a man of liberal education which does indeed have an ennobling and orderly effect on character and is of no small help to future rulers who wish to establish a safe form of government.²³

We learn nothing either from Anna or from her husband's unfinished history about their domestic life or about their role as parents, other than the few words Anna says in the Preface, that her husband was anxious about his family while he was on campaigns, which probably kept him away from home often and for long stretches of time. We do get an inkling about their home life from the Epithalamium of Prodromos, who tells us that Anna had two sons. One was called Alexios, who took his mother's surname; the other was named John Ducas, who took his grandmother's maiden name. Both boys received their education under the direction of their mother. From the same source we learn that Anna's two sons had learned to ride, play polo, hunt, and set phalanxes in array.²⁴

We get an inkling of Anna as a mother and as a wife from the Prologue to her Will, which she says she wrote to please her mother. She writes of her joy in her husband and her very handsome and fine children. She mentions the fact that she lost some children, "which was the will of God"; others survived, she tells us, and she hopes that they may go on living. One other item pertaining to Anna's married life is found in the Prologue to her Will. She boasts of the "best and divinest husband under the sun … in descent and virtue, in both body and soul, endowed to the highest degree."²⁵

Empress Irene's Typikon mentions that Anna and Nicephoros had two daughters; one was named Irene Ducas; no name is given for the other. Both of Anna's daughters succeeded their mother and grandmother in the patronage of the Kecharitomene convent founded by Empress Irene.²⁶ We know from Prodromos that one of her daughters-in-law was named Theodora.²⁷ For the story of Anna's other daughter-in-law, Zonaras informs us that she was sent to Constantinople in the last year in the life of Alexios and was with the other members of the family around his deathbed. He does not mention her by name.²⁸

When we reflect carefully on Anna's remarks about her husband, we discover that she praises him for his literary achievements, his bravery or skill in his military campaigns, or in some other service for her father, or, as at the very end of his life, to list the campaigns he fought with her brother John during his reign. We know from Anna that her husband's illness may have been caused in part by "his overwhelming anxiety" about his family, but she tells us nothing specific about Nicephoros as a husband or as a father. Obviously, she felt that her private life had no place in a history of her father.

Role of Anna at Court

And as a rule I was with my father and mother and accompanied them. For it was not my lot to be kept at home and brought up in the shade and in luxury. (Alexiad, XIV, 7, 2, p. 381)

Anna lived at the Boucouleon palace from the time of her birth in 1083 to the year of her father's death in 1118. Yet, from the scant information she gives us, we can only surmise what her role at court must have been. From the three already mentioned contemporary Byzantine writers—Prodromos, Nicetas Chionates, and Zonaras—we know that the aristocracy of the court admired Caesarissa Anna for her scintillating intellect even more than they did her respected, scholarly husband. She must surely have participated in discussions in astrology, science, and geometry with the scholars who frequented the court. She surely entered into discussions on the subject of heresy with the monks who were always to be seen at her grandmother's table. From her own often-repeated avowals of devotion to her parents and her mother's "oracular" dependency on her knowledge, we can also assume that Anna must have been consulted about some of the events that took place at the imperial court, which she describes vividly in the Alexiad. As a woman of culture, her father must have relied on his eldest daughter to serve as official hostess at banquets to which dignitaries or foreign potentates were invited. From her dramatic delineations of the personages who came to the court, her father's diplomatic handling of the rude Franks, especially Bohemond, whose covetous eye was on the Byzantine throne, one gets the impression that Anna was not left out of any of the comings and goings in the palace. She herself tells us that the women's quarters were separated by only a curtain, which made it easy for her to hear what was taking place in the court. This is how she heard her father's and Isaac's investigation of Basil the Bogomil, which she records in such detail after so many years. And then, from the quotation given above, we learn that as a rule she accompanied her parents on campaigns which must have brought her even more actively into court life. She mentions specifically having stayed with her father at Philippopolis "for some purpose or other" (XIV, 8, p. 384).

Naturally, Anna must have felt awe for her parents, which restrained her sense of freedom at court to some extent. She has told us that she was seized with wonder as she watched her mother poring over the writings of the didactic Fathers (V, 9, p. 135). On another occasion when Anna wanted to plead for the life of Anemas, the captured ringleader who had plotted to assassinate her father, she tells us that she stood fearfully outside the doors, trying to draw her mother out by signs, because her parents "were conjointly making intercessions to God" (XII, 6, p. 314). But awe for one's parents has been part of the Greek tradition from ancient times to the present. Alexios and Isaac felt the same awe for their mother. Within the framework of Byzantine family life, awe for one's parents was an ingredient of individual dignity.

Anna tells us nothing of her own immediate family at the imperial palace. As has already been stated, she speaks repeatedly of her love for her husband in the Alexiad, and in the Prologue to her Will she speaks of her "very handsome and fine children"; but we never see her children or learn anything about them in the history of her father.

We do get an idea of Anna's relationship to her brothers and sisters, which might have been more intimate and happier had her parents been in agreement about Alexios's successor to the throne. The Comneni family was split down the middle because of this issue concerning which each parent differed radically, even violently at times. Chalandon states that John secretly endeavored with his brother Isaac to form a party and sought to win to his cause the Senate and the people. "The task wasn't at all easy," he writes, "for John was watched closely and each of his measures was watched by his mother's spies. Despite all these obstacles the legitimate heir grouped around him a certain number of determined and energetic partisans."²⁹

From what Nicetas Chionates writes, it was common knowledge that her mother never ceased trying to persuade Alexios to choose Anna and her husband to succeed him on the throne. Nicetas paints a picture which must have occurred often to disturb the harmony of family life in the imperial family. He tells us that Irene would call John "fickle in his habits; she ridiculed his soft and luxurious life and found absolutely nothing good in his character." Alexios would listen to her exasperating importunities and try to reply with tact and diplomacy, for he liked Nicephoros Bryennios and was on good terms with his son-in-law. He may not have expected that Anna's marriage would turn out as happily as it did; nonetheless, he was pleased that it did. Anna tells us repeatedly that Irene often called on her husband, preferring him to all others for his persuasive powers and his ability to calm some bitter foe, as in the case of Bohemond. But sometimes Irene's nagging pleas were too much even for the patient and cleverly evasive Alexios; at such times, says Nicetas Chionates, he would speak to her as follows:

Madam, partner of my bed and empire, stop trying to change my mind in favor of your daughter and do not undermine the existing harmony and order, as if you were mad! Let us rather consider the question together. Who among us of all the former Emperors of the Romans (Byzantines) who had a son capable of ruling ignored him and preferred a son-in-law? Even if something like this has occurred we should not, madam, make a rule of the exception. In any case, the whole Roman Empire would laugh at me uproariously and think that I had lost my mind if I, who came to power not by lawful means but by shedding the blood of my relatives, and by methods contrary to Christian morality, when the time came to designate my successor should cast aside my flesh and blood and bring this Macedonian to my house.³⁰

Bryennios was a native of Oresteias, one of the most prosperous and powerful cities in Macedonia.

