Antony Eastmon, Ed - Byzantium's Other Empire Trebizond

ntium's
Other Emoire:
s—41Ш
M соинглш
ICOl
Institute of Aft
This book has been pubUshed on the occasion Printed in Turkey by Ofset Yapımevi
of the exhibition "Byzantium s Other Empire: Certificate no: 12326 Çağlayan Mahallesi
Trebizond," at Koç University Research Şair Sokak No: 4 Kâğıthane/İstanbul
Center for Anatolian Civilizations, Istanbul, Tel. +90 212 295 86 01
June 24-September 18,2016.
A Turkish edition appears under the title On the front cover: Hagia Sophia at Trebizond
Bizans'ın Öteki imparatorluğu: Trabzon. from the south east in 1929, David Talbot Rice
Trebizond Archive, digitised by Birmingham
The authors of this book acknowledge that the East Mediterranean Archive.
work is their original creation and that all the
opinions are their own and no one else can be On theflap:Detail of an angelfromthe dome
held accountable for them, and that there are of Hagia Sophia, с 1960; David Winfield
no parts in their work that could infringe upon archive, Conway Library, Courtauld Institute
the rights of third parties. of Art.
Edited by Antony Eastmond Koç University Suna Kıraç Library

Project Manager: Buket Coşkuner Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Project Coordinators: Ebru Esra Satıcı, Byzantium's other Empire : Trebizond :
Şeyda Çetin Exhibition June 24-September 18 2016 Koç
Project Editor: Çiçek Öztek University, Research Center for Anatolian
Project Assistant: Serra Tanman Civilizations (ANAMED) / Edited by Antony
Copy-Editing: Niamh Bhalla, Çiçek Öztek Eastmond; project manager Buket Coşkuner;
Book Design: Ayşe Karamustafa translation Egemen Demircioğlu, Yiğit
Design Implementation: Erkan Armutçu Adam.—İstanbul:
Koç Üniversitesi Research Center for
© Koç Üniversitesi Anadolu Medeniyetleri Anatolian Civilizations, 2016.
Araştırma Merkezi (ANAMED), 2016 264 pages ; 16,5 χ 24 cm.
certificate no: 18318 Includes bibliographical references.
1st Edition: Istanbul,June 2016 ISBN 9786059388009
1. Trebizond Empire—History. 2. Trebizond
Koç University Research Center for Empire—Description and travel. 3. Trebizond
Anatolian Civilizations Empire—Antiquities, Byzantine. 4. Byzantine
İstiklal Caddesi No: 181 Merkez Han Empire—History. 5. Christian art and
Beyoğlu 34433 İstanbul symbolism—Turkey—Trabzon—Medieval, 500
Tel: +90 212 393 61 00 | anamed.ku.edu.tr 1500.6. Ayasofya Müzesi (Museum : Trabzon,
Turkey). I. Eastmond, Antony II. Demircioğlu,
© BnF, Bibliothèque nationale de France Egemen. III. Adam, Yiğit. IV. Coşkuner, Buket.
© Birmingham East Mediterranean Archive DF609.B99 2016
(BEMA) I © Collection chrétienne et
byzantine/Photothèque Gabriel Millet,
EPHE | © Conway Library, Courtauld Institute
of Art, David and June Winfield Archive
© Sir David Russell Photographic Collection,
University of St. Andrews © St. Petersburg
Branch of the Archive of the Russian Academy
of Sciences.
CONTENTS
Foreword 7
Antony Eastmond Introduction: The Lure of Trebizond 9
Antony Eastmond The Empire of Trebizond 31
Antony Eastmond Hagia Sophia at Trebizond 59
Glenn Peers Trebizond and its World through 103

Manuscripts
Barbara Roggema The Prayer of Cyprian on the Reverse 127

of the Amulet Roll
Ioanna Rapti The Tower Frescoes: Art at the End 145

of the Empires
Annika Asp-Talwar The Chronicle of Michael Panaretos 173
Pınar Üre Byzantine Past, Russian Present: The Russian 215

Archaeological Institute s Trabzon Expedition
during the First World War
James Crow A Tale of Two Davids: The Russell 239

Trust Expedition to Conserve the
Wall Paintings of the Church of
Hagia Sophia (Ayasofya) at Trabzon,
1957-1962
Contributors and Acknowledgements 262

Foreword
The Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, has a long association with
Trebizond and the Pontos. Just four years after the Institutefirstopened its doors
in London in 1932, David Talbot Rice, its young and enterprising lecturer in medi-
eval art, persuaded the Institute to launch a book series: Courtauld Institute Publica-
tions on Near Eastern Art. Thefirstvolume to be published was Byzantine Painting
at Trebizond (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1936). Written jointly with the
French art historian Gabriel Millet, the book brought together the two men s re-
search. Both had realized the importance of Trebizond and its monuments for the
understanding of thefinalcenturies of the Byzantine Empire before Trebizond, its
final outpost, was conquered by Mehmet II in 1461. Millet had visited Trabzon
in 1893, Talbot Rice travelled there in 1929 with his formidable wife and fellow
art historian, Tamara, and their dog, Ghost. Talbot Rice was later responsible for
organizing the conservation of the church of Hagia Sophia (Ayasofya), the greatest
Byzantine imperial monument of the thirteenth century to survive in Turkey.
British interest in the region has been maintained throughout the century,
dominated by the research and conservation work undertaken by Anthony Bryer and
David Winfield, who both travelled extensively in the regionfromthe 1950s. Both
scholars deposited copies of their images in the Conway Library at the Courtauld In-
stitute, forming a part of its huge collection devoted to medieval art in Turkey and be-
yond. New material was still being added in the 1990s by Antony Eastmond, the most
recent Courtauld scholar to work on the city and its empire. The Courtauld is proud
tojóin with the Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations (ANAMED) to exhibit
these pictures along with those in the Gabriel Millet Archive in the Ecole Pratique des
Hautes Etudes in Paris, the David Talbot Rice archive at the University of Birming-
ham, the Russell Trust archive in St. Andrews University, and Fyodor Uspenskii's ma-
terials housed in the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg. As
cities change ever more rapidly the information contained in these archives becomes
crucial to preserve the history and memories that make up a city s character and life.
We are grateful to all the institutions that have opened their archives for this ex-
hibition, and particularly the support of the Winfield family who graciously passed on
all of David Winfield s outstanding materials to the Courtauld after his death in 2013.
Deborah Swallow Chris Roosevelt

Märit Rausing Director of the Courtauld Director, ANAMED
Introduction: The Lure of Trebizond
Antony Eastmond
Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London
During all my winter walks I always had a wish in my soul to go to Trebizond

in the approaching spring}
Written in the chill of a wintery Constantinople at the start of the seventeenth

century, the words of the French traveller Julien Bordier (с. 1580-1620) capture
the lure of Trebizond in the imagination of visitors from western Europe. This
exhibition shows how, since the late nineteenth century, a similar lure has drawn
art historians and conservators from Europe to Trabzon to study the medieval
remains of its citadel, walls, palaces and churches, and their attempts to preserve
the monuments and the history that they reveal: the history of the Empire of
Trebizond, Byzantium's other empire. The drawings and photographs show the
state of the churches as they found them and their work either to record or pre
serve them. As these records now cover a century from the late nineteenth cen
tury, it is possible to see how Trabzon has changed, and how this has affected our
knowledge and understanding of its history. Some monuments seen by Gabriel
Millet (1867-1953), the first art historian carefully to record what he saw in his
photographs and writings, were still functioning as Christian places of worship
when he visited in 1893. From centuries of use, their paintings were blackened
with soot and it was only with difficulty that he was able to discern anything; but
his records are crucial as these buildings are now in ruins. At other sites, notably
the main church at Hagia Sophia (Ayasofya), Millet seems hardly to have noticed
anything because of its poor condition and the fact that its paintings were covered
by plaster. But these have since been revealed. The cleaning of the paintings of
Hagia Sophia was one of the great revelations of Byzantine art in the second half
of the twentieth century, and has transformed the understanding of the develop
ment of Byzantine art in the thirteenth century. Even now each new study of the
monuments of medieval Trebizond reveals new facts and changes our perception
of the empire and its art.
1 Bordier, 1888:117.
9
llUlUUULllun. лис I-ui с uj i rcviwriu, и і ш и ^ L>aai
What attracted so many Europeans to visit and study Trebizond? Where did such
desires come from? Two hundred years after Bordier, the first modern historian of
the empire of Trebizond, Jakob Fallmerayer (1790-1861), also fantasised over the
"long-anticipated city of the Komnenians with its soft and melodious name,"2 and
he later reminisced that it was "the country of my dreams from my earliest years;
1 felt I must breathe its air."3
The empire that was founded there in 1204 was an empire in name only.
The lands it ruled were limited to a narrow coastal strip between the Black Sea and
the Pontos Mountains about 400 km long (Fig. 3). It briefly reached as far west
as Sinope in the early thirteenth century, and as far east as the modern frontier
between Turkey and Georgia. It controlled only one other territory, the southern
edge of the Crimean Peninsula. In this relatively isolated location, it rarely had an
impact on politics or culture beyond the region immediately surrounding it. Yet
despite this, Trebizond has resonated with historians and travellers for centuries.
We must distinguish between Trebizond, the medieval empire and city of

the imagination, and Trabzon, the modern name for the real city in today's Turkey.
Whilst Bordier, Fallmerayer and all other modern visitors travelled to the city of
Trabzon—the Turkish port on the southeast corner of the Black Sea—what they
were hoping to find was Trebizond, the Byzantine city and capital of an empire that
lasted for more than two hundred and fifty years. When the Russian historian of
the empire Alexander Alexandrovich Vasiliev (1867-1953) first saw Trabzon from a
boat crossing the Black Sea as a student from St Petersburg in 1889, he dismissed it
as "a second-rate maritime city in Turkey" (Fig. 2); but he too was soon ensnared by
the medieval Trebizond that he believed lay hidden within the modern city and de
voted much of his career to understanding its history. Echoing Fallmerayer's words
of a century earlier, he wrote that "from my very youth—it is hard to say why—the
lure of Trebizond has been strong in my imagination."4
Trebizond/Trabzon hovers between the worlds of reality and myth. As

