Byzantine Monograms vs Western European Coats of Arms - Archaeology Ep 16

One of the most exciting topics when studying Europe in the Middle Ages is heraldry and examining all the different coats of arms that represented royal and noble European families. These coats of arms were important symbols of individual and family identity, achievement, and status in the medieval west. But if we go a little to the east, another powerful state existed during the Middle Ages, the Byzantine Empire. Did they use coats of arms or did they develop their own system of visually displaying family status and prestige? I'm Madam Archaeologist, your go-to informant on everything archaeology, and in this episode I'll explore the ways that individual, family, and status were visually communicated in the Byzantine world in comparison to the medieval west's coat of arms. This comparison is not something that's received a lot of attention in archaeology, but it is important because while the popular image of the High and Late Middle Ages is dominated by Western European culture, the Byzantine Empire was just as much a medieval state and I hope that this episode will help, if you're not as attuned to Byzantine culture and history, broaden your image of the medieval world. Heraldry originated in Western Europe in the 12th century within the context of knightly tournaments as a means of distinguishing knights dressed in full armor and then, within the contexts of medieval feudalism, chivalry, and the Crusades, evolved into a codified and hereditary system of symbolically representing family lineages. Coats of arms quickly became symbols of identity and status. Initially, distinctive colors and symbols were painted onto shields, banners, and then surcoats to make it easy to identify knights in battle and tournament. The knight's surcoat, a garment worn over his armor, actually gave rise to the term coat of arms. According to a new dictionary of heraldry, which is not so new now, it's from 1987, but it's still one of the best resources on the topic, a coat of arms properly refers to the shield of arms, the design of which was shown on the surcoat, but it is now used to refer to the entire heraldic design, the shield being the most important part. One of the earliest examples of arms being passed down to one's descendants is seen with the Plantagenets. Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou, and his grandson, William Long's Pe, Earl of Salisbury, both feature six lines rampant on a blue or azure background on their shields and tombs. As time went on, heraldry had developed into a formalized and regulated practice, with specific rules governing the use and design of coats of arms. Heralds recorded and kept track of designs in order to be able to identify the knights and they made sure that no design was duplicated. Coats of arms were featured on shields and other military-related objects, as discussed, tombs, gates, buildings, and more, serving as a means of visually communicating status, prestige, and identity. But what about further east, in the Now, the Byzantine state emerged long before heraldry began developing in western Europe, and the Byzantines actually had their own means of symbolically representing families rooted in their respective cultural contexts. The Byzantine Empire was a continuation of the Roman Empire in the east, and the Byzantines referred to their state as such. They never called it the Byzantine Empire. This was introduced as a scholarly convention in the 16th century as a means of distinguishing the earlier, classical Roman Empire from the medieval, Greek-speaking state that was and it continues to be used in academic circles alongside the term Eastern Roman Empire. To give you some context, the Roman Empire was permanently split into two halves in the year 395, when the Emperor Theodosius I died and had it divided between his two sons, Honorius and Arcadius. And while the western half fell in the 5th century, the eastern half survived until the Ottomans conquered Constantinople in 1453. The eastern half in its history is associated with the term Byzantine. Since there was no formal change of state name or identity from Roman to Byzantine, different scholars start the Byzantine period at different times. It can start in the year 324 or 330, when Constantine the Great founded and inaugurated Constantinople, respectively, or in 395, when, as we know, the Roman Empire was officially split into an eastern and western half. Byzantine Emperors fashioned themselves as Roman rulers, and the people, as you have probably predicted by now, called themselves Romans too. The term Byzantine, within its proper historical context, was mainly restricted to referring to the inhabitants of Constantinople, the Empire's capital, also known as Byzantion or Byzantium in its Latinized form. If you'd like to learn more about the city's transformation under Constantine the Great, check out my episode From Byzantium to Constantinople. For this episode here, I will use the term Byzantine in the broader academic way, to refer to the eastern part of Roman Empire that survived until 1453 and to its people and rulers. Heraldry was adopted to a certain extent near the end of the Empire's life, which I'll get to later in this episode, but the Byzantines had their own equally fascinating way of portraying family and status symbolically. According to the prominent Byzantine scholar, the late Robert Oosterhout, our closest approximation to Western European heraldry would be the Byzantine use of the monogram. A monogram is, according to the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, the combination of a number of letters that form, when read in the correct order, name a title, or name and title, or an invocation. Monograms are really cool because they're a sort of puzzle. You have to take the pieces, in this case letters, and put them in the right order to find out what it's spelling. They are not to be confused with sigils, which are used in magic. Monograms existed from the earliest times of the Byzantine period, within the context of the late Roman world. Now, this wasn't the first time in history that monograms were used. The earliest documented case of monogram use is on classical and Hellenistic Greek coinage, for example, where they are believed to have identified a mint, an individual involved in coin production, or even production size. But monograms in the late Roman and Byzantine worlds are interesting because of how much more diverse their usage becomes. Monograms were used in both the Eastern and Western halves of the post-395 empire, and continue to be used throughout the history of the Byzantine empire. An example from the Western half is this ivory diptych from Circa 402 AD, featuring a monogram of what has been interpreted as the Symmachus family. It is thought to have been carved for the funeral of the prominent Roman senator and orator, Quintus Aurelius Symmachus. And to show you just a few Byzantine examples, here's the monogram of the famous emperor Justinian on a capital at Hydra Sophia. Monograms appear on coins too, as we see here on a coin of Theodosius II, but this time bearing the monogram of an