This division in the Comneni household broke the tradition of unity in the imperial family established by Anna Dal assena. From what Nicetas Chionates writes, we know that Isaac was on John's side and helped him "more than anyone else to ascend the throne." Isaac, who became second Sebastocrator, was "an equal partner of his throne and table."³¹ Had it not been for this division of forces within the family, Anna might have had a fine relationship with Isaac, who had gained some repute as a writer. Isaac is credited with two short works on the history of the transformation of the Homeric epic in the Middle Ages, as well as the introduction to the so-called Constantinopolitan Code of the Octateuch in the Library of Seraglio.³² Theodore Prodromos wrote a discourse in which he praised Isaac for his excellence in war, poetry, philosophy, and his love of books.³³ In his Typikon of the Kosmosoteira monastery, which Isaac founded, he mentions a book which he had written in "verses, heroic, iambic and political (popular)," also letters and descriptions. Two specimens of his verse have been preserved, one headed Peri Pronoias Aporimaton, the other a lament of forty-one lines written in exile. He is also credited with three prose essays on Homer and a paraphrase of Aristeias.³⁴

Andronicos, Anna's younger brother, who was killed in the war against the Turks in 1129 during the reign of John II, was on his sister's side. She must have loved him dearly, for she mourns him with genuine sorrow as she writes of him as "the brother I held dearest" and laments his death when "he had just reached the most charming period of his life" (XV, 5, p. 403).

From Anna's description of Maria, whom she refers to as "my dearest sister," it would appear that this sister was also on Anna's side. Maria was married to Nicephoros, son of Constantine Euphorbenos Catacalon, whom Alexios had honored with the dignity of Sebastocrator (X, 3, p. 242). From the indifferent mention of Eudocia, her third sister may either have sided with John or stayed out of the family quarrel completely; she had her own sorrow to contend with. Eudocia had been married to Iasitas Constantinios who, from what Zonaras tells us, had treated his wife not as the daughter of a king; he had behaved toward her as a superior, and he quarreled often with his mother-in-law. Eudocia fell sick, and he forced her to retire to a convent.³⁵ Eudocia is credited with having written a poem which has been preserved.³⁶ As for her sister Theodora, married to Constantine, Zonaras informs us that her husband was statuesque in shape and form, but he came from a family "not of noble birth."³⁷ Anna says nothing about her, possibly because Theodora's husband was not of the nobility; despite Anna's dedication to learning and her recognition of achievement, she was haughty about noble birth.

We learn something of Anna's relationship to her sisters from the way she writes about their husbands. Nicephoros Catacalon, married to her sister Maria, receives high praise. "He knew how to brandish a spear and cover himself with a shield," she writes. "He was a marvel on horseback and a magnificent work of nature; he was strong in his piety to God and sweet and gracious to men" (X, 3, p. 242). We learn nothing from Anna about her brother's wives. About John's personal life we learn only that while her father was journeying to Thessalonica, "the first son of the prince John Porphyrogenitos was born at Balabista and a little girl was born at the same time" (XII, 4, p. 309).

Anna must have gotten along well with her husband's family. She writes favorably of Marianos Mavrocatacalon, married to one of her husband's sisters; he was "truly a very brave warrior …, a braver scion of very brave ancestors" (X, 3, p. 242). She also makes laudatory remarks about her husband's grandfather, the rebel Bryennios, whom her father captured. "Bryennios," she writes, "was a very clever warrior, as well as of most illustrious descent, conspicuous by height of stature, and beauty of face, and preeminent among his fellows by the weightiness of his judgment, and the strength of his arms" (I, 4, p. 13). Her husband's family naturally sided with Anna in her aspirations for the throne; they would have been delighted to see Nicephoros sharing the throne with Anna.

It would appear that Anna's relationship to those members of her family about whom she says little, or fails to mention, must have been distant, or they may have been on John's side. She seems to have been close to her paternal and maternal uncles, especially her uncle George Palaeologos, married to her mother's sister Anna. She admittedly learned many of the facts of her history from Palaeologos. But most of her accounts she heard from her father. What becomes evident is that Anna sought involvement in the affairs of state, not only because she was devoted to her parents and was equipped to help them, but also because she herself never completely lost hope during her father's lifetime that she might succeed him on the throne.

Last Illness of Alexios

For I was there myself by order of my mistress to adjudge the physicians' arguments, and I heard all they said. (XV, 11, p. 420)

The person who stands out most sharply in Anna's poignant account of her father's last illness is Anna herself, spending sleepless nights, standing watch over Alexios. It is the most three-dimensional portrait we have of her in a family group as she takes charge of things around her father's deathbed, arguing with the doctors about their different diagnoses and the varying treatments they suggested, her mother's oracular reliance on her knowledge of medicine, trying in her own way to alleviate the pain of the emperor, who was to Anna "the whole sun" and "the great lighthouse" which illuminated the world.

It is as if Anna had a doctor's chart before her at the moment of her writing, so empathic is her report of her father's condition. As she reports it, Alexios had been suffering from the wracking pains of gout for some time. Matters became very serious in the spring of 1118, when at a race track the emperor caught a bad cold, which developed into a rheumatic pain in his shoulder. At first his family saw no danger in this, but as the rheumatic attack spread to other parts of his body, they naturally became fearful, although, Anna observes, the majority of the physicians did not appreciate the danger that this threatened (XV, 11, p. 420). However, Alexios managed to recover from this attack. After a period of six months, "a deadly sickness took hold of him, caused probably by his deep despondency over daily business and the mass of public duties" (XV, 11, p. 420). The doctors could not diagnose the case, though they found "multifold irregularities" in every movement of the arteries. The most celebrated doctors of Constantinople were summoned; there was Nicolas, Callicles, poet and doctor; a friend of the Sebastos George Palaeologos; the eunuch Michael; and Michael Pantechnes, a friend of Theophylactos. All discussed her father's illness with Anna, unable to agree on the nature of the "humors" which, according to them, were the cause of the affliction which had struck the emperor. The condition of Alexios grew easier after an antidote of pepper, which gave the family new hope for his recovery, but this lasted only three or four days; his fits of suffocation attacked the lungs again; still the doctors could find no remedy for the disease, though they tried many things. They even moved the emperor from the large palace to the bright halls of Mangana Palace, where he could be more comfortable, but this did not help either. The picture that Anna paints of her mother during her father's last illness is that of a loving, grief-stricken wife,

spending a sleepless night with the Emperor, sitting behind him on the bed and supporting him in her arms and relieving his breathing somewhat… nursing him and continually changing his position, and devising all kinds of changes in the bedding. (XV, 11, p. 422)

We learn something more of Irene's bountiful nature when Anna tells us that her mother invoked the mercy of God upon the ailing Alexios and made numerous donations to the poor and sick:

When the Empress saw that the disease was gaining ground and she quite despaired of any human help, she made still more fervent intercessions to God on his behalf… and all those who were sick or confined in prison and worn out with suffering she made very rich by donations and invited them to offer prayers for the Emperor. (XV, 11, pp. 422-23)

Her sister Mary was there too, trying to ease her father's pain, giving him water to drink from a big goblet, so that drinking might not be too difficult for his inflamed palate; her sister Eudocia was also there, but all we learn about her is that "this was the third one, the Porphyrogenete" and that Eudocia had recently lost her husband and her garments were suitable for a funeral, which she could lend her mother after the death of Alexios.