Trabzon, the city is a pragmatic, gritty trading city with a harbour filled with
commercial ships and a history of bloody wars for survival. As Trebizond, it em
bodies a remote, orientalist fantasy of mythical emperors and intrigues—a place
2 Fallmerayer, 1877: 26: "Die langersehnte Comnenstadt mit Irhem Namen voll Schmelz und Melodie."
3 Fallmerayer, 1861:1: xxi-xxii.
4 Vasiliev, 1941: 316.
10
Introduction: The Lure ofTrebizond, Antony Eastmond
where imagination has free rein. This dual identity has its roots in the city s loca
tion as a meeting place between east and west and its long history.
Trabzon has a Hellenic past that can be traced back, in legend, to 765
ВС. It was founded as a distant trading outpost by Greek colonists from Mile
tus (modern Milet) on the west coast of Asia Minor. This colony gave the city
and region its first name: Τραπεζους (Trapezous). Its place in Greek history
was assured by Xenophorís description of the arrival of the Greek army there in
401 ВС and their shouts of θάλαττα! θάλαττα! (the sea! the sea!); a story famil
iar to Europeans who were taught ancient Greek from his text.5 For Xenophon's
soldiers, the city was thefirstpoint of contact with the Hellenic world after their
long retreat through Persia, but it was still a long way from their homes around
the Aegean Sea. The strategic position of the city also ensured later Roman and
Byzantine emperors continued to invest in the city: Hadrian (r. 117-138) built a
harbour for his fleet there, and in the sixth century Justinian (r. 527-565) needed
the city as a supply base for his Persian wars, and set up an inscription recording
his "renewal" of its buildings.6 Its Hellenic past, combined with the Christian
emperors of the Middle Ages, lent a tangible reality and familiarity to the city in
the eyes of western visitors (Fig. 1).
Its status as a trading city later gave Trebizond a place in western me
dieval consciousness. It was a major port, marking the first point where goods
travelling west along the Silk Road from China could be put aboard a ship for
easier transport. The city hosted important Genoese and Venetian colonies that
reported back accounts and descriptions of the city to the west.7 The earliest Eu
ropean accounts are relatively unromantic, concentrating on the commercial pos
sibilities and dangers of the city. In the early fourteenth century, the Florentine
banker Francesco Balducci Pegolotti (d. 1347) wrote a merchant s handbook, The
Art ofTrade, with advice about operating across the world. He noted that Trebizond
was part of an informal currency union that stretched into the Iranian world: "The
weights and measures ofTabriz are as one with those ofTrebizond."8 His impression
has been confirmed by the discovery of hoards of Trapezuntine coins in Tabriz.9
5 Xenophon, 1949: 4.7.24.

6 Bryer & Winfield, 1985:182.
7 Karpov,1986.
8 Pegolotti, 1936: 29: αΙ1 peso e la misura di Torisi [Tabriz] è tutt'uno con quello di Trabisonda."
9 Hendy, 1999: 36; Bryer, 1973: 339 reports an unpublished hoard from Tabriz.
11
A generation earlier, the Venetian merchant-traveller Marco Polo (c. 1254-

1324) had passed through the city on his return from China. He had a less pleasant
experience in Trebizond. We learn from the will of his uncle Maffeo, also a member
of the family trading firm, that the city was ruled by a swindler: "I testify that the
aforesaid loss inflicted on us as well by the Lord Comnenus ofTrebizond as in his
territory was in sum about four thousand hyperpera. ^0 This robber-lord must have
been the emperor John II Grand Komnenos (r. 1280-1284; 1285-1297), who is oth-
erwise recorded as one of the great patrons of the Christian church in the empire.
Trebizond was remote enough for most of these more factual accounts to
have been obscured by myth and romance. This other Trebizond was a city of beauti-
ful, beguiling women, wealthy despotic emperors, intrigue, luxury and indolence. The
roots of such myths may have lain in the commercial reality of the city—its access to
the silks and spices of the caravan routes from the east—along with the wealth that
the emperors gained from their silver mines in the Pontos Mountains to the south.11
However, the mythical city bore little relation to this reality and yet quickly began
to overtake it. It is a very different Trebizond that appears in many European tales.
In early European novels, such as François Rabelais' Gargantua (1534) and Miguel
de Cervantes'Dow Quixote (1605), characters proclaim their desire to be the king of
Trebizond, with no sense of what that might mean. A few years later the Londoner
Thomas Gainsford published TheHutorie ofTrebizond inf oure booh (1616). The title
is misleading; this is not history, and certainly not about Trebizond. His book is
simply a collection of romantic stories in which the name ofTrebizond is enough to
establish that they are set in a world of myth and desire.
The Trebizond Cassone, a painted wedding chest now in the Metropoli-

tan Museum of Art in New York, shows how quickly the mythology emerged
(Fig. 4).12 Painted in Florence in the 1460s, only a few years after the fall of
Trebizond to the Ottoman sultan Mehmet II (r. 1451-1481), the magnificent
painting across the front of the chest apparently depicts the last days of the Byz-
antine empire. It shows a great battle being fought in front of the two capitals
of the Byzantine world: Constantinople on the left hand side and Trebizond on
the right. The walls and monuments of Constantinople are recognisable, but Tre-
bizond is magnified beyond all measure. It is now a great walled fortress, de-
10 Marco Polo, 1938: vol. 1,29. The will was notarised on 6 February 1309.
11 The evidence for silver mining is analysed by Bryer ÔcWinfield, 1985: 303-4.
12 Baskins, 2014: 83-100. The cassone is in the MetropoÜtan Museum of Art, New York, inventory
number: John Stewart Kennedy Fund, 1914.14.39.
22
Introduction: The Lure o/Treòizond, Antony Eastmond
fended by monstrous towers which protect huge palaces and churches within; it
is nothing Hke the narrow city hemmed in between steep ravines on the shores of
the Black Sea. The fierce fighting that rages on the fields between these cities is
also a fantasy. It does not show the Byzantines'doomed defence of their Chris
tian cities, but instead an imagined defeat of the Ottomans, perhaps to satisfy a
Christian audience desperate to see evidence that the Ottomans might not be
invincible.
Trebizond's romance grew because it was distant enough to be beyond the

experience of most Europeans, and yet it shared enough in common with the
Latin west to be recognisable. This tension is best captured in fiction. Rose Ma-
caulay s novel of 1956, The Towers of Trebizond, recounts the misadventures of a
group of Anglican missionaries in eastern Turkey in the early 1950s who also
had travelled in the hope of seeing the imaginary Trebizond, rather than the real
Trabzon (Fig. 5):
When we saw Trebizond lying there in its splendid bay... it was like seeing
an old dream change its shape, as dreams do, becoming something else, for
this did not seem the capital of the last Byzantine empire, but a picturesque
Turkish port and town... Expecting the majestic, brooding ghost of a fallen
empire, we saw, in a magnificent stagey setting, an untidy Turkish port.13
The impression of the city was very much determined by the place of origin of
those that chose to write about it. For western Europeans, the remoteness of
Trabzon and its long history in literature and romance provided much of its al
lure, and this coloured their interest in it, and their desire to search for a lost and
hidden world on the shores of the Black Sea. For others, the city was much closer
to home, and so their view of the city was very different. As Pınar Üres essay in
this volume shows, for Russians living under the Tsar, the empire of Trebizond
represented a much closer and more tangible memory. As a country that saw
itself as the spiritual leader and protector of the eastern Christian world, Tsarist
Russia regarded Trebizond as part of its own Orthodox culture and history, and
saw the contemporary city ofTrabzon as a legitimate goal for conquest because of
its history, in just the same way that Russian armies periodically sought to return
Istanbul to Christian rule.
13 Macauley, 1956: 68.
23
Equally for Greeks, the city and its empire was part of the Hellenic com-
monwealth to be preserved and celebrated. The exchange of populations in 1923
saw the removal of the Greek population in the region and ended the folk and
oral memories of the empire that nineteenth-century travellers had encountered.
The creation in 1928 of the journal Arkheion Pontou, cited frequently in the foot-
notes of this volume, was a concerted attempt to preserve the memories of Tra-
bzon^ Pontic Greek population. The journal was founded by Chrysanthos, who
had been appointed Metropolitan ofTrebizond in 1913 (he died in Athens in
1949), and his efforts to record the history of the city appeared as a monumental
nine-hundred page article on the church ofTrebizond in 1933.14
Memories of the city are contested because it was home to so many dif-
ferent populations, including Greeks, Turks, Georgians, Armenians and others.
However, these labels—whether based on perceived ethnicity or religious affilia-
tion—are easy to apply, but difficult to define. When George Finlay (1799-1875)
visited the city in 1850 he engaged as his servant a man named Demetri who
proved to be hard to characterise: "He was something as I found out afterwards
neither Mussulman nor Christian called Krumhledhes... he considered himself
almost a christian"15 The shifting nature of the identities of the peoples ofTrebi-
zond is equally reflected in the monuments of the city and their history. Hagia
Sophia, the main focus of this exhibition, has variously been a church, a mosque,
a ruin, a stable, a military storehouse, a cholera hospital, a museum, and is now
once again a mosque.16
Julien Bordier, whose desire to visit Trebizond opened this chapter, finally
reached the city of Trabzon in 1609. He recorded his impressions in his journal
and also drew a sketchmap of the city (Fig. 6), recording the monuments as he
remembered them.17 This is the earliest visual record of the topography of the city
and its monuments. Bordier also left a memento of himself behind, scratching his
name in a graffito in the apse of the bell tower at Hagia Sophia.18 A century later,
the French botanist, Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (1656-1708) visited Trabzon
14 Chrysanthos, 1933:1-904.
15 Hussey, 1995: vol.1,289.
16 Talbot Rice, 1968:2-7.
17 Published in Bordier, 1935: 85-158.
18 Bryer&Winfield, 1985:235.
24
in 1701 and recorded a view of the city from Boztepe (Fig. 7).19 When Gabriel
Millet took photographs from an almost identical viewpoint nearly two hundred
years later, the view was remarkably unchanged.
It was only in the nineteenth century that serious recording of the city
began. Jakob Fallmerayers discovery of the chronicle of Michael Panaretos pro
vided a first-hand account of the history of the empire, and on his visit to the
city in 1840 he searched for portraits of its emperors and other historical in
scriptions.20 Finlay was to do the same on his visit a decade later, and much of
his work was incorporated into his History of Greece, the first full treatment of the
empire in English.21 Other visitors made drawings of what they saw, including
Xavier Hommaire de HeU (1812-1848) (Fig. 8-9), Charles Texier (1802-1871) in
1839 (Fig. 10) and Grigorii Gagarin (1810-1893) in the 1880s.22 All three men
were particularly attracted to different aspects of the church of Hagia Sophia, and
their drawings of elements that are now lost are important records for historians,
although their accuracy must be treated with caution: certainlyTexiers engrav
ings were only completed long after he returned to France from his travels.
Gabriel Millet s visit in 1893 was the first systematic and detailed study of the
monuments, and he set in train the modern study of the churches of the empire.23
Although he spent relatively little time in the main church at Hagia Sophia, whose
wall paintings were then still largely hidden by whitewash, his interest sparked that
of David Talbot Rice (1903-1972), who visited the city in 1929. Their joint book on
the paintings ofTrebizond remains the major study of most of its Byzantine church
es, and it led directly to Talbot Rice s drive to secure funding to conserve the church
of Hagia Sophia and its paintings.24 This work was undertaken by David Winfield
(1929-2013) and his team from 1957 to 1962, after which the church opened as a
museum to display the rich and vibrant medieval culture of the Pontos.
This exhibition brings together the archival photos by Gabriel Millet, Fyo-
dor Uspenskii (1845-1928), David Talbot Rice and David Winfield, along with
some from other sources. They record both the city and its monuments, but also
19 Pitton de Tournefort, 1717.