emperor. And this signet ring, from the 6th or 7th century, bears the Names on monograms could be personal or familial. Here are the monograms of the All were noble Byzantine families and each even produced some rulers. There are, of course, differences with coats of arms, one being that monograms are letter-based while coats of arms are pictorial, they rely on colors and images that stand for something. This difference may be because of the cultural contexts in which these practices emerged. Heraldry grew out of a need to distinguish knights, where symbols and colors would have been more practical, while the monogram was a means of spelling out names. Literacy was one of the ways in which Byzantine elites showed off their social status, and so monograms would have worked really well in this context. But the two are similar in that both were means by which noble families and royals could portray their status and familial affiliations. As late Robert Oosterhout wrote, I quote, patronage and ownership, end quote. Byzantine monograms functioned in a very similar way. They could represent individuals and families and were attached to status, patronage and ownership as well. We find these monograms in places similar to coats of arms too, like in architecture. For example, just as we see the coat of arms of Sir Edward Dallingridge, a former knight, at Bodium Castle in England, the monogram of the Byzantine statesman, writer, philosopher, and patron of the arts, Theodore Metokites, can be found inside the Cora Church, where he undertook a major renovation program. In both these examples, the coat of arms and the monogram are associated with patronage, identity, and status. Another interesting use of the monogram can be found in Tomb E at the Cora Church, where the garments of its owner bear the monograms of three families. One is of the Palaeologos family, whose monogram we have encountered already. Another is of the Assan family, or Assani Palaeoloi, who were the descendants of a powerful union between the Assan and Palaeologos families, with Arit Palaeoloina, the daughter of Emperor Michael VIII Palaeologos, married Ivan III Assan, Tsar of Bulgaria for a very brief period of time. The third monogram is of the Raoul family, who were also allied with the Palaeologos family. It is very useful when familial associations are displayed in this way because it makes it possible to narrow down who could be the owner of a tomb. Irene Raulina Palaeoloina, widow of the Emperor Andronikos II Palaeologos's brother, Constantine, and mother-in-law of Irene, daughter of Theodore Metokites, has been proposed. It is very interesting that the monograms of familial associations are depicted together here because this can be paralleled with the This also isn't a one-off example. This fragment of a group portrait from Tomb F at the Chora Church also depicts familial monograms on their garments. The monogram of the Palaeologos family is easily recognizable here. The use of the monogram is a practice rooted in the Byzantine Empire's respective cultural context and is the closest thing we have to heraldry in the sense that both were ways of symbolically representing individuals, families, and status. The monogram, thus, can be seen as a parallel to Western European heraldry. Byzantine monograms appear on various types of artifacts too, but by far seals are the most common where they could be accompanied by images. But the images we see on these objects, for example of Christ, the Virgin Mary, or saints, were personal rather than familial and they were not hereditary. They thus didn't function in the same way that heraldic emblems did. Remember, coats of arms were hereditary and were pictorial representations of a family lineage, descent, alliance, and achievement. By the Palaeologan era, heraldic imagery were finally being used by Byzantine elites. But by this time, the Byzantine Empire was already starting to breathe its last breaths. Less than 200 years after the restoration of the Empire in 1261 by the Palaeologos family, more on that soon, the Byzantine Empire came to an end. For most of its existence, and even in conjunction with heraldry, the Byzantines preferred to use monograms to symbolize individual family and status. The Byzantine nobility came into contact with Western European culture through a few different means. Trade, marriage, and the Crusades. The Crusades were a series of military expeditions initiated by Western European Christians as a response to the expansion of Muslim states. Their goals were to stop those expansions, recapture territories that had formerly been Christian, and reclaim the Holy Lands. During the Fourth Crusade, the original plan was to retake Jerusalem by first invading Egypt. But the Crusaders deviated from this goal and instead ended up targeting Constantinople, the biggest medieval Christian city. And in the year 1204, they successfully sacked and took the Byzantine capital. The Crusaders divided up the Byzantine Empire, established a Latin Empire there, and the Byzantines in exile were now ruling three successor states, founded in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade. The most successful of which was the Empire of Nicaea. But this didn't last very long because in the year 1261, the Nicaean Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos and his forces successfully recaptured Constantinople and restored Byzantine rule there. Do note that these images we may consider heraldic emblems from a Western European perspective would have probably been seen as more general symbols of status and power to the Byzantine audience. And there's nothing to suggest that the usage of symbols, like rampant lions, was codified according to a person or family. It is also interesting that those immunograms we saw on the garments of the feature symbols boasted side by side with the monograms. However, none of these symbols seems to have been formally associated with any particular family in the same way coats of arms were. The double-headed eagle was used by members of the Palaiologos family, but it was not used in the same way as Western European heraldry. It is also worth noting that although all three garments boast the Palaiologos family monogram, each features a different accompanying symbol or symbols. This suggests that the monograms remained, throughout Byzantine history, the most important means by which Byzantines visually represented their familial associations. The medieval world and popular thought is dominated by Western European culture, its castles, feudalism, knights and chivalry. But to the East, there was an empire more glorious than all the medieval European states, the Byzantine Empire. It is very interesting to see how the practice of symbolically representing, or visually communicating, familial associations and status developed in the West versus the East. With the development of heraldry, these concepts were portrayed pictorially in Western Europe, but in the Byzantine world, letter-based monograms took center stage. If you have any thoughts, feel free to leave a comment. Subscribe for more cool content where I go to information on everything archaeology from Madame Archaeologist.