What is most impressive in Anna's account is her knowledge of medicine and the authority she maintained, not only over her mother and sisters, but even over the doctors. She watched the movements of his pulse and studied his respiration (XV, 11, 3, p. 424). She describes the consultations of the doctors, their differences of opinion, the one advocating purgatives, the other forbidding them. About her own efforts she writes simply, "and yet God knows, I occupied myself diligently with the preparation of his food and brought it to him daily with my own hands and tried to make it all easy to swallow" (XV, 11, p. 423).

When they became aware that the final hour had come for Alexios and no one knew which way to turn, it was Anna to whom her mother often looked steadfastly, waiting for her "oracular decision as she had been wont to do at other critical moments," waiting for Anna's prophecy, making signs to tell her the state of her father's weakening pulse (XV, 11, p. 426). When Anna recognized that the pulse of the emperor had stopped, she tells us that she bowed her head and, exhausted and fainting, looked down to the ground and said nothing but clasped her hands over her face and stepped back and wept. The empress, who understood what that meant, "took off her royal veil and caught hold of a knife and cut off all her hair close to the skin and threw off the red shoes from her feet and demanded ordinary black sandals" (XV, 11, p. 426).

The only incident about her brother John that Anna adds to this scene is "Now the Emperor's successor had already gone away secretly to the house set apart for him, seeing the Emperor's … and hastened his going and hurried to the great palace!" (XV, 11, p. 425). This is all we learn about John during the last illness of Alexios. Anna makes no mention of her brother Isaac or Andronicos by name, nor any other male relatives who must surely have surrounded her father's deathbed. Had she done so she might have unwittingly revealed a little more of what actually happened during those last hours of her father's life.

Chalandon writes that Anna's account of what happened is inexact. Irene and Anna took a prominent part in the events which preceded and followed the death of Alexios. As he states, it is precisely their attitude which obliged John to take over the palace; it was proof that the legitimate heir had to preserve the crown which the ambitious envy of his sister sought to capture from him.³⁸

Here is what Nicetas Chionates writes of these last hours in the life of Alexios:

His son John, seeing his father near death, and knowing that his mother did not love him and that she wished to bestow the kingship on his sister, took into his confidence those of his relatives who were friendly to him and told them of his plans. The most reliable of these relatives was his brother Isaac. Unnoticed by his mother, John entered his father's bedroom, fell down beside him, as if about to break into tears, and stealthily removed the signet ring from his finger. There are some who say that he did this with the full knowledge of his father.³⁹

If we accept what Nicetas writes, then Anna and Empress Irene must surely have seen this; shocked, they must have tried to do something about it while the Emperor was still alive, make every effort to have him pronounce some last-minute decision. Nicetas reports further that when Empress Irene saw that matters were not proceeding according to her expectation,

She went to her husband who was lying on his bed, showing only weak signs of life, and throwing herself upon his body, began to inveigh loudly against her son "shedding tears like a black fountain" calling him a thief and accusing him of having designs on the throne, while his father was still alive, and of planning a rebellion. But her husband did not answer her, being naturally concerned with the more serious questions of how long he had to live, reflecting on his departure from this life which was not very far off, and directing his eyes toward the angels who receive and guide the souls. As the empress, unable to bear the conduct of her son, kept pressing her husband, Alexios, with a slight forced smile lifted his hands toward heaven. Perhaps he was pleased at her report and thanking God for what had happened; or, as he glanced at his wife with a smile, he may have been about to make a taunting remark to the one who had the heart to speak of the succession at a time when his soul was about to leave his body; or, he may have been begging God's forgiveness for having wandered from the path of righteousness. The woman doubtless thought her husband was pleased with what she had told him. She felt entirely cheated of her previous hopes and utterly disappointed of all promises. With a deep groan she said "My husband, throughout your active life, you surpassed all men in every sort of wiliness; you were always a master of doubletalk and even now, as you are about to quit life, you have not changed at all."

"This then," says Nicetas, "is what happened there."⁴⁰

As can be seen, this dramatic account by the Byzantine historian is radically different from Anna's recollection of the last hours in her father's life and John's accession. Zonaras also believes that Alexios died with a smile on his lips and that John took the signet ring off the hand of his father with the approval of the dying man.⁴¹

The mortal remains of Alexios were carried the next morning in a solemn procession to the Christ Philanthropos monastery which he had founded. John did not go to the funeral, but clung to the royal palace "as polyps do to rocks."⁴² He had to be prudent about running the risk of a confrontation with those who coveted the throne, but he did send most of his relatives to his father's funeral.

Alexios died on August 15, 1118. He had reigned over the Byzantine Empire for thirty-seven years, four months, and fifteen days. John II was thirty years old when he ascended the throne. Anna was thirty-five. At his accession, John II Comnenos placed Irene and Anna in the convent of Kecharitomene.

Anna's Plot to Assassinate John II (1118-1143)

He was the best type of all the Emperors from the family of the Comneni who had ever sat upon the Roman throne. (Nicetas Chionates, Historia ed. I Bekker, Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae, pp. 64-65)

The Alexiad offers no information about what took place after John hastened out of the Palace Mangana where his father lay dying, with Alexios's signet ring securely placed on his own finger. Again the reader must turn to other Byzantine historians if he wishes to learn what happened directly after the death of Alexios. As Nicetas Chionates and other Byzantine historians recount these events, John with his troops, his brother Isaac, and other relatives who favored his accession proceeded to the great palace. At the same time, he sent word to the patriarch announcing the death of Alexios and asked to be crowned immediately. From what they write, he seems to have found no obstacle there. John gained entrance to the great palace but not before a struggle with the Varangian Guard, which forced his followers to lift the doors off the hinges. Alexios died during the night, but John did not budge from the great palace once he gained entrance. He even disregarded his mother's invitation to attend his father's funeral, "not because he was unwilling to do honor to his father," writes Nicetas, "but because he was afraid of his rivals who were still coveting his throne."⁴³ The family was openly divided now. His sister Anna, his mother, Bryennios, and his brother Andronicos were on one side; John, Isaac, and his followers were on the other. John waited to see who would make the next move.

Nothing happened directly after Alexios was laid to rest, although the quiet which followed was the calm before the storm. John started his rule a few days later, following in his father's footsteps, and honoring with titles and dignities all those who had supported his ascension to the throne. His brother Isaac became Sebastocrator, which made him "an equal partner of his throne and his table."⁴⁴ It was the way his uncle Isaac had been honored during his father's reign. All seemed to be going forward as John had hoped.

But the other side had not ceased in its plans to overthrow John. Less than a year after John's reign had begun, Anna headed a conspiracy to assassinate her brother and place her husband on the throne. The conspirators chose to execute their coup de grâce when John II was spending the night at the Hippodrome of the Philopation, one of the imperial residences outside the capital near the Golden Gate, where the conspirators had succeeded in bribing the guards. Bryennios was to give the signal for the conspirators to storm the residence and assassinate John.

But Nicephoros Bryennios, the man whom Anna admired for his literary pursuits and his love of books, was evidently less greedy for power and did not wish to carry out his wife's planned conspiracy against her brother. Curiously enough, neither his wife nor their conspirators detected Bryennios's true feelings about the matter; his quiet resolve not to execute his wife's violent plan he kept to himself until after the conspirators were caught and the whole plot was disclosed to Emperor John II. Nicetas writes that the plot failed "because of the dull and sluggish Bryennios who was in the country and forgot his arrangements with the conspirators."⁴⁵ It hardly seems possible that Nicephoros would have forgotten so important an assignment. Enraged at her husband's failure to appear at the post which would have given the conspirators the signal agreed on, Anna lashed out at her husband and at nature for having made her a woman and her husband a man.

