Narrative Bewältigungsstrategien von Katastrophenerfahrungen: Das Geschichtswerk des Nikitas Honiatis

Abstract

The topic of this paper is the perception of the biggest catastrophe so far that befell the Byzantine Empire, the conquest of Constantinople in 1204, by the prominent historian Nikitas Honiatis, the only one who has left a continuous narrative as an eyewitness of the events. The underlying question is not so much a detailed reconstruction of these, but how they became part and parcel of the organized Byzantine and Modern Greek memoria.

To answer this question, an overview over the political history is given. As an introduction to this part, based on two maps, Byzantium′s situation during the last decades of the 12^th century is confronted with the fragmentation of the Empire after the Fourth ‘Crusade’ of 1204. In their own view, the Byzantines were “God′s own inheritance”, a originally Jewish concept transposed to the Christianized Roman Empire. The fact that their Empire and its capital lost their significance for ever before the Ottomans erected their own Empire based on now Muslim Constantinople in 1453, was felt a heavy blow against their political and religious convictions.

The Byzantine intellectual reaction consisted in the gradual substitution of the Eastern Roman by a Hellenic consciousness. By memorizing ‘1204’, a trauma stands at the cradle of Modern Greek nation-building, determining the relations between Orthodox and Catholic Christians and by extension the relationship of Greece towards the ‘West’, as could be seen by the reaction of the Greek clergy during the visit of Pope John Paul II. in 2004. So, the Fourth Crusade forms a hallmark for Near Eastern, East European and Mediterranean history as well as for the memoria of the victims.

Following this, an overview of the historiography of the ‘winners’ is given: In contrast to the former Crusades, Western historiography turned for the first time to the vernacular spoken by the majority of the participants, to Old French. In a postcolonial manner, the chronicles written by these knights triggered a continuation on Byzantine soil, since the Chronicle of Morea, preserved in four languages, describes the exploits of the members of the same family of the Villehardouin, whose ancestor left the most important eyewitness of the Fourth Crusade. Thus, the Greek version marks the beginning of Modern Greek Historiography.

In continuation, an overview of the life, the carrier and the works of Nikitas (1155–1216) is given, culminating in six points that show the striking and – for medieval circumstances – exceptional intertwining between these items.

For understanding Nikitas, the Byzantine traditions of historiography are then delineat ed: chronicle and historia division established since K. Krumbacher. Whereas, roughly said, historia has its precedents in ancient, esp. Hellenistic, historiographical writing, the genre of the chronicle exploits biblical models. In their development over the centuries, these genres show a different evolution: though both traditions of writing history break off in the 7^th century, probably under the shock caused by the Arab conquests of the Near East, the biblical genre recovered first (already in the 9^th century), and the following centuries saw but a gradual recuperation of the models of ancient historiography, as has been shown convincingly by the late Jakov Ljubarskij. This traditional division of historical narration undertaken by Byzantinists and sketched by general remarks here, is only partially valid, since it does not take into consideration the genre of ecclesiastical history, whose most prominent exponent, Eusebios of Kaisareia, displays important parallels with Nikitas, since his Church history has been rewritten several times.

Nikitas′ most prominent examples are the works of M. Psellos and A. Komnene, typical exponents of the again prominent historia tradition of Byzantium. But Nikitas differs from them in one prominent point by his declaration that he writes plain and easy – being indeed one of the most difficult Byzantine historians, well acquainted with all narrative devices of his ancient forerunners.

As a matter of fact, it is indeed his complete mastering of the ancient art of writing history that causes the inherent self-contradiction of his work, since his language had not been made for describing the annihilation of the civilization that had created them.

Since the following summary of the history of Nikitas′ text results in that the actual editorial situation of his work suggests a homogenity that is only apparent, this preceding thesis is confirmed by the circumstance that the four existing versions (called u – LO – b – a) of Nikitas′ historia represent four different steps in his subsequent attempts to cope with the incomprehensible events. As the description of these version shows, each version stands for a different phase of the intertwined stages of his life/work so unique among Medieval historians.

Thus, the criticism against Nikitas′ CFHB-editor J.-L. van Dieten by Kazhdan (1977), Irigoin (1978) and more recently by Simpson (2007) does not hit the point: Even if, as Maisano (1994) has shown, the ms. V might represent Nikitas′ last version and some mss. (P, W and A) deserve a separate study, in my opinion in Nikitas′ case the whole triangle: events – author – text has to be readjusted. The criticism in this article is not, though, directed against the current – and only existing scientific – edition; it attacks the use commonly made of it. One of the main results of this paper is that the four versions transmit four different views of Byzantine history and by this way four contradictory metahistorical positions of the author inside the same work, while the applicability of H. White′s known classification has still to be proven for the field of Byzantine historiography.

After the remark that a comparable intratextual diversity can be discerned also inside Nikitas′ theological work, the “treasury of Orthodoxy”, the four versions are analysed in the light of this main assumption. For exemplifying this, important breaks in his works are examined, as well as his use of his teacher Eustathios′ work and his citation-technique (e.g. Plutarch to characterize his position after his final settlement in Nikaia).

But the four versions share also important common characteristics: a highly classiciz ing language, biblical citations (often from the prophets when describing the capital′s fall), foreboding of the approaching catastrophe and an increasing predilection for reflexion on history-writing (most important: 579,82 ff.). Without exaggeration it can be main tained that Nikitas in his historia foreshadows the whole of the subsequent final devel opment of Byzantine historiography.

In a final section, R. Koselleck′s paper on “Sprachwandel und Ereignisgeschichte” (language change and evenemental history) is applied to Nikitas′ work – with the result that he significantly did not change his language, viz.: he did not adapt his narrative techniques to the new situation established after 1204. And it is not least this inherent tension between his different strategies of interpretation that makes his work so attractive.