20 Fallmerayer, 1843; see also Annika Asp-Talwars translation of Panaretos in this volume.
21 Hussey, 1995; Finlay, 1851.
22 Hommaire de HeU, 1854-1859; Texier бе Piulan, 1864; Gagarin, 1897.
23 Millet, 1895: 419-59; Millet, 1896: 496-501.
24 Millet & Talbot Rice, 1936.
25
the work, love and care that went in to the restoration of the church of Hagia So-
phia. The essays that follow introduce the empire and its history and set out much
of the background to help understand the monuments and the broader contexts
in which we must study them. They emphasise Trebizond's connections to the
world. The translation of Michael Panaretos'chronicle, the first to be published in
English and Turkish, makes his account more accessible, and gives a direct wit-
ness to the empire's history. Other essays shine light on the cultural and political
aims of the Russian occupation of Trabzon in 1916, and the conditions under
which Winfields team worked in the 1950s and 60s.
This exhibition is dedicated to all the men and women who gave so much
of their time to record and preserve these buildings, their histories and their
memories.
26
Introduction: The Lure of Trebizond, Antony Eastmond
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28
The Empire of Trebizond
Antony Eastmond
Introduction
The empire of Trebizond is an important, but largely forgotten outpost of the

Byzantine empire. Established in April 1204, it existed for more than 250 years.
It outlasted the fall of Constantinople by eight years and its last emperor, Da-
vid Grand Komnenos (r. 1460-1461), only surrendered to the Ottoman sultan
Mehmet II on 15 August 1461, the Feast of the Dormition of the Virgin in the
Christian calendar. Its history is often characterised by tales of palace intrigue,
civil war, usurpation and murder.1 George Finlay, one of the earliest historians of
the empire, despaired of these internal squabbles which ultimately drained the
empire of power and vitality. He ended his History of Greece , written in 1851, with
a damning summary: "In concluding the history of this Greek state, we inquire in
vain for any benefit that it conferred on the human race. It seems a mere eddy in
the torrent of events that connect the past with the future. The tumultuous agita-
tion of the stream did not purify a single drop of the waters of life."2
Finlay's verdict ignored the evidence of the city itself, which he had visited
in June 1850.3 For alongside its political infighting and court scandals, the empire
of Trebizond had a vibrant and unique culture that is visible in the buildings,
paintings, manuscripts and metalwork that were made in the city, and which this
exhibition celebrates. Its emperors commissioned great monuments and works
of art both within the borders of the empire and further afield in the Byzantine
world; it had a flourishing intellectual life, and it was a meeting place of cultures
from across Europe and Asia.
For their capital, the emperors chose well. Trebizond was an easily defend-
ed city (Fig. 1), in a well-protected land. Its rulers made the most of the natural
lay of the land, building their palace in the formidable citadel between the two
1 See, for example in Enghsh Finlay, 1851; Miller, 1926. More recent scholarship takes a different approach.
See Karpov, 2007.
2 Finlay, 1851: 496-7.
3 Hussey, 1995: vol. 1,289-310.
31
The Empire ofTrebizond, Antony Eastmond
ravines that divide the city. Here they lived in splendour in a lavishly decorated
palace that attracted wonder from visitors. Over the centuries they extended the
city walls down from the citadel to the shoreline, joining the heart of the city to
the harbour created by the Roman emperor Hadrian in the second century AD.
Throughout the city they built churches to honour the precious relics and mirac-
ulous icons that the city preserved. The cathedral of the Panagia Chrysokephalos
stood in the middle city (Fig. 3) and the principal cult church of St. Eugenios
overlooked the city from the east ravine by the commercial heart of the city (Fig.
2), around the Daphnous harbour and the central square, the Meydan. It was here
that Venetian and Genoese merchants established their warehouses and castles.
Looking down on them all was Mount Minthrion (Boztepe) (Fig. 4), where a
number of religious foundations were established, including the nunnery of the
Theoskepastos (Fig. 5) and the monastery of St. Sabbas. Further afield the mon-
asteries of the Matzouka, notably Soumela (Fig. 6) and Vazelon (Fig. 7), received
lavish funding from the emperors to match their extraordinary cliff-face loca-
tions; and in 1374 emperor Alexios III financed the building of the Dionysiou
monastery on Mount Athos, where his memory is still treasured today. Hagia
Sophia stood somewhat apart from the city to the west, and until the 1960s it
was surrounded by fields as it must have been throughout the Middle Ages. All
are testimony to the piety of the Christians ofTrebizond, the wealth that they
derived from trade passing through their city, and the silver mines they were able
to exploit.
The narrow strip of land between the Black Sea and the Pontos Mountains
on which the empire was founded makes Trebizond look isolated, but as a trading
city it maintained important links that connected it to Europe and the Silk Road.
The emperors ofTrebizond also ruled the Crimea, giving them access to trade
crossing the Black Sea from the rivers of Russia. To the south, the Zigana pass
that cut through the mountains gave access to the Anatolian Plateau.
Although the empire presented itself as a Pontic Greek state with a strong
awareness of its Hellenic ancestry, it had significant populations of other peoples.
The great mercantile city-states of Europe—Genoa and Venice—both supported
significant colonies in the city, and they had a strong visible presence in the cas-
tles that they owned to guard their ships in the harbour (Fig. 8).4 Armenians
and Georgians frequented Trebizond's markets. Their presence is evident in the
4 Karpov, 1986.
32
Armenian monastery at Kaymaklı in a southern suburb of the city (Fig. 9); and in
the Laz and Tzan names (related to the Georgians) that fill the Acts of Vazelon
monastery; records of the donations of these people from the east of the empire
to one of its most important religious foundations.5 Turkish groups also played an
important role in the empire, whether as allies, as enemies or as trading partners,
beginning with the Seljuks in the thirteenth century and ending with the Otto
mans in the fifteenth. The stories in the Book of Dede Korkut delight in the bravery
of Kan Turali, the Turkmen prince who single-handedly fought bulls, lions and
camels in the Meydan to win the hand of Salján, the beautiful, fierce (but mythi
cal) princess of Trebizond.6 The story had ancient roots, but its written version
intertwined these with the realities of diplomatic marriages between the empire
and the Turkmen tribes in the fourteenth century.
The international outlook engendered by these contacts is evident in as

pects of the decoration of the church of Hagia Sophia, the best preserved mon
ument of the empire. Here Caucasian sculptural traditions appear alongside
muqarnas niches drawn from Muslim cultures imported by the Turks, in a church
with the finest Byzantine wall paintings of the mid-thirteenth century. The inter
weaving of cultures and ideas is visible again in the Trapezuntine manuscripts of
the fourteenth century.7
The History ofthe Empire
If George Finlay was damning about the end of the empire, he was equally scep
tical about its beginnings. His History begins with these words: "The empire of
Trebizond was the creation of accident. "8 It does not suggest the most auspicious
start to the history of an empire that was to last so long, but it accurately captures
the slightly haphazard nature of its birth and survival over the following two and
a half centuries.
In April 1204 the Byzantine empire in Constantinople was in chaos: three

men claimed the imperial throne, and the city was threatened by the Latin forces
of the Fourth Crusade. The Crusader knights had embarked on ships for passage
5 Uspenskii бе Benesevic, 1927.
6 Lewis, 1974: chap. 6; Mélikoff, 1964:18-28.
7 See the chapters by Glenn Peers and Barbara Roggema in this volume.
8 Finlay, 1851: 353.
33
The Empire o/Treòizond, Antony Eastmond
to Jerusalem, but they were diverted to Constantinople instead by their Venetian

navigators who were seeking revenge after a massacre of Venetians there in 1182.
Centralised control in the Byzantine world was collapsing, and local rulers sought
to fill the gap to benefit themselves. The initial appearance of Alexios and David
Komnenos in Trebizond was part of this fragmentation of the empire, a pattern
repeated in Rhodes, the Meander Valley and elsewhere as men proclaimed them-
selves independent rulers.9
The brothers differed from these other new rulers in two ways: their an-
cestry and their supporters. They were the grandsons of the last emperor of the
Komnenian dynasty, Andronikos I (r. 1183-1185), and so claimed royal blood
and they were supported by queen Tamar of Georgia (r. 1185-1213).10 At this
moment Georgia was the most powerful state in the region, its influence increas-
ing rapidly after its overhwleming victory over the Seljuk sultan Rukn al-Din
Suleymanshah II (r. 1195-1204) at the battle of Basiani in 1203. Tamar seems to
have encouraged the brothers to make the most of the instability in Constantino-
ple and to raid Trebizond. However when they arrived in the city, Byzantium had
fallen to the Fourth Crusade, thus making them defacto rulers. Trebizond's his-
tory of independence from central control made their assumption of power easy,
and their family pedigree allowed them to proclaim Alexios as the first emperor
(r. 1204-1222). Trebizond had long kept Constantinople at arm's length. From
the eleventh century its government had been dominated by a local family, the
Gabrades, who largely ignored the distant capital.11 By the middle of the twelfth
century, Theodore Gabras "regarded the city as his own property and was invin-
cible," according to Anna Komnenas Alexiad}2 The brothers were easily able to
exploit that local sense of independence to their own ends.
Alexios ruled in Trebizond while his brother sought to expand to the west, hop-
ing to reach Constantinople. David s expedition failed in Paphlagonia, the heartland
of Komnenian power. He was defeated by the rival emperor in Nicaea, Theodore I
Laskaris (r. 1204-1222), and was later sent to Vatopedi monastery on Mount Athos
where he died.13 Alexios was forced to concentrate on securing his power in Trebizond
instead. And so a new empire was born, apart from Constantinople.
9 Cheynet, 1990: nos. 205-23.

10 Toumanoff, 1940; VasiUev, 1936.
11 Bryer, 1970:164-87.
12 Comnena, 1969: 8.ix.
13 Bryer, 1988:161-88.
48
The empire was quickly isolated from the Byzantine world around it. The
Anatolian Plateau, once a key province of the Byzantine empire, was now firmly
under Seljuk Turkish rule and when, in 1214, sultan Kaykaus I (r. 1211-1220)
captured the Black Sea port of Sinope, the empire was cut off from the Byzantine
lands to the west. To the east lay Georgia, but that state s early dominance quickly
waned in the face of the Khwarazmian and Mongol invasions that followed in
quick succession in the 1220s and 1230s, devastating the land, depopulating the
cities and deporting or killing the people. Trebizond itself narrowly managed to
avoid these disasters.
Although they lost any hope of regaining Constantinople, within a decade

of establishing themselves in Trebizond, the Grand Komnenoi had not aban-
doned the pretence of their power. We have evidence that its emperors set them-
selves up in imitation of their ancestors in Constantinople, taking the title of
"Emperor and autocrat of the Romans," the traditional title of the emperor of
Byzantium. These are the titles that Manuel I Grand Komnenos (r. 1238-1263)
gave himself in his donor portrait in Hagia Sophia; although the robes he wears
are remarkably unlike those traditionally worn by the Byzantine emperor (Fig.
10) The emperors also began to remodel Trebizond to be a suitable capital for an
empire and to reinvent the processions, rituals, tides and protocols that an empire
needed.
The battle for imperial supremacy was conclusively lost in 1261 when Ma-
nuel's rival in Nicaea, Michael VIII Palaiologos (r. 1259-1282), re-entered Con-
stantinople and revived the Byzantine empire in its old capital in his own name.
This did not stop the emperors in Trebizond from continuing to set forth their
claim to the imperial throne, but the reality of their position was now very dif-
ferent. This seems to have been recognised in 1282 when John II Grand Kom-
nenos agreed a marriage alliance with Michael VIII, sealed when John married
the Constantinopolitan emperors daughter, Eudokia. George Pachymeres,writing
on behalf of the winning Constantinopolitan party, says that John agreed to take
only the lesser tide of Despot, and to swap the red shoes of the emperor for black
ones.14 However, the Grand Komnenoi s imperial pretensions were not ended: fre-
quently thereafter we find them naming themselves as "Emperors of all the East,
of the Iberians [Georgians] and of the transmarine provinces [the Crimea]."15
14 Pachymeres, 1984: V1.34.

15 Karakatsanis, 1997: cat. 2.29.
49
This established the framework for the future history of the empire. It had
lost its original raison d'être, and it had lost direct contact with its place of origin.
Now it was more concerned to survive in relation to the states around it: the
Georgians to the east, and the plethora of Turkish polities in Anatolia, including
the Seljuks, the Turkmen Beyliks, Ak Koyunlu, Kara Koyunlu and, finally, the
Ottomans. The Grand Komnenoi emperors maintained some links to Byzantium,
and many marriages were contracted between them and the Palaiologan emperors
in Constantinople, but their empire was never again at the centre of Greek politi-
cal life. The survival of the empire was down to money, location and canny diplo-
macy Successive emperors ensured that they were related to all the ruling families
that surrounded them: Alexios II (r. 1282-1330), whose mother was sister of the
Byzantine emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos in Constantinople (r. 1282-1332),
married into the Jaqeli family that ruled Samtskhe, the south-western province
of Georgia that bordered Trebizond. His daughter Eudokia married the emir of
Sinope. In the next generation the daughters of Basil Grand Komnenos (r. 1332-
1340), included Maria, who married Fahreddin Kutlug beg, khan of the Ak Ko-
yunlu, and Theodora who married Hajji Umar, emir of Chalybia, in 1358. Alexios
IV (r. 1417-1429) continued the tradition of political marriages by marrying two
of his daughters to the rulers of the two rival neighbouring Muslim states: Jihan
Shah, khan of the Kara Koyunlu, and Ali Beg, khan of the Ak Koyunlu. His eld-
est daughter Maria became the third wife of the Byzantine Emperor John VIII
Palaiologos in Constantinople. Michael Angold has suggested that it would be
better to call the empire of Trebizond a "Greek emirate," and its Hellenic roots
were certainly tempered by its geographical setting and neighbours.16
Life in the Empire
Most of our knowledge about the empire comes from life in the city of Trebizond
itself. The surviving buildings, their decoration and paintings, and the inscriptions
carved into the city walls all provide crucial evidence to add to that provided in
manuscript sources. Thus, it is only from an inscription cut into the walls of the
lower city in 1314 that we know that order was kept in the city by a group of
night watchmen.17 We know less about life outside the city, a world dominated
16 Angold, 1999: 543-68, at 547.

17 Grégoire, 1909: 490-9.
50
by the exploitation of natural resources and agriculture.18 As a result, our picture

of the empire is dominated by the urban elite world of the Grand Komnenoi and
their concerns. It was these men and women who commissioned, built and deco-
rated the churches in the city and beyond.
For this group, it was an empire of patronage and with periods of extraor-
dinary prosperity. Only one church built before 1204 survives in the city, that of
St. Anne (Fig. 11), all the others were built and re-built on a larger scale (often
more than once) during the centuries of empire. The empire's three main surviv-
ing churches—the cathedral of the Panagia Chrysokephalos (the All Holy Gold-
en-Headed Mother of God, now Ortahisar Camii), the church of St. Eugenios
(now Yeni Cuma Camii) and Hagia Sophia (since 2013 reopened as Ayasofya
Camii)—all share a similar architectural aesthetic, with their carefully carved ash-
lar masonry and their polygonal apses. These features marked these Trapezuntine
buildings out from the Byzantine churches erected in other former provinces of
the Byzantine world. The splendour of these buildings is hard now to gauge: the
solidity of the architecture is evident, and from Hagia Sophia we also have the
beautifully cleaned wall paintings, discussed in the next chapter. All the churches
also seem to have had magnificent marble panels on their walls and floors (Fig.
12), and these are found in other churches within the empire's realm (Fig. 13).
The Panagia Chrysokephalos may even have had golden mosaic, the most expen-
sive form of decoration of its age, in its main apse or on its façade.19
Some emperors emerge as particularly dynamic patrons: recent work has

highlighted the role of John II Grand Komnenos (who was probably responsible
for the extortion of Marco Polos expedition in the 1290s) at St. Eugenios and
Soumela;20 and Alexios III in the later fourteenth century, who sponsored work at
Soumela, the Theoskepastos nunnery, and further afield at the Dionysiou Monas-
tery on Mount Athos. Women were also active in the life of the empire. In addi-
tion to the women who ruled as empresses in their own right, notably Theodora
who seized the throne from her half-brother John II in 1284-5; a number of oth-
er female members of the imperial family played important roles in the empires
politics. Eudokia Palaiologina, who had come from Constantinople to Trebizond
to marry John II, became an important defender of the empire against the mach-
is Bryer, 1966:152-60.
19 Hussey, 1995: vol. 1,289-310.
20 For emphasis on the patronage of John II: Georgiadou, 2015: 280-365.
51
inations of her brother, the emperor in Constantinople. In the next generation,

Eirene, the mother of Alexios III, established the nunnery of the Theoskepastos
(Fig. 14), where she was depicted as founder with her son and his wife Theodora.
The paintings were repainted by an abbess "who loved splendour and was anxious
to revive religious feelings in the minds of the people of Trebizond,, in 1843. She
replaced Eirene with a portrait of Alexios' illegitimate son, Andronikos, who was
buried at the monastery in 1376 after he died falling from a window high up in
the palace in unexplained circumstances (Fig. 15).21
There is less evidence from the final decades of the empire, but it still kept
up its business until the very end. The sense of inevitable defeat that comes across
from reading subsequent histories was not shared by those that lived through it.
Emperors continued to patronise monasteries in the fifteenth century, including
the wall paintings in the eastern chapel of St. Sabbas, dated 1411, (Figs. 16-18)
or those commissioned for the bell tower at Hagia Sophia by Alexios IV between
1426-7 and 1444.22 In October 1460, just months before the fall of the empire to
Mehmet II, the last emperor David Grand Komnenos issued a decree to sort out
a property dispute between two royal monasteries in the city, the Pharos and the
Theoskepastos.23
Trebizond is striking for the quantity of imperial portraits that have been
recorded in the city, on the walls of churches, and also in the imperial palace, as
Bessarion recalled: "All round, on the walls, is painted the choir of the emper-
ors, both those who have ruled our land and their ancestors."24 Jakob Fallme-
rayer reports seeing portraits of all the emperors from Alexios I to Alexios III
painted in the church of St. Eugenios, now all long lost.25 They show the pride
the Grand Komnenoi took in their genealogy that they traced back to imperial
roots in Constantinople in the eleventh century, and their desire to commemorate
this repeatedly. The wish to remember and commemorate the dead filtered down
through society, and the ninth-century church of St. Anne seems to have become
a burial place for members of the court, which was filled with their portraits in
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Indeed commemorative paintings and
tombs are known from many of the churches in the city, including the bell tower
21 Hussey, 1995: vol. 1,289-310.

22 See Ioanna Rapti's chapter in this volume.
23 Laurent, 1953: 271-2.
24 Mango, 1972: 252-3.
25 Fallmerayer, 1843: vol. 1,125.
52
and church platform at Hagia Sophia, and at the Theoskepastos nunnery. The tra
dition continued into the nineteenth century, when the last king of Georgia, Solo
mon II (d. 1815), was buried outside the cathedral of St. Gregory (Figs. 19,20).
At the centre of Orthodox worship were icons and relics. The cathedral
of the Chrysokephalos had a miraculous icon of the Mother of God. Another
miracle-performing icon of the Mother of God, supposedly painted from life by
St. Luke, was kept at the monastery of Soumela. These could be processed around
the walls and through the streets of the city in times of need, as in 1223 when
the sultan Melik besieged the city. Alongside the icons, the people of Trebizond
could also turn to the relics of their local martyr-saint Eugenios, who was sup
posedly killed by the pagan emperor Diocletian с 303. The church dedicated to
him, overlooking the east ravine of the city, marked the site of his martyrdom. It
was the appearance of the saint at his shrine that confounded sultan Melik s at
tack, and a century later it was the same saint who helped the emperor Alexios
II to kill a dragon that terrorised Mount Minthrion (Boztepe).26 A magnificent
reliquary of the saint (and his three companions, Aquila, Valerian and Canidus),
possibly brought from the city by its most famous son, cardinal Bessarion, is now
kept in the Treasury of San Marco in Venice (Fig. 21).27 It calls the saints the
"enduring pillars of the East, the splendid blessing of Trebizond."
Alexios IPs fight against a dragon hints at a less mundane world of myths
and beliefs that existed in the empire. A dragon was by no means the weirdest.
In 1318 Alexios II supposedly employed a magician to bring back his favourite
courtier from the dead briefly, so that the man could name his murderer.28 These
practices, along with horoscopes and other astrological beliefs, were shared with
all the peoples that surrounded the empire.
According to the courtier John Lazaropoulos (1310-1369), Alexios

dragon-killing feats encouraged him to re-establish St. Eugenios' feast day in the
city. It was to last a whole day and a night with:
... hymn-singing throughout the night, the songs, the hymns, the resplend
ent lights, the manifold perfumes, the torchbearers, the vessels used as
26 Lazaropoulos' Logos in Rosenqvist, 1996: 226.

27 Buckton, 1984: cat. 28.
28 Miller, 1926: 37-8.
53
lamps [...] further the varied table and the varieties of drink and food, the
banquet guests, the golden plates, the fish dishes, the saucers, the various
kinds of bottles and cups of wine, the sweet drinks—in short, a complete
spiritual dinner for the soul and a full banquet for the body.29
The dragons head was preserved in the metropolitans palace and shown to visitors.30
Lazaropoulos'account of the feast of St. Eugenios reminds us that the em-

pire was not solely concerned with politics and religion. Accounts ofTrebizond
frequently remarked on its abundance of gardens and fruit: the city was a place
of pleasure as well as politics. Sources give us glimpses of the trappings of wealth.
We hear of a wandering troop of acrobats who performed in Trebizond before
moving on to Constantinople.31 And we know that polo was a favourite pastime
of emperors: the polo field, tzykanisterion, was located to the west of the city
(possibly under the modern site of Trabzonspor's football stadium). But it was
a dangerous sport. Andronikos I Gidos (r. 1222-1235), the first emperor to be
recorded as being buried in the city's cathedral, died during a match after being
trampled to death when he fell from his horse.
The intellectual life of the empire was strong. It attracted scholars such as
Gregory Chioniades (between 1240-50-c. 1320) and George Chrysokokkes
(c. 1300-1350), known for their work in astronomy. They moved between Trebizond
and Iran, translating texts from Persian into Greek.32 Chioniades'wide reading is
evident from the copies of Homers Iliad and Thucydides' History of the Pelopon
nesian War that he owned and later passed on to Constantine Loukites, a scholar
attracted to the city from Constantinople who rose to become Alexios II s effective
prime minister at the start of the fourteenth century.33 Chrysokokkes isfirstrecorded
as making a copy of the Odyssey. All of this indicates a high quality of scholarship
in the city, and how deeply rooted in ancient Greek literature it was. The surviving
writings of other Trapezuntine scholars, such as Michael Panaretos and John Laza-
ropoulos, give other insights into the history, culture and life of the city and its in-
habitants.34 In the fifteenth century, cardinal Bessarion was born in the city. He lived
29 Lazaropoulos'Lo£Oi in Rosenqvist, 1996:226.

30 Miller, 1926: 41.
31 Miller, 1926: 42.
32 Pingree, 1964:133-60.
33 Westerink, 1980:236.
34 See Panaretos in this volume; Rosenqvist, 1996.
54
there before moving to Constantinople and then Italy, where he was a key figure in
the transmission of Greek learning into the Renaissance. His encomium of the pal
ace in Trebizond is an exercise in nostalgia, but also a great rhetorical work about the
luxury and splendour that he remembered from his childhood.35
The churches ofTrebizond show how the Greek roots of the city were
manifested to its populace. The buildings and their paintings, made to suit the
liturgies and rituals that were performed within them, all form an integral part of
the history of Byzantine art. Whether they survive as works of architecture and
painting in the city today, or only as photographs of long-vanished fragments or
ruins, they are the most tangible manifestations of the empire ofTrebizond, its
history and its beliefs. The church of Hagia Sophia stands to the fore as the best
preserved of all the medieval buildings and the only one to have been cleaned and
conserved. Built in the first decades of the empire it allows us to see the splen
dour of its art at this early stage, just as the paintings in the fifteenth-century
tower in the monastic complex allow us to see the state of its art in the empires
final decades. They have an international importance as evidence at crucial mo
ments in the history of the Byzantine world, when relatively little evidence sur
vives elsewhere. Equally, they have a local importance, showing the distinctive
characteristics of the art and extraordinary mixed culture of this corner of the
medieval world, and the ways its rulers, patrons and artists negotiated between
their membership of the wider world and their need to respond to the particular
local conditions under which they lived. They show how a Byzantine world could
develop and change in a region dominated by the Turkish Muslim powers of
Anatolia. They are Byzantine buildings and paintings, but they are also Trapezun-
tine buildings and paintings. It is in that overlap that their fascination lies.
35 Abşık, 2011:1-25; Mango, 1972: 252-3.
55
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Vasiliev, A. A. 1936. "The Foundation of the Empire of Trebizond." Speculum 11: 3-37.
Westerink, L.G. 1980. "La profession de foi de Grégoire Chioniadès." Revue des études byzantines
38:233-45.
57
Hagia Sophia at Trebizond
Antony Eastmond
For much of its history the church of Hagia Sophia (now reopened as the mosque
of Ayasofya once again) stood proudly above the fields that stretched out to the
west of the city of Trabzon.1 It is only in the past few decades that the outcrop
overlooking the Black Sea, on which it is set, has been encroached upon by hous-
ing and roads (Figs. 1,2). The building neatly encapsulates the empire of Trebi-
zond: beautiful, intriguing, slightly mysterious and somewhat remote, but not
inaccessible. It is part of the Byzantine world, but at a remove from it. The church
was founded by the emperor Manuel I Grand Komnenos (r. 1238-1263), whose
reign was one of the more successful in the thirteenth century. It was a period of
military expansion, political stability and security, marking the early highpoint
of the empire of Trebizond. Manuel's portrait still survived inside the church in
the middle of the nineteenth century, when it was seen by the Russian Grigorii
Gagarin and by the Englishman George Finlay.2 The tower to the west of the
church, examined in a later chapter by Ioanna Rapti, was built and decorated in
the fifteenth century in the final decades of the empire. It too had imperial ties:
portraits of John IV (r. 1429-1448) and his father Alexios IV (r. 1416-1420) were
painted on its exterior east wall, facing the church.3 Between them, the church
and the tower encompass the history of the empire and its changing fate between
the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries.
The church is the best preserved monument from the empire. It has sur-
vived in part because it lay outside the walls of the city and therefore was less
affected by urban change, and in part because of its intermittent use as a mosque,
which ensured the fabric of the building was maintained. However, the building
has had a chequered history and many visitors have found it neglected or abused:
Joseph Pitton de Tournefort found it partially in ruins and partly converted into
a mosque in 1701, and when Jakob Fallmerayer visited in 1840 the narthex was
in use as a stable.4 When the building was restored as a mosque in the 1880s, the
1 Talbot Rice, 1968; Eastmond, 2004.
2 Gagarin, 1897: pi. 25; Finlay, 1995: vol. 1,301.
3 Bryer & Winfield, 1985: figs. 178a b.
4 de Tournefort, 1718: vol. 2,236; Fallmerayer, 1843: vol. 1,124.
59
Hagia Sophia at Trebizond, Antony Eastmond
wall paintings were covered in plaster. This protected the surviving paintings for
the next eighty years, until the Russell Trust expedition of 1957-1962 revealed
them once more. However, the plaster covering also caused considerable dimage:
in order to make the new covering adhere to the existing plasterwork, the work-
ers hacked pits across the surface of the paintings, creating a snowstorm effect
that is visible in some of the photographs taken before the holes were toned in by
the restorers (Figs. 3,4).
The isolated location of Hagia Sophia may have been due to the piesence
of an outcrop of rock on which to build—giving the church its prominent posi-
tion to the west of the city. It may also have served to facilitate imperial proces-
sions, which were a crucial part of Byzantine society, and had their origins in the
imperial processions of ancient Roman emperors after a victory. As the Roman
empire became Christian, processions came to take on religious significance too,
especially as victory was associated more and more closely with divine interven-
tion, effected through fragments of the True Cross, other relics and images of
Christ, the Virgin and saints. Processions began not just to commemorate victo-
ries but also to ensure them. The victory of Andronikos I Gidos (r. 1222-1235)
over the sultan Melik in 1222-3 was ensured by a procession of the icon of the
Virgin from the Chrysokephalos and the relic of the head of St. Eugenios, from
his church in the east of the city.5 As Trebizond was a narrow city it was not well
suited to processions, so the presence of Hagia Sophia outside the city walls may
have provided a staging point for grander processions that were more appropriate
to the pomp of a new empire.
Architecture
The church was once at the heart of a monastic complex. When Gabriel Mil-
let visited in 1893, the original gatehouse to the site was still visible, giving an
indication of the scale of the buildings that must once have filled the grounds
(Fig. 5). The church, at the centre of the complex, was designed to serve the needs
of the Orthodox Christian liturgy (Fig. 6). The eastern part of the church, with
its three semi-circular apses was reserved for the priests and officiants at services;
the rectangular space to the west (the naos), surmounted by a dome supported on
four columns, was where the congregation stood. These are standard features in
5 The story is recounted in Rosenqvist, 1996: 308-34; Shukurov, 2001:116-35.
60
an Orthodox church: the small chapel that was excavated during the restoration
in the 1950s, immediately to the north, shares these same features.
To the west of the naos of the main church is a separate space called the
narthex.This was used for various other functions, including the baptism of new
Christians, which would have taken place in front of an image of the first bap-
tism: that of Christ by John "the Forerunner" (Fig. 7).
While the interior space of the church would have been familiar to Ortho-
dox Christian visitors, their first sight of the exterior of the church would have
been much more surprising. As they approached the site, visitors would have
immediately noticed two features: the overall exterior shape of the church and
the materials from which it was built. The outside of the church is dominated by
the three open porches that stretch out on the north, south and west sides of the
building, giving it the appearance of a cruciform building (Fig. 8). The function
of these porches is still unclear, although they may have been added simply to
provide a shelter from the rain.
The building material of the church is also unusual in a Byzantine context.

The use of finely dressed masonry gives the church its crisp external lines (Fig. 9),
and it allowed the craftsmen to add the other extraordinary feature of the build-
ing, its relief carvings which will be examined later. Both of these features were
rare in the Byzantine world but they were much more common in Anatolia and
the Caucasus, the first indication of the impact of local artistic traditions on the
building.
The final unusual feature of the church's exterior is the podium on which
the church was built. The retaining wall contains a series of niches, which were
used over the centuries of the empire for burials (Fig. 10). Thus like many of the
other churches in the city, one of the main functions of Hagia Sophia was for the
commemoration of the dead.
For all the care with which the church was built, it is clear that some as-
pects were changed during building, or not fully thought through: the walls of
the porches are all skewed on their north-south axes, some windows are partially
hidden by other walls and roofs, and the four columns beneath the dome are not
aligned with the pilasters on the walls beside them.
61
Havia Sophia at Trebizonđ, Antony Eastmond
Function
Churches had many functions. Primarily, they were built to accommodate Chris-
tian rituals and to be places of worship. They were the focus of communities and
the centre of Christian life. However, they had other less overt functions as ways
to express ideologies and beliefs. They could be political as well as religious sym-
bols. This is evident even in the decision to build a church in the first place. All
people in positions of power and authority in the Orthodox world faced expecta-
tions of how they should behave, and what they should undertake. The display of
piety was one particularly important expectation, and the building of a church
was an exemplary way publicly to demonstrate this virtue. Hagia Sophia should
primarily be seen in this light (Figs. 11,12). It provides evidence of the resources
available to Manuel I, and the proportion of his wealth that he was able and will-
ing to devote to the glorification of the Christian God. However, the foundation
of a church was never so straightforward, and God was not the sole audience for
Manuels display of piety.
The location chosen for the church, its architectural design, the decision
to decorate its exterior with sculptural reliefs, and the choice and arrangement
of paintings throughout the interior might all reveal Manuel s personal beliefs
and interests; but they also affected how Manuel's offering was interpreted by
his subjects within the empire and those who visited it from outside, whether
Muslims travelling north from Anatolia, or Christians of different confessions
from Italy, Constantinople or the Caucasus. Although we know that he paid for
it, we do not know how much personal involvement Manuel had in the design of
the church. Its appearance probably reflects a range of different views, including
the direct input of the emperor, the ideas of the designers he employed to oversee
the building, and the practical contributions of the builders, carvers and painters
who brought their own experiences to the building and used their skills to make
something that they thought was worthy of the emperor and his aims. Thus the
church does not articulate a single ideological position, but rather it negotiates
many ideologies, some of which were consciously intended, and others are only
apparent from a distance. The church and its decoration can be discussed under
a number of headings, the most important three of which are theology, politics
and culture.
90
Hagia Sophia at Trebizonä, Antony Eastmond
Ђео/ogy
The interior of the main church has two key focuses: the naos, dominated by its
dome supported on four granite columns, and the apse, the centre of the liturgical
rituals that took place inside. This design was standard for Orthodox churches,
and would have been familiar to visitors from anywhere in the Byzantine world.
The programme of paintings set up in these two areas was equally familiar. Both
show Christ: in the dome he appears as the Pantokrator [the Ruler of All] (Fig.
13); and in the apse he is shown as a child in the arms of his mother, the Vir
gin Mary (Fig. 14). This succinctly summarised the key features of Christianity:
God's incarnation as a man to redeem the sins of humankind, and his resurrec
tion after death to preside over heaven.
The juxtaposition of the human and divine natures of Christ is a major

feature of the decoration, and it is repeated on the vaults between the dome and
the apse. On the east side of the arch, the young, human Christ appears as Em
manuel among his ancestors (Fig. 15), while on the vault in front of the apse the
divine Christ ascends to heaven in a splendid aureole of light, perhaps the most
magnificent image in the main part of the church (Figs. 16,17) .
The dome image is now badly faded; we see only the torso of Christ who
has a long beard and centrally parted hair. It is no longer possible to see his facial
expression: is this the forbidding Christ that will come to judge all men, or a
more sympathetic God, inclined to look on men and women with benevolence?
Perhaps it does not matter. Around 1200, the Byzantine writer Nikolaos Me
santes described a similar image in the dome of the church of the Holy Apostles
in Constantinople, and concluded that it was all in the eye of the beholder: "His
eyes are joyful and welcoming to those who have a clean conscience... but to
those who are condemned by their own judgment, they are wrathful and hostile."6
A second image of Christ that appears in the narthex, on the south side of
the door into the main church, suggests that the designers of the church intended a
more sympathetic vision of Christ: here he is labelled ό φιλάνθρωπος (Philanthro-
pos—the lover of mankind) (Fig. 18). His mother, depicted on the north side of the
door, turns to him in prayer; and the two figures are repeated in another image of
intercessory prayerthe—Deesis—in the north bay of the narthex (Fig. 19).
6 Downey, 1957: sect. XIV.
91
Most of the rest of the painting in the main part of the church is now
sadly lost, but those images that survive are concentrated around the apse. They
show scenes from the life of Christ, and this programme of decoration probably
dominated the interior (although the side apses preserve fragments of cycles from
the lives of Mary and John the Baptist). The scenes that survive around the main
apse all come from the end of the Christological cycle and depict events that took
place after his resurrection. In addition to the Ascension and Pentecost (now
poorly preserved on the vault in front of the Ascension), three scenes survive on
the side walls of the main apse: Christs mission to the aposdes (south wall) (Figs.
20,21), the Incredulity of Thomas (Fig. 22) and Christ s appearance on the Lake
of Tiberias (both on the north wall) (Figs. 23,24). 7 It is unusual to find such a
concentration of post-resurrection scenes in the apse of a church in the period
before 1204; but it became increasingly common from the thirteenth century. The
paintings at Trebizond can be compared to those at Sopoćani in Serbia, which
was painted at about the same time, where the Incredulity of Thomas also appears
in the apse.8 It suggests that the theological concerns of the empire of Trebizond
were shared with other Orthodox centres in the thirteenth century. More scenes
from the life of Christ appear in the pendentives beneath the dome. Here, four
key scenes from his life—the Nativity, Baptism, Crucifixion and Anastasis—are
each associated with one of the four Gospel writers.
The second leading concern of the imagery in the church is the glorifica
tion of God. Surrounding the dome figure of Christ is one of the greatest won
ders of the church: an adoring choir of angels who bow down before Christ and
sing his praises. Just one inscription survives—Και προσκυνισατων αυτών πάντες
("And may all bow down before him", adapted from Psalm 72:10) (Fig. 25). The
Winfield Archive contains numerous photographs of these angels and their un
covering (Figs. 26,27), reflecting the care with which the restorers worked and
their fascination with this particularly well-preserved set of figures. The dyna
mism of the angels' poses and the richly varied colours of their haloes and robes
hint at how magnificent the church must have appeared when it was first fin
ished, probably in the 1250s, but possibly up to twenty years earlier.
The spectacle in the dome is matched by another in the vault of the central
bay of the narthex, where God is celebrated in a different guise (Figs. 28-30)
7 Eastmond, 2004:108-12.
8 Djurić, 1967.
92
The vault celebrates God as the Word (ό λόγος in Greek), reflecting the opening
sentence of St. Johns Gospel 1:1: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word
was with God, and the Word was God."The Word is represented as the hand of
God appearing at the centre of an angular burst of light. H e sends his word out
into the world, shown here by the four beasts of the vision of Ezekiel from the
Old Testament—the man, the lion, the ox and the eagle—that came to repre
sent the four evangelists in Christian theology. The four beasts each hold a copy
of their gospel, surrounding the central hand. From this centre, bright, multi
coloured shafts of light radiate down to the corners of the vaults. From below, it
is as if the hand of God is held up by rainbows. There are no exact parallels to this
vision, but its mixture of Old and New Testament imagery, its interweaving of il
lumination and eschatology is a heady theological and visual experience. It echoes
the imagery depicted on the pendentives below the dome, but with all the figures
and scenes here replaced by symbols. The imagery of light appears elsewhere—
not least in the acrostic that appears around the arms of a cross in a niche in the
north apse: ΦΧΦΠ, standing for Φως Χρίστου Φαίνει Πασι (the Light of Christ
shines upon all).9
The repetition and variations of these themes indicate that the programme
had a rich and learned team of designers. They also recurred elsewhere in the
empire. In the decoration of the small chapel of St. Elias at Vazelon monastery,
a number of images appear that are very close to those at Hagia Sophia. In the
apse of the chapel, angels bow down in a way very similar to those beneath the
dome (Fig. 31), and on the vault of the chapel the Christ of the Ascension is also
very close to that in the apse of Hagia Sophia (Fig. 32). 10 Although the paintings
at Vazelon have long been known to scholars, they have always been assumed to
be later. However, recent work indicates that they may pre-date the paintings at
Hagia Sophia, indicating how quickly the emperors of Trebizond set about beau
tifying the monasteries in their realm.11
At Hagia Sophia, the rest of the narthex is filled with a different set of im
ages, showing the miracles performed by Christ during his lifetime (Fig 33). Begin
ning with his first miracle—the turning of water into wine at the marriage feast
at Cana (Figs. 34, 35)—altogether at least eight miracles are depicted, including
9 Eastmond, 2004: 118.
10 Bryer&Winfield, 1985: 289-94.
11 I am most grateful to Ioanna Rapti, who alerted me to her discoveries, which she will publish in Revue des
études byzantines.
93
some in great detail such as the miracle of the loaves and fishes, which covers two
walls (Figs. 36-39), or the ghoulish image of a devil being cast out of a possessed
woman (Fig. 40) These paintings are filled with detail and incident—wedding guests
carefully studying the wine that Christ has just transformed, children squabbling
over the distribution of food, the agonised, contortions of the possessed woman. The
depiction of Christ s miracles and the interest in incidental aspects of the narrative
became a particular concern in Byzantine art at this time, and it appears in many
churches in Constantinople, Thessaloniki and Mistras painted between 1280 and
1340. Trebizond shows the first evidence of this growing interest.
More unusual imagery is found in the porches of the church. Nothing now
survives in the south porch, which must have been the most important, and in the
west porch only a few small fragments of the Last Judgement remain. The north
porch preserves considerably more, and the imagery here seems to concentrate on
the status and importance of Christ's mother. It includes a number of Old Testa-
ment scenes which act as préfigurations of the Virgin—Gideons fleece, Moses
and the burning bush, Jacobs ladder and his struggle with the angel (Figs. 41,
42), and the suffering of Job on the dunghill (Figs. 43, 44). O n the east side of
the porch is the Tree of Jesse, a genealogy that traces the ancestry of Mary—the
Mother of God, who appears at the top of the tree—back to Jesse (the father of
the king and prophet, David) who acts as the tree's root (Fig. 45). The cult of the
Virgin was central to the religious life of Constantinople, and was also evident in
all the cities in which the imperial exiles set up their capitals after 1204. It was a
miraculous icon of the Virgin (along with the head of St. Eugenios) that helped
defend the city during the invasion of the sultan Melik in 1223.
Educated viewers would have been expected to recognise and understand

all the scenes from the Old and New Testaments in the church, and to draw theo-
logical links between them. The images therefore acted not only as a spur to the
celebration of the liturgy inside the church and as a vehicle for prayer, but also as
a theological exercise in understanding the nature of Christian belief. As evidence
of the sophistication of art in this period of exile and civil war across the Byzan-
tine world, the paintings are unparalleled. However, questions remain about the
degree to which we should see these paintings as a substitute for the lost art of
Constantinople in the thirteenth century, as evidence of local developments, or as
a sign of growing western European influence.12
12 Caillet бе Joubert, 2012; Vinogradova, 2008; Talbot Rice, 1967.
94
Hagia Sophia at Treòizond, Antony Eastmond
Politics
Theology was not the only concern of an imperial church, however. Given that
the church was an opportunity for the emperor to display his wealth, piety and
ambition, viewers might have seen other, more topical, concerns as they looked at
the imagery. The most obvious political concern was the future of the Byzantine
empire, and Manuel I Grand Komnenos's claim to be the universal emperor of
the Byzantine world. This claim was set out in the titles that he claimed for him
şelfin his donor portrait in the church, "Emperor and autocrat of the Romans."
In Trebizond he was in exile. Although the emperors worked hard to make Tre
bizond a city suitable to be an imperial capital, Hagia Sophia reveals that they
viewed the capital as a temporary home in exile, and that they desired to return
to Constantinople.
The theme of exile recurs in a number of places in the church, but it is

most visible in the frieze that was carved across the width of the main, south
porch through which worshippers entered the church once they had come into
the complex through the gatehouse on the southeast side.13
The frieze (Fig. 46) tells the story of the Fall of Man, from chapter two of
the book of Genesis. Unusually, the narrative starts at the right-hand side with
the creation of Eve from the rib of Adam. It then continues to the left with the
temptation of Eve by the serpent, who winds his body around the tree of knowl
edge and whose head looms down over that of Eve. In the third scene, Eve then
hands the fruit of the tree to Adam, who stands among the luxurious vegetation
of Eden. This section of the story is accompanied by an inscription taken from
Genesis 2:8:
Έφύτευσεν ό θεός Παράδεισον εν Εδέμ κατά ανατολάς και εθετο έκεΐ

τον ανθρωπον öv έπλασε
And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put
the man whom he had formed.
The story continues to the left of the central arch with one last tree from Eden;
all the scenes thereafter refer to life in exile outside of paradise. By the tree the
13 The frieze is discussed at greater length in Eastmond, 1999 and Eastmond, 2004: 64-74.
95
Hagia Sophia at Trebixond, Antony Eastmond
closed gate of paradise is guarded by an angel. Then follow the final three scenes,
carved over the remaining seven blocks of stone. In the first, an angel drives
Adam and Eve out of paradise; next the pair sit lamenting their fate, raising their
hands to their faces in a sign of mourning and shame which repeats the gesture
from the previous episode. Finally, against the left-hand side of the arch, Cain
raises a stone with which to kill Abel, who already lies prone on the ground be
neath him. The rich foliage which fills Eden is absent from all the scenes set be
yond its gate. A second inscription, which comes from the Triodion and is taken
from the Orthodox service performed during Lent on the eve of the Sunday of
Forgiveness, is carved above these scenes:
Έκάθισεν Αδάμ απέναντι του Παραδείσου και την ιδίαν γύμνωσιν

θρενών ώδύρετο
t Adam sat before Paradise and, lamenting his nakedness, he wept.14
The two forms of narration here are strikingly at odds with each other: the in
scriptions read from left to right, but the sculptures in the frieze read in the op
posite direction. Moreover, unlike the account in the book of Genesis, in the
frieze Adam and Eve start off on the right fully clothed; it is only after they
have been expelled from Eden that they appear naked. The shame of nakedness is
linked with the shame of exile. It would seem that the artist followed the text of
the Triodion, rather than that of the biblical source.
The theme of the frieze seems cruelly appropriate to the position of the
Grand Komnenoi emperors in Trebizond, exiled from their capital in Constan
tinople. However, it might contain a more positive message. If viewers follow the
frieze as they read the inscriptions, they see it in reverse, and so witness a return
to the state of innocence in the garden. Was this a deliberate, if well-hidden mes
sage, of hope?
The theme of exile is alluded to again inside the church. This time it is in
the inscription that runs around the base of the dome, beneath the host of angels
who bow down before God to proclaim his praises (Fig. 47). This text, whose let
ters are beautifully painted, comes from Psalm 102:20-2:
14 Millet, 1895: 447, no. 2.
96
Hagia Sophia at Trebizond, Antony E a s t m o n d
Κύρι.ος έξ ουρανού επί την γην έπέβλεψεν του άκουσαι τον στεναγμον
των κεπεδημένων του λυσαι τους υιούς των τεθανατωμένων του άναγ-
γεΤλαι έν Σιων το όνομα κυρίου καΐ την αϊνεσιν αύτου έν Ιερουσαλήμ
Out of the heaven did the Lord behold the earth; that he might hear the
mournings of such as are in captivity; and deliver the children appointed
unto death; that they may declare the Name of the Lord in Zion; and his
worship at Jerusalem.
The text was often used in church decoration, as the opening words fitted the
image of Christ looking down from the dome so well, but the rest of the verse
also acted as a reminder of the lament of the Grand Komnenoi, excluded from
Constantinople.
It is possible that more concrete reminders of the Great City were avail
able. The four great marble/granite columns that support the dome were prob
ably brought to Trebizond from Constantinople, as part of the great export of
materials from the city after the Fourth Crusade when its marbles and bronzes
were dispersed as far afield as Barcelona, Venice and Damascus. Equally, the mag
nificent inlaid floor beneath the dome (Figs. 48-50) looked to Constantinopoli-
tan precedents, echoing the marble inlay on the south side of the nave in Hagia
Sophia in Constantinople.
The church was able to present a political manifesto through its images
and inscriptions. It both lamented the pain of exile, and held out the promise of
a renewed, superior empire. The optimism of this vision was reflected in Michael
Panaretos' account of Manuel Fs reign: he called the emperor "the great strategist
and most successful kyr [Lord]," and concluded that he "ruled fairly and piously
for twentyfiveyears."15
The Cultural World ofTrebizond
Hagia Sophia is an important monument in one final way: it is a crucial document

in helping us to understand the cultural milieu of the empire in the thirteenth
century, especially the way in which the people of the empire interacted with their
15 See Annika Asp-Talwar's translation of Michael Panaretos in this volume.
97
neighbours, both Christian and Muslim. The early history of the empire is filled
with skirmishes between the rulers of Trebizond and the powers that surrounded
them: the Seljuks to the south on the Anatolian Plateau and the Georgians to the
east. In 1214 the first emperor, Alexios I, had been captured at Sinope and less
than a decade later his successor, Andronikos I Gidos, faced a more serious attack
when the sultan Melik besieged the city, basing himself at the church of St. Eu-
genios overlooking the citadel. Equally, the Georgians attacked in 1241 and 1282.
Military encounters continued throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,
counterbalanced by diplomatic engagements and alliances, and trade relations.
The church presents one rhetorical response to these encounters. A final,

now fragmentary, scene painted in the north porch shows the apostles evangelis-
ing the world. Each apostle baptises representatives of different nations, in keep-
ing with the mission to evangelise that Christ gave them (Fig. 51) .This imagery
is very unusual in Byzantine art, and the apostles here may perhaps be seen as
providing an idealised model for the role of the emperor of Trebizond himself.
The paintings imply that the emperor too should institute an aggressive policy to
promote Christianity, in a part of the world in which the majority of the people
were Christian, but their rulers were largely not. This painting is the only aspect
of the decoration that suggests a desire to impose ideas upon the surrounding
area however; the church has much evidence to support the idea that Trebizond
was more concerned to accommodate the local realities of power in the Pontos,
and desired to exploit the resources and people that were available. The Genesis
frieze, already noted above, is part of this engagement. It employs an artistic me-
dium little used in the Byzantine world. It is just one of many sculptural plaques
appear all over the south porch (Fig. 52) and on the outside of the apse (Fig 53).
This artistic form had a strong history in Anatolia and the Caucasus, suggesting
that this part of the church was probably made by local craftsmen, possibly Geor-
gian or Armenian, who were used to working in stone.
Other aspects of the church decoration can more securely be linked to the
Islamic visual traditions of the Seljuks of Anatolia, most noticeably the use of
muqarnas designs that appear around the exterior of the church. They are most-
ly employed as cornices at the springing of arches (Figs. 54-58) and as impost
blocks above re-used classical capitals (Fig 59), but they were also used as the
heads of niches. The niches were filled with masonry at some point, but were un-
covered by the restoration team (Figs. 60, 61) .The facets of the muqarnas are all
98
Hagta Sophia at Trebizond, Antony Eastmond
filled with an exuberant variety of interlace and foliate designs. Across Anatolia,
muqarnas vaults appear over the entrances to the great mosques, madrasas and
caravanserais set up by the Seljuks, and similar devices were used in Armenian
churches of the thirteenth century. The muqarnas at Hagia Sophia must derive
from these models, but their use in the church stands apart from this tradition.
They are only used on a small scale and the endless minor designs that appear
on them have no counterparts to the south of the Pontos Mountains. Muqarnas
seem to have become part of the common architectural language of Anatolia,
suggesting a movement of craftsmen around the region who were able to work on
all types of building.
The appearance of these elements is difficult to interpret: was their incor-

poration ideological or an unconscious process? Was it part of a deliberate ploy to
assimilate the church into the local culture using a widespread visual vocabulary
that was employed by both Christians and Muslims, or was it the inevitable result
of employing local craftsmen? It certainly makes the church stand apart from
contemporary Byzantine buildings. This evidence of interaction between Trebi-
zond and the world around it is perhaps one of the abiding features of the empire
throughout its history.16
The many different facets of the church that this chapter has briefly out-
lined defy easy categorisation. Instead they seem to pull the church in many dif-
ferent directions. When Cyril Mango tried to summarise Hagia Sophia in his
history of Byzantine architecture in 1979, he found himself pulled in three dif-
ferent directions: "The frescoes that decorate St. Sophia are purely Byzantine; the
architecture contaminated; the sculpture entirely alien".17 It was perhaps only in
Trebizond that such a diverse range of styles and cultures could be brought to-
gether in this way.
16 See Glenn Peers' essay in this volume.

17 Mango, 1979: 166.
99
Bibliography
Bryer, A.A.M. and D. Winfield. 1985. The Byzantine Monuments and Topography of the Pontos,
Dumbarton Oaks Studies: 20. Washington D . C .
Caillet, J.-P. and F. Joubert. 2012. "Le programme pictural de Sainte-Sophie de Trébizonde: un
jalon essentiel de l'art byzantin et ses assonances italiennes?" In Orient et Occident méditer
ranéens auXIIIe siècle. Les programmes picturaux. Ed. J.-P. Caillet and F. Joubert, 103-22.
Paris: Picard.
de Tournefort, J.P. 1718. Л Voyage into the Levant: Performdby Command of the Late French King.
London.
Downey, G. 1957. "Nikolaos Mesantes: Description of the Church of the Holy Apostles at Con
stantinople." Transactions of the American Philospohical Society 47, no. 6: 855-924.
Djurić, V.J. 1967. Sopoćani. Leipzig: Veb Seemann.
Eastmond, A. 1999. "Narratives of the Fall: Structure and Meaning in the Genesis Frieze at Hagia
Sophia,Trebizond." Dumbarton Oab Papers 53: 219-36.
Eastmond, A. 2004. Art and Identity in Thirteenth-century Byzantium. Hagia Sophia and the Empire
of Trebizond. Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman Monographs: 10. Aldershot: Ashgate/
Variorum.
Fallmerayer,J.P. 1843. Original-Fragmente^ Chroniken^ Inschriften und anderes Materiale zur
Geschichte des Kaiserthums Trapezunt, 3 vols. Munich: Verlag der K. B. Akademie der wis
senschaften.
Gagarin, G. 1897. Sobrante Vizantiiskikh] Gruzinskikh I Drevnerusskikh Ornamentov I Pamiat-
nikov Arkhitektury. St. Petersburg.
Hussey, J. M., ed. 1995. The Journals and Letters of George Finlay. Camberley, Surrey: Porphyrogenitus.
Mango, C , 1979. Byzantine Architecture. London.
Millet, G. 1895. "Les monastères et les églises de Trébizonde." Bulletin de correspondance hellénique
19: 419-59.
Rosenqvist, J . 0 . 1 9 9 6 . The Hagiographie Dossier ofSt Eugenios ofTrebizond in Codex Athous Dio-
nysiou 154> Studia Byzantina Upsaliensia 5. Uppsala: Uppsala University Press.
Shukurov, R. 2001. Velikie Komneny i Vostok (1204-1461). St. Petersburg.
Talbot Rice, D . 1967. "The Painting of Hagia Sophia, Trebizond." In art byzantin du ХШе siècle.
Ed. V.J. Djurić, 83-90. Belgrad.
Talbot Rice, D., ed. 1968. The Church of Hagia Sophia at Trebizond. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univer
sity Press.
Vinogradova (Lukovnikova), E.A. 2008. "O stile rospisei Sofii Trapezundskoi." In Obraz Vizantii.
Ed. A.V. Zacharova, 73-102. Moscow.
100
Trebizond and its World through Manuscripts1
Glenn Peers
University of Texas at Austin
The empire of Trebizond is now an historical ghost, its culture largely effaced in
its former territories and recoverable only through fragments. Its books comprise
some of the most compelling of these remains, although they are rare and—de-
spite their substantial materiality—phantom-like too. Given such limitations, this
short essay engages with some aspects of manuscript culture, as revealed by a
handful of extant books, and it attempts a sketch of a multi-lingual world in
which faith, art and ideologies deeply affected book production in ways that were
unique in the Middle Ages, in both the east and west.
The empire of Trebizond s culture was largely determined by two elements.

The first was the ruling dynasty's relationship to Constantinople, which led to
cultural forms strongly associated with the glories ofthat former world capital.
The second was the empire's geographical relationship to the Christian king-
doms of the Caucasus in Georgia and Armenia, and to the polities of the south
and southeast, namely Muslim Turkmen and the Persian empire.2 Indeed, the
political character of the empire of Trebizond was very much in keeping with
other groups in eastern AnatoUa. Less a Byzantine kingdom—despite its outward
forms—than a Christian kingdom beholden to stronger regional forces that were
Muslim, the Trapezuntine empire has been called a "Greek emirate."3 Moreover, a
"mainstream" Byzantine culture no longer existed by the fourteenth century, only
various tributaries that ran off from that original source. Trebizond's culture was
a particular tributary that certainly admitted Byzantine water, but it welcomed
sources from the Caucasus, Anatolia and Persia also.4
One manuscript, in particular, reveals the "conceptual landscape" of mid-

fourteenth century Trebizond: an almanac dated to 1336 (Munich, Bayerische
1 Some of the material treated here is drawn from Peers, 2009: 153-78, and from Peers, forthcoming.
2 See Baskins, 2014: 83-100.
3 Angold, 1999: 547.
4 Eastmond, 2003, is excellent. See also Eastmond, 2003: 707-49; Eastmond, 2000: 3-40.
103
Trebizond and its World through Manuscripts, Glenn Peers
Staatsbibliothek, gr. 525,155v 171v) (Fig. I). 5 This short book provided informa-
tion useful to all strata of Trapezuntine society, from the working merchant to the
emperor himself, using computational tables with the positions of the sun, moon
and planets in the course of the year from the 12 March 1336 to the 12 March
1337. The work is anonymous but it shows astrological activities taking place in
the empire at that time, and the patron must have been an elite figure who could
benefit from all the information in it. It contains not only Greek but Islamic sys-
tems of calendar reckoning, even if the writer was not entirely familiar with the
Islamic method. It reveals an openness to Persian learning generally, all the while
dealing with the major Christian feasts for the year and wishing the emperor of
Trebizond well. Yet a topographical bias is evident: interest in western areas and
knowledge of locations in that direction are weak, while information about areas
to the south and east is generally reliable. Indirectly, the almanac reveals an alter-
nation in the axis of the "conceptual landscape," from east-west to north-south.
The axis in some way still takes into account Constantinople, but the reality of
the Trapezuntine situation was that trade routes and intellectual contacts were
more strongly oriented, from the mid-fourteenth century, towards Turkish and
Persian centres, rather than Byzantine ones to the west.6
A very unusual survival also demonstrates the multi-faceted lives of manu-

scripts in this milieu: an amulet roll, made of strips of parchment and now di-
vided between Chicago (Regenstein Library, University of Chicago, MS 125)
and New York City (Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M. 499) (Figs. 2-6). The
point at which the roll was divided is not clear, but it happened before the sepa-
rate acquisitions by those libraries.7 The New York fragment was bought by John
Pierpont Morgan, Jr. (1867-1943) in 1912 from Léon Gruel (1841-1923), but it
had passed through the hands of a Dominican priest, Luis Albert Gaffre (1864-
1914), who claimed to have purchased the fragment from "a very old Coptic or
Egyptian Christian family" in Egypt.8 The Chicago fragment came to the United
States by a different route, having been owned by Baron d'Honnecourt of Paris
5 See Shukurov, 1999:1-14; Mercier, 1994. See also Magdalino, 2006:140. Parallel almanacs in Arabic and
Latin from tenth-century Spain reveal similar accommodations of cultures through reckonings of time. The
Munich almanac belongs, in other words, to a widespread medieval phenomenon. See Christys, 2002:108-34.
6 On the history of Trapezuntine trade leading up to this period, see Peacock, 2007: 65-72.
7 A similar fate befell a nineteenth-century Bengali pata roll, which was divided into three segments at least
by 1964, before being reunited in an exhibition of 1998-99. See Ghosh, 2000: 166-85.
8 On Gaffre, see Espose éHijos, 1930, vol. 25: 383. On the manuscript, see Sunday New York Journal-
American, May 10,1908, and L'illustration, vol. 66, no. 3399 (April 18,1908), 266-7. The latter, written by
Gaffre, was also published as a pamphlet entitled L'image d'Edesse.
104
and M. Stora and bought by the University of Chicago in 1930.9 Apparently the
roll was divided before it passed into these European hands, and as each fragment
shows damage at their ends, the division occurred in the nineteenth century or
before. The fragments were re-united once for a Metropolitan Museum of Art
exhibition in 2004—Byzantium: Faith and Power (1261-1557)—where they were
in close proximity to each other.10 A new wooden scroll was made for holding the
Morgan piece, while the Chicago piece had already been placed between panes
of glass and framed. The history of the pieces is thus obscure before they arrived
in American collections, and their present forms and display do not reflect their
original constitution as a discrete and furled object.11
The features of this composite object are very striking: the roll, when the
two extant sections are added together, reaches a length of 5.11 m and a width
of 9.3 cm. The texts are oriented on the vertical axis of the roll, and comprise a
remarkable constellation of devotional and apotropaic elements. On the obverse,
texts in Greek include—in order from top to bottom and starting with the Chi-
cago piece—the initial passages from the Gospels of Mark (1:1-8), Luke (1:1-7)
and John (1:1-17), followed by Matthew 6:9-13, the Nicene Creed and Psalm 68.
On the New York fragment are Psalms 35 and 91, the Epistle of the Abgar leg-
end, and short, poetic invocations of eleven saints. All but one of these last texts
were taken from the eleventh-century collection of Christopher of Mytilene (c.
1000-d. after 1050-68).12 The one original verse is in honour of the patron saint
of Trebizond, St. Eugenios, and his martyred companions, and it is this that links
the scroll to the city and the empire. The reverse of the roll is more overt than the
obverse in functioning as an amulet. Beginning with a cross at the head of the
roll as it survives, it contains a series of prayers, supplications and spells in Arabic
which were written for a Christian—Sulayman ibn Sarah—by what appear to
be several hands, in 1694 according to the Seleucid calendar (i.e. 1383).13 It ends
with an identification of one of the scribes:
9 Vikan, 1973:194. See also Belting, 1970: 37, no. 119.

10 Evans, 2004: 438-9.
11 Ghosh, 2000: 177 83, tracks the changes in a Bengali pata scroll in its museum lives.
12 Follieri, 1980. The two lines for St. Eugenios are not in the collection of Christopher, nor in that of
Theodore Pródromos (с. 1100-d.l 155-59). For the latter see Acconcia Longo, 1983.
Bryer, 2008: 31-7.
105
... completed at the end

of the month June of the year one thousand
six hundred and ninety four
of Alexander son of Philip.
Its scribe was, in name only, the monk
priest al-Bashünï.
(Translated by Barbara Roggema. See Roggemas article in this volume.)
The Arabic reverse provides the terminus ante quern for the creation of the manu-
script, since it was evidently written in a separate campaign. The obverse was
most likely produced in an elite Trapezuntine milieu in the third quarter of the
fourteenth century.
The roll possesses twenty-eight illustrations, if one counts the cross at the
head of the reverse (Fig. 6). Excluding that final example, the illustrations are of
a high quality in terms of style, and while they survive in remarkably good condi-
tion given the format, flaking of the pigment reveals that each pictorial ground
was entirely painted with gold before the pigments were overlaid. Not all of the
figures are identifiable now, as damage is particularly heavy at the bottom of the
roll, and some of the marginal inscriptions identifying the saints are no longer
legible.
Such features indicate the extraordinary quality of the object: a bilingual

scroll of striking dimensions with very fine illustrations, and a date for owner-
ship that places it outside of the Byzantine empire but within its cultural orbit.
Indeed—as far as I know—it is a unique survival, as we have no mention of the
existence of a roll with Greek and Arabic in the Middle Ages that is not liturgical,
diplomatic or legal in character. Before the sixteenth century, no precise parallel to
the Chicago-New York roll is extant.
Such manuscripts demonstrate—through their verbal and visual con-

tents—the reach of book learning, as well as manuscript culture and its social
functions. The medium of manuscripts also resonates with other extant, material
remains of Trapezuntine history. At times manuscripts show intimate, personal
and local concerns and aims, but they also reveal a broader cosmopolitan world
filled with diversity of language and faith. So, the almanac demonstrates its own
universe, and the expanse between its covers is great. The roll evidently wandered
112
from Trebizond to an Arabic-speaking Christian milieu, and then from the end of
the fourteenth century embarked on mysterious journeys that ended in the US. It
shows in its contents a deep investment in Christian history—both scriptural and
apocryphal—that resonates profoundly with the need for devotion, protection,
and the necessity of representation.
Traffic in manuscripts around the eastern Mediterranean is only glimpsed

very occasionally, but one might cite the example of a manuscript in Paris (Bib-
liothèque Nationale, suppl. gr. 911), which is a bilingual edition of Luke in Greek
and Arabic, produced in Sicily in 1043. This manuscript made its way east where
it was restored in the fourteenth century by a Christian Arabic speaker, who did
not know Greek, and then restored again by a Greek speaker in the fifteenth
century.14 The manuscript was attested in Jerusalem by the nineteenth century,
when it made its way to Paris, but it is assumed that sometime in the later Middle
Ages it was transported to the polyglottic Christian milieu of Palestine. Such
instances of clear movement and intervention are rare, unfortunately, but they do
reveal the peripatetic quality of scribes and artists among Latin, Byzantine, East
Christian and Muslim lands. Gregorius Bar-Hebraeus (1