When the plot was discovered, the property of all the conspirators was confiscated, though most of it was later restored. Anna's property went to John's Grand Domestic John Axuchos, a Persian by nationality and a child prisoner whom Alexios had captured during the siege of Nicaea and raised with his son John. Axuchos, an able administrator in the reign of John II, was also interested in Christian metaphysics and was in close touch with contemporary scholars and theologians. Axuchos refused Anna's property and urged John to return it to her; although he admitted that Anna was guilty, he said that she was still the sister "of a good ruler who would regain once more by her repentance and with the help of nature, the love which she had lost through her folly."⁴⁶

Anna's career at the Byzantine court ended with her father's death. From her complete silence on the events which took place during her brother's and her nephew Manuel's reign, which followed that of John II, it would appear that she no longer mixed in political or military events or any other public happenings at the imperial court. After the accession of John II she lived most often at the convent Kecharitomene. It was at this convent that she wrote her Alexiad which starts at 1069 and ends with her father's death.

Anna and Her Family During the Reign of John II

But all that was most desirable vanished together with the Emperor, and his efforts were all rendered vain after his departure by the stupidity of his successors to the throne. (XIV, 3, 3, p. 371)

The return of her confiscated property did not lessen Anna's hatred of her brother John. From the above state ment, it can be seen that Anna did not think much of her brother's rule. So far as she was concerned, her father who was "more solicitous of the universal welfare than his own," had failed in his objective. "For after him," she writes, "things were different and everything was turned into confusion" (XIV, 3, 3, pp. 370-71).

Despite what Anna writes, contemporary historians regard John II as one of the greatest Byzantine emperors. Both Greek and Latin chroniclers agree that John, who earned the surname of Caloyan (John the Good) merited the general respect of the populace because of his high moral qualities. Nicetas Chionates wrote that everyone praised John "as the finest of all the Romans who sat on the throne."⁴⁷ John lowered taxation and abolished capital punishment, which was unprecedented; he never mutilated anyone guilty of a crime.⁴⁸ In 1123 the Patzinaks, who had remained quiet ever since their defeat in 1091 at Lebunium, crossed the Danube and spread over the country north of Mount Haemus. John annihilated them completely. In memory of this victory John set up a trophy and even instituted a special "Patzinak celebration" which, according to Nicetas Chionates, "was still celebrated to that day in commemoration of the victory and in gratitude to God."⁴⁹ Ostrogorsky reports that in view of the danger of Norman power in south Italy, John II formed an entente first with Lothair of Germany; then, after the latter's death, with Conrad III. Pisa was also drawn into this anti-Norman alliance, and in 1136, John confirmed the trading privileges which his father once granted it.⁵⁰ John II reigned successfully for a quarter of a century until his death of a poisoned wound in 1143. During his reign, Byzantium regained most of its former boundaries. Cilicia was conquered; Byzantium was enlarged by the annexation of Armenia Minor, and after a short siege, reached the borders of Antioch, which surrendered to John.⁵¹ John II founded the monastery of Pantocrator in 1136, with many charitable institutions; he instituted a hospital in it with fifty beds, a consultation room with a pharmacy annexed to it, an almshouse for twenty-four old men, well equipped with nurses and surgeons. It had three churches.⁵² When John II died, his heir found an even stronger empire than John received at the death of his father.

Anna's brief listing of the campaigns fought by her brother John reveals nothing of the significance of these campaigns for Byzantium; actually, they were outstanding victories for John II. It is John and not his father whom historians credit for the complete annihilation of the Patzinaks in 1123, although his father did win a tremendous victory against the Patzinaks in 1091 at Lebunium.

Anna mentions John three times to state three facts about him: his birth and the twins born to John and his wife Princess Prisca in 1104; and she includes John's name officially in the treaty between Alexios and Bohemond, which ended the last struggle between them in which the Norman repeated his pledges of faith to Alexios and his "thrice-longed for son, the Emperor and Lord John Porphyrogenitos." She could not very well omit John's right to succession from the official document which she quotes verbatim and in its entirety.

From what we learn of John's forgiving nature, he may even have attempted a reconciliation with his sister. We know that Andronicos, who had openly sided with Anna, repented. John, who believed that "a strong thing is affection interwoven with kinship," forgave him, and Andronicos again lived at the court with his brother, continuing to serve John until his death in 1129. Nicephoros Bryennios also lived at the palace, and, as Anna herself states in her Preface, her husband accompanied his brother-in-law on several of his campaigns and held high office in his administration. John gladly forgave Isaac after he tried to stir up foreign enemies against him. John's home life was conducive to friendship; he and his wife had eight children, four daughters and four sons, whom John took with him on several of his campaigns. Princess Prisca, who had changed her name to Irene when John ascended the throne, was praised for her modesty and charity. Both she and her husband constructed the monastery of Pantocrator. Irene died on August 13, 1134 in Bithynia; on her deathbed she took the monastic habit and the name of Xene.⁵³

Anna's two sons and two daughters were treated kindly by their uncle. John II had Prodromos compose the already mentioned Epithalamium extolling the virtues of his nephew Alexios, who had married the daughter of the king of Georgia, David II, and of John, who married Theodora.⁵⁴ Both marriages were celebrated by their uncle with nuptial festivities. But so far as is known, John and Anna were never reconciled.

Death of Nicephoros Bryennios; Anna's Retreat to Convent Kecharitomene; the Writing of the Alexiad

He returned to the Queen of Cities suffering from an internal tumor caused by his incessant sufferings. (Preface, 3, p. 3)

The only cloud in Anna's otherwise happy marriage was her husband's inability to fulfill her conspiratorial plans to overthrow her brother John, although this disappointment appears nowhere in the Alexiad. She is full of praise for her husband; she writes proudly of his military successes during her father's reign, which he continued in the reign of her brother John, although Anna has no heart to give us any more than a listing of the campaigns which ended his life so unexpectedly. She offers no historical or military analysis of these campaigns.

Anna was totally indifferent to the reigns of her brother and her nephew Manuel, though she survived her brother by a number of years and lived several years after her nephew's succession to the throne. But even in her cursory listing of her husband's last campaigns, we get a picture of Nicephoros Bryennios as a responsible man, who thought little of his own welfare.

In reliving the last days of her husband's life, when he returned home seriously ill from one of the campaigns with her brother John, Anna acquaints us with the probable causes of his illness, the endless discomfort of a soldier's life, his many expeditions, or again his overwhelming anxiety over her and their children. Her soul is torn to pieces, and even the memory of their last scene together overwhelms her soul with dizziness and tears blind her eyes; she wonders how she has been able to survive so much (Preface, 4, p. 4).

When Bryennios returned to the capital so gravely ill, Anna must have nursed him with the same devotion and skill that she displayed during her father's last illness, although she says nothing of that. She tells us only that her husband was anxious to tell the tragic story of his adventure. She forbade it not only because he was unable to do so because of his disease but because she feared that the effort might cause the tumor to burst. Once again, we have another instance of her knowledge of medicine. Nicephoros died in 1138, when he was fifty-seven years old.

Anna's Last Years

We clearly owe much to the drive and inspiration of this astonishing lady whose memory is enshrined not only in the immortal history of her father's reign, but also in the austere volume of the Commentaria Graeca in Aristotelem. (Robert Browning, "An Unpublished Funeral Oration of Anna Comnena," by Georgios Tornikes, p. 10)

From what Tornikes says of Anna, whom he refers to constantly as "basilissa," her greatest intellectual fulfillment and her contribution to letters came after the death of her father and more particularly during the years of her enforced retirement from public life. From this account, it was certainly not as pathetic as Anna makes it sound. The convent Kecharitomene, overlooking the Golden Horn, gave our historian the serenity she probably never enjoyed in the imperial palace. Although she did not reside there permanently until the death of her husband, it was there that she made her greatest contribution, not only as a historian, but as an educator and as a woman of letters. It was at the convent Kecharitomene that Anna intensified her intellectual pursuits. Tornikes tells us that Anna gathered about her a philosophic circle whose work she inspired and directed.⁵⁵ In particular we learn that she encouraged Aristotelian commentators; Tornikes mentions the name of Michael of Ephesus whom he himself had heard speak of the basilissa as the cause of damage to his eyes, because he had to work nights without sleep on the commentaries of the works of Aristotle which Anna supervised.⁵⁶ Michael of Ephesus wrote commentaries on zoological and anthropological works and on the Rhetoric and the Politics.

Anna and her daughter Irene must surely have enjoyed the privileges at the convent Kecharitomene set in her mother's Typikon for imperial princesses and nuns. Yet from the way Anna writes, she felt like an outsider, despite the dignity and ease of her surroundings and despite the scholarly group who revered her. "For the powers that be have condemned us to this ridiculous position so that we should not be seen, but be a general object of abhorrence" (XIV, 7, 3, p. 382). Anna felt the greatest sense of belonging in her father's imperial court, participating in the comings and goings in the palace, basking in the adoration of her parents, especially of her mother, admired by the aristocracy who looked upon her as the most scintillating woman of the Byzantine nobility. Tornikes states that Anna took the veil at her deathbed. Both Browning and Darrouzès are inclined to date Anna's death to the years 1153-55, from the probable date of the delivery of Tornikes's funeral oration.

…..

Her Contribution to History

The Alexiad is the first great work of the Hellenic Renaissance which starts with the Comneni and ends with the Palaeologi. (Karl Krumbacher, Geschichte der Byzantinischen Litteratur, Munich, 1897, p. 270)

Anna's Hellenic account of her father's reign is an invaluable historical document despite her instances of unhistorical partiality. From the first edition which crawled out of obscurity five centuries after it was written, the Alexiad has been gaining recognition, until now it has come full circle to fill a gap in Byzantine history and correct a distorted perspective of the history of Byzantium, created chiefly by Gibbons's Decline and Fall and by Sir Walter Scott's ridiculous portrayal of Anna in his Count Robert of Paris.

Probably Anna's most important contribution to history is her account of her First Crusade, for the reasons already stated. Invaluable for the student of Byzantine history is Anna's detailed account of the Turkish incursions on Byzantium, especially those of the Patzinaks, for which Anna is our only source.⁵⁷ Chalandon notes that the greater part of the events which occurred in Asia Minor are known to us only through the Alexiad.⁵⁸ Her dramatic description of the Muslim raids convey to the reader the perils that beset her father from the very outset of his reign as Seljuks, Patzinaks, Uzes, and other Turkish tribes, threatened not only the frontiers of the empire but the very walls of Constantinople. Anna knew the mentality of the Turks; she was familiar with their character as a people; she writes of their domestic quarrels, their rivalries, their methods of warfare which her father understood so well that he could advise the crusaders how to do battle with them. Indeed, it was his understanding, his close associa tion with the Turks, his ability to maneuver with them when he needed them as allies, and when they fought against him, that lengthened the life of Byzantium and helped to preserve the heritage of the Greeks for another three centuries. "The happy results of his reign will follow him under his son John …" writes Chalandon.⁵⁹

Under Alexios's strategic and diplomatic leadership, the frontiers of Byzantium were extended both in Europe and in Asia. "After thirty-seven arduous years as ruler, Alexios had greatly strengthened the Empire and restored its glory," writes Vryonis, "having found Byzantium virtually destroyed, deprived of its fairest provinces, and with the foes at the door. Through sheer ability, he defeated the Normans, destroyed the Patzinaks, exploited the Crusaders and forced the Turks to retreat."⁶⁰

In Anna's portrayal of life at the Byzantine court in which she grew up and resided until the death of her father, we have a first-hand report of the court intrigues of the imperial family, as well as their fierce solidarity in support of their vested interests; the rivalries, the diplomatic moves, and the rebellions of several members of the feudal aristocracy, each vying for power and seizure of the Byzantine throne. The Alexiad presents lively pen portraits not only of the subject of her history and her mother Empress Irene but also of her uncle Isaac; the Mother of the Comneni; her uncle George Palaeologos; and even of the enemy Bohemond, the Frankish count for whom, according to some Byzantine historians, Anna felt a sinister attraction. We get to know their way of life at the court, their morals, their ideals of learning, as well as her own, the religious climate of her father's reign, the heresies of the time. Anna's report of her imperial life as a princess in a feudal society is a primary source for her age, written by a woman well qualified as a distinguished, cultured, and educated member of the military aristocracy of the Byzantine court. But "almost as far down as the nineteenth century a woman as an historian was indeed a rara avis, " writes one critic, "when therefore a princess arose in one of the most momentous movements in human history she surely deserves the respectful attention of posterity."⁶¹

The authentic documents that Anna records verbatim are particularly valuable. The first Golden Bull she records in her history is the one her father issued entrusting her grandmother Anna Dalassena with the single-handed running of the imperial government when he was forced to be away from the capital (III, 6, pp. 83-84). In the same book Anna also records one of the letters Alexios wrote to the king of Germany in which he tries to bring about an alliance of marriage between his brother's son John and the daughter of the king of Germany in an attempt to join him in the war he was waging against Robert Guiscard (III, 10, pp. 91-93). In Book VIII, Anna gives us two letters written by her father after he learned from the archbishop of Bulgaria that his nephew John, Duke of Dyrrachium and the Sebastocrator's son, was accused of rebellion. One of these letters he addressed to John himself asking for his presence; the other letter was addressed to leading men of Dyrrachium to arrest John if he proved recalcitrant or refused to obey (VIII, 7, pp. 208-9). Anna records the letters exchanged between Bohemond and her father concerning the oaths and promises he and the Frankish counts had taken, and which they had broken; the letter in which Bohemond blames the emperor for breaking his promise to follow the crusaders with a large army is also included (XI, 8, pp. 290-91). In Book XIII, Anna gives the reader the longest document between Bohemond and her father, written in 1109, invalidating their first agreement because he had declared war against Alexios and stipulating the terms in detail of the new Golden Bull officially signed in red ink (XIII, 12, pp. 348-58).

One Chrysobull issued by Alexios which Anna does not include is a serious omission. This is the one entitled "Guildsmen and Merchants may not take the oath in their homes." Vryonis, who brings this to our attention, is not certain of the date of this decree, but he notes that it was pronounced in a dispute over certain merchandise between two merchants and a woman named Anna. "When the former were asked to testify under oath," writes Vryonis, "they demanded to take the oath in their homes rather than in a public court, claiming this prerogative on the grounds that they were both senators."⁶² This Chrysobull reveals the democratization process which was going on in the reign of Alexios, despite the feudalization of the empire. Obviously, Anna was not interested in the democratization of the Byzantine Empire.

Anna says nothing about her father as a writer, which would have added a new dimension to Alexios not only as a ruler but as a father and as a man. There are extant twenty-four imperial novels and golden bulls written by Alexios, five of which, according to Buckler, deal with female rights and duties.⁶³ Also extant are two poems to his son John, the first of which consists of four hundred and twenty lines, and the second, an unfinished poem which consists of eighty-one lines. There is still another poem of one hundred iambic twelve-syllable lines headed "Prayer of the Emperor Alexios," which is contained in a manuscript at the Bodleian Library.⁶⁴ Alexios wrote several theological treatises against heretics. His Muses, written a short time before his death, were published in 1913. They were written in iambic meter in the form of an "exhortation' and dedicated to John. "These Muses," writes Vasiliev, "were a kind of political will, concerned not only with abstract problems of morality, but also with many contemporary historical events, such as the First Crusade."⁶⁵

Her greatest contribution to history, of course, is her three-dimensional portrait of her father as a monarch and as a military strategist. It is a panegyric of Alexios, inspired by Homer's epic, yet it is also a realistic portrayal of a monarch who was beset by enemies both domestic and foreign. Despite his ruses and dissimulations, Alexios was also a man blessed with a sense of philanthropia. His most significant contribution in this direction is his Orphanage about which Anna writes fully and without exaggeration; other contemporary Byzantine historians also have praised Alexios for the Orphanage. Zonaras writes that Alexios had renovated the Orphanage and placed in it numerous old people in need of care; furthermore, he built within it residences for nuns and monks and a school for orphans or poor children. He placed teachers, educators, and provisions for all of them.⁶⁶

Modern Byzantine historians also recognize the greatness of Alexios. "He was a man of talent," writes Chalandon; "he stopped for a time the slow disintegration of the diverse elements of which the Empire was formed."⁶⁷ And Krumbacher states, "In spite of all defects these memoirs of the daughter about the father remain as one of the most eminent works of medieval Greek historiography."⁶⁸ Indeed, one might add without exaggeration, that Anna's status in Byzantine historiography has now extended beyond the borders of Byzantium. There is no comparable work by any woman Eastern or Western. On the whole, her Alexiad is objectively conceived and objectively executed.

Evaluation

The Alexiad of Anna Comnena, daughter of Alexios, is without doubt the most remarkable of the works of Byzantine historiography, not only as a historic source of her father's reign, but clearly for its literary worth. (Radoslav Katicic, "Anna i Komnene, Kai O omeros," Epeteris Etairias Byzantinon Spoudon, Vol. 27 [Athens, 1957], p. 213)

As Anna has repeatedly informed the reader in several sections of her history, she derived part of her history from her own memory, part from the men who had been soldiers when her father ascended the throne, and who accompanied the emperor on his campaigns. These she valued because they were "simple in diction, incurious and strictly truthful and displayed no style and were free of all rhetorical pretensions" (XIV, 7, 3, p. 382). She also tells the reader that she gathered part of her material during the reign of her nephew Manuel, son of John II, "when all flatteries and lies about his grandfather had expired together" (XIV, 7, 3, p. 381).

Anna naturally learned the facts of her early childhood from her parents and older relatives closest to her. When she was old enough to accompany her parents on their expeditions, she herself was an eyewitness to the events that took place. As has already been stated, aside from oral sources, she also used written sources, as state archives, diplomatic correspondence, and imperial decrees. There were also enough people still living during the years when she was writing her Alexiad who had known her father and informed her of his doings. By all standards of historiography, then, it can safely be said that the Alexiad is a primary source of her father's reign.

Anna's account reflects the prevailing standards of her age and of her class. She was infinitely more cultured than most of her father's aristocratic subjects; she was certainly the most enlightened woman of her age. She would naturally be inured to use the cultural and Christian rationale of her class. Her point of view is feudal, military; it represents the slave-owning aristocracy and the wealthy landowning class of Asia Minor to which both her parents and the Bryenni family belonged. The reader will find no mention in Anna's history of the con dition of the common people, or the social unrest and the political uprisings which occurred during her father's reign. She seems to have no interest whatever in the other classes of Byzantium. Anna's account of her father's reign is palace oriented, woven out of the fabric of her training and her environment.

In part, her approach was influenced by the Greek historians Herodotos, Thucydides, and Polybios, whose work she knew well. Herodotos wrote his History in order that the deeds of men might not be effaced by time nor remain unsung, which Anna states as her own purpose in her Preface (I, 1, p. 1). Thucydides wrote of causes and events that he either saw himself or heard from the testimony of others, which he carefully examined. This Anna does with meticulous honesty. Polybios felt it his greatest duty as a historian to be impartial, which is Anna's sincere intention as she repeatedly avows.

But Anna's approach to history is also a blend of the Byzantine view of religion. If the Byzantine view of religion was one of Providential design, then Anna leans more heavily on that side, for the predominant tone of the Alexiad is a religious one. Providence appears in almost every page of her history. In essence, however, her approach to history is most significantly identified with what has come to be known as the "cult of personality." For Anna, the destiny of Byzantium was shaped chiefly by the force of one great man: her father Alexios I, emperor of the Romans, who was destined by Providence to restore Byzantium.

Anna's method was one of simple comparison. As she herself tells us, she compared the accounts of the old men, what they had told her, what she remembered from often having heard the accounts both from her father and from her paternal and maternal uncles, and what she herself had witnessed. From all these sources, she says, she wove the whole fabric of her truthful history (XIV, 7, 3, p. 382).

As has been stated elsewhere, one of her sources to which she refers the reader on five different occasions is her husband's unfinished history Hyle Historias, which she claims is fuller than her own. The Hyle ends in 1079 because of the untimely death of Bryennios. In her Preface, she erroneously states that her husband's history begins with the reign of Romanos IV Diogenes instead of the reign of Emperor Isaac Comnenos, first of the Comneni dynasty to rule Byzantium. Buckler has noted that the opening of the second chapter of her first book is almost a paraphrase of Book II, Chapter 21, of the Hyle, and even more closely copied are the three speeches put into her father's mouth in the same episode. Her report of the rebels Bryennios and Basilacios are found in Book IV of her husband's history.⁶⁹

For Byzantine events before her father's lifetime, Anna referred to the Chronographia of Michael Psellos, "prince of philosophers." The Chronographia covers a period of one hundred years, beginning with the acces sion of Basil II (976) and ending with the accession of Nicephoros Botaneiates (1077). She also used the Byzantine chronicler and theologian Joannes Zonaras, who lived in Constantinople where he served as commander of the Imperial Guard and was private secretary to Alexios I. His work Epitomi Historiai (a compendium of history in eighteen books) extends from the creation to the death of Alexios in 1118. Anna also used the Synopsis Istorion of Joannes Scylitzes, a history of the Eastern Roman Empire covering the years 811 to 1057. The Historia of Michael Attaleiates (1079-80), which covers the period 1034-79, is another of her sources. For her reports on the heretical trials she referred to Euthymios Zigabenos's Dogmatic Panoply, which she advises us to read for a fuller knowledge of these reports.

One cannot omit from this evaluation of Anna's history her filial devotion, which understandably colors her history, despite her often-repeated avowals to write an account of her father's reign based strictly on historical facts. As Diehl has asserted, "the Alexiad is less the title of a history book than the title of an epic poem, written to celebrate a legendary hero."⁷⁰ This is not to say that Anna makes no sincere effort to be impartial about her father's deeds; indeed, considering the three decades which transpired between his death and her writing of the Alexiad, she recounts facts with unusual objectivity and accuracy. She has been seriously criticized for omitting all mention of the role she and her mother played during those last moments in her father's life, although one can understand the reason. There is a wide discrepancy between what she writes of these last hours in the life of her father and the report of Nicetas Chionates already noted. On the whole, however, the Alexiad is an honest appraisal of her father's reign and a frank statement of her own Byzantine beliefs.

A word must be added about Anna as a writer. In the main, the Alexiad is written in Attic Greek. Basically, our porphyrogenete adheres to classic tradition and form. She herself has informed us that she carried her study of Greek to the highest pitch" (Preface, P. 1). Zonaras states that she had "a precisely atticizing language."⁷¹ In other words, Anna made an attempt to imitate the Attic, and in large part it is accurate Attic. As Antoniades states, Anna was proud of her eclectic training and she was therefore, not so much concerned about reflecting the language of her epoch, as she was of reflecting the Homeric, Platonic, and Thucydidean language which she used with great facility.⁷² Thucydides influenced her most; it must be added, however, that her style of writing was also influenced by two Byzantine writers: Ioannes Epiphaneus and Theophylaktos Simokattes.⁷³ Haritonides states that her language is archaic but not without a mixture of the spoken language of the day.⁷⁴

One cannot possibly identify all of Anna's unclassical deviations in a few pages. Buckler, who has probably made the most detailed analysis of Anna's writings, divides Anna's unclassical words and words unclassically used in three categories: non-Latin, old Latin, and medieval, but concludes that there are few non-Latin and medieval words in the Alexiad.⁷⁵

Most numerous are Anna's old Latin words, which had long been assimilated into the Greek language. On four random pages of Book XI of the Alexiad (Leib III, pp. 7, 8, 11, 12), I found komites (counts); courtins (curtains); komitouras (companies); Frangikou fossaton (Frankish boundary) from the Latin Fussatum meaning boundary; kastellion (castle from the Latin castellum).

Anna's abundant use of old words with new meanings may be logically traced to the koine, the language which was used in Greece from 323 B.C. to 330 A.D. The koine identified with the New Testament became the standard in Byzantine learning and writing. Living in a Christian epoch, profoundly indoctrinated in the Orthodox faith, Anna would naturally use the meanings of words found in the koine. As Anna uses the word ecclesia, it means church, not the classical assembly; litourgia means liturgy, not public service to the state; episcopos in Byzan tine as well as modern Greek means a bishop, not an overseer; monachos in Attic means alone; in modern Greek it means alone and monk; as Anna used the word it means a monk. In the Attic, diabolos meant a slanderer; as Anna uses the word it means a devil.

What makes the Alexiad so difficult to read are the grammatical deviations from the classic, only a few of which can be considered here. In the post-classical epoch, a whole list of nouns took the neuter gender and the ending ion. For example, Anna uses the neuter kaukion (chalice) instead of the classical masculine kaukos; the neuter margaritarion (pearl) replaces masculine margaritis (Leib I, p. 135). Antoniades notes that these words refer to the gifts that Alexios sent the king of Alamania, which are the "bibelots" of a Christian period, and Anna cannot help but use them as they are heard in their daily lives.⁷⁶ In the word mosuna (wooden tower) (Leib III, p. 9), Anna uses the neuter instead of the classical masculine; she uses the Latin word bukina (from the Latin bucina meaning trumpet) as a neuter noun instead of the classical form of the masculine or feminine (Leib III, p. 12).

There are syntactical deviations from the Attic. For example, the word ephevron (discovered), a second aorist in the classical language appears as ephevrosan, which is a first aorist (Leib III, p. 192). Both Antoniades and Buckler agree that as Anna uses the word sozousan, which is the present participle feminine accusative singular in the classical, and meant saving, it is nearer to the modern Greek sonei meaning it is enough.⁷⁷ Anna writes of the Roman army not being equal sozousan even to a small part of the barbarian forces (Leib II, p. 88). She speaks of her father's troops amounting only to a small part of Robert's forces dynameis mede to polloston ton tou Rombertou sozousas (saving not even a fraction of Robert's forces) (Leib I, p. 146). And again, she writes of forces which were equal to only a minimal part of the forces which were there, mede to polloston tes epikatalambanouses dynameos sozontas (saving not even the smallest fraction of the occupying power) (Leib II, p. 79). Anna uses the phrase kai tas sozousas apololekotas elpidas, which Leib translates as having lost all saving hope (Leib II, p. 143).

These are only a few of the deviations that are found in the Alexiad which make it extremely difficult to read. For this reason, probably more than any other, Anna's "purist" style of writing has been severely criticized. Krumbacher implies that Anna Comnena used the mummified language found in the writings of her age.⁷⁸ This was probably best explained by Dawkins, who classifies it as a mixture of the classic forms of the written tradition as part of the ordinary spoken Greek of the day. The koine standardized the Greek language, but "it inevitably produced a certain deadness, as learning and literature became the close preserve of trained scholars rather than a field open to all comers."⁷⁹

What should not be overlooked, it seems to me, for a fair appraisal of Anna both as a historiographer and as a writer, is that she is the first and only woman who wrote history in Byzantium. N. Iorga feels that "taken as a whole, the Alexiad is the very tableau of the Byzantine Empire under Alexios I and Anna without doubt has fulfilled the difficult task she assigned to herself."⁸⁰ Anna achieved her purpose in her portrayal of her father as a Byzantine emperor whose military strategy extended the survival of the Hellenic heritage for at least three centuries.

Notes

¹ "Quaternion"—the quaternion of learning had two divisions: the quadrivium and the trivium. In medieval universities, the quadrivium embraced geometry, astronomy, arithmetic and music; the trivium embraced grammar, logic and rhetoric; both of these formed the three years' course between the taking of the B. A. and the M. A. New Standard Dictionary, Funk and Wagnalls, pp. 2023 and 2569.

² Prodromos, "Poem on the Death of Theodora," in Ed. Kurtz, "Unedierte Texte," B. Z. XVI (Leipzig, 1907), p. 88, lines 43-45.

³ Prodromos, "Epithalamium" in (Migne's) P. G. (Paris, 1864), Vol. 133, col. 1401.

⁴ Ioannes Zonaras, Epitome Historiarum (Leipzig, 1868-75), Vol. 4, XVIII, p. 251.

⁵ Acominatos (Nicetas) Chionates, "Preface" History of John Comnenos, unpublished translation by Procope S. Costas, p. 12.

⁶ Jean Darrouzès, "Discours Sur La Mort de la Porphyrogenétè Kyra Anna La Kaissarissa" in Georges et Demetrios Tornikes Lettres et Discours (Paris, 1970) p. 231.

⁷ Demetrios Dematrakos, Mega Lexikon Ellinikis Glossis (Athens, 1959), Vol. 8, p. 7053.

⁸ Steven Runciman, "Education and Learning," Byzantine Civilization (London, 1933) p. 230.

⁹ Darrouzès, op. cit., p. 243.

¹⁰Ibid, p. 263.

¹¹ Buckler, op. cit., pp. 175, 197.

¹² Radoslav Kati i, "I Archaiomatheia kai to Epikon Pnevma eis tin Alexiada tis Annis tis Komninis," in Epetiris Etaireias Byzantinon Spoudon (Athens, 1959), Vol. 29, pp. 81-86.

¹³ Darrouzès, op. cit., pp. 285-93.

¹⁴ Buckler, op. cit., p. 194.

¹⁵ Nicetas Chionates states that Alexios is made to call his son-in-law rather scornfully a Macedonian. Costas, op. cit., p. 6.

¹⁶ Ed. Kurtz, "Prologos eis tin diataxin tis Kaisarissis Kyras Annis os par ekeinis ekdothis," "Unedierte texte aus der Zeit des Kaisers Johannes Komnenus," in Byzantinische Zeitschrift XVI (Leipzig, 1907) p. 100

¹⁷ J. Segar, "Nikephoros Bryennios," in Byz. Hist, der 10ten u. 11ten Jahrh. I, pp. 14-17, apud Buckler, op. cit., p. 33 and 33, n. 3.

¹⁸ Zonaras, op. cit., 4, XVIII, 22, p. 240.

¹⁹ Grégoire, op. cit., "La Famille Bryenne," pp. 466-68.

²⁰Ibid.

²¹ Grégoire, op. cit., "Preface," p. 475.

²² Zonaras, op. cit., 4, XVIII, 24, pp. 246-47.

²³ Costas, op. cit., p. 5.

²⁴ Prodromos (Migne's), P. G. Vol. 133, col. 1399.

²⁵ Kurtz, op. cit., p. 100.

²⁶ "Typikon," op. cit., Vol. 127, col. 1116.

²⁷ Prodromos, "On the Death of Theodora," in Kurtz, op. cit., pp. 87-93.

²⁸ Zonaras, op. cit., 4, XVIII, 28, p. 256.

²⁹ Frederick Chalandon, Jean Comnène 1118-1143 et Manuel Comnène 1143-1180 (Paris, 1912), Vol. I, p. 5.

³⁰ Costas, op. cit., pp. 5-6.

³¹Ibid., p. 9.

³² Th. I. Uspensky, "The Constantinopolitan Code of Seraglio," Transactions of the Russian Archaeological Institute at Constantinople XII (1907), 30-31, apud Vasiliev, op. cit., p. 490 and 490, n. 352.

³³ Theodore Prodromos, "Os Apo tou Porphyrogenitou Kyrou Isaakiou tou Komnenou," in Kurtz, op. cit., pp. 107-8.

³⁴ Buckler, op. cit., p. 9 and p. 9, nn. 5, 6, 7; also cf. Kurtz, op. cit., pp. 104ff.

³⁵ Zonaras, op. cit., 4, XVIII, 22, p. 241.

³⁶ Rosprawy Akad. Umiejet wydzial filol. (Krakow) Ser. II, XXI, 1903, p. 360, apud Buckler, op. cit., pp. 5-6 and p. 6, n. 1.

³⁷ Zonaras, op. cit., 4, XVIII, 22, p. 241.

³⁸ F. Chalandon, Essai sur le Règne d'Alexis I^er Comnène, 1081-1118 (Paris, 1900), pp. 275-76.

³⁹ Costas, op. cit., pp. 6-7.

⁴⁰Ibid., pp. 7-8.

⁴¹ Zonaras, op. cit., 4, XVIII, 28, p. 257.

⁴² Costas, op. cit., p. 9.

⁴³Ibid., p. 8.

⁴⁴Ibid., p. 9.

⁴⁵Ibid, p. 12.

⁴⁶Ibid.

⁴⁷ Acominatos (Nicetas) Chionates, Historia, ed. Bekker, Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae pars. 14 (Bonn, 1835), pp. 63-64.

⁴⁸ Runciman, op. cit., p. 106.

⁴⁹ Chionates, op. cit., p. 23.

⁵⁰ Dölger, Reg. 1312 apud Ostrogorsky, op. cit., p. 337 and p. 337, n. 1.

⁵¹ Vasiliev, op. cit., p. 415.

⁵² F. Chalandon, Jean Comnène 1118-1143 et Manuel Comnène 1143-1180 (Paris, 1912), Vol. I, pp. 32-34.

⁵³Ibid., p. 11.

⁵⁴Ibid., pp. 16-17.

⁵⁵ Darrouzès, op. cit., p. 282.

⁵⁶Ibid.

⁵⁷Buckler, op. cit., p. 231.

⁵⁸ Chalandon, op. cit., p. 100.

⁵⁹Ibid, p. 323.

⁶⁰ Vryonis, op. cit., p. 141.

⁶¹ F. J. Foakes-Jackson, "Anna Comnena," Hibbert Journal, XXXIII (1934-35), p. 430.

⁶² Speros Vryonis, Jr., "Byzantine Demokratia and the Guilds in the 11th Century," Dumbarton Oaks Papers No. 17 (Washington, 1963), p. 310.

⁶³ Georgina Buckler, "Women in Byzantine Law About 1100 A.D.," in Byzantion XI (1936), Fasc. 2, pp. 391-416.

⁶⁴Mousai Alexiades Komniniades, ed. P. Maas, B.Z. XXII (1913), pp. 348-62.

⁶⁵ Vasiliev, op. cit., pp. 488-89.

⁶⁶ Zonaras, op. cit., 4, XVIII, 24, p. 244.

⁶⁷ Chalandon, op. cit., p. 323.

⁶⁸ Krumbacher, op. cit., p. 276.

⁶⁹ Buckler, op. cit., p. 231.

⁷⁰ Charles Diehl, La Société byzantine à l'Époque des Comnène (Paris, 1929), p. 8.

⁷¹ Zonaras, op. cit., 4, XXVIII, 26, p. 251.

⁷² Sophia Antoniades, "Neoellinika Stoicheia sta Epta Biblia tis Alexiados," in Eis Mnimin Spiridonos Lambrou (Athens, 1935), p. 371.

⁷³ Gyula Moravczik, "Byzantinoturcica I," Die Byzantinischen Quellen der Geschichte der Türkvölker. Akademie Verlag (Berlin, 1958), p. 220.

⁷⁴ Hariton Haritonides, "Paratereseis Kritikai kai Grammatikai eis Annan Komnene," in Academia Athenon Pragmateia tis Akademias Athenon, Vol. 15 (Athens, 1949, 1951), p. 40.

⁷⁵ Buckler, op. cit., p. 495; Antoniades, op. cit., p. 373.

⁷⁶ Antoniades, op. cit., p. 371.

⁷⁷ Buckler, op. cit., p. 495; Antoniades, op. cit., p. 373.

⁷⁸ Krumbacher, op. cit., p. 277.

⁷⁹ R. M. Dawkins "The Greek Language in the Byzantine Period," p. 253, in Baynes and Moss, op. cit., pp. 252-67.

⁸⁰ N. Iorga, "Medallions d'histoire littéraire byzantine 18 Anne Comnène," in Byzantion 2 (1925), p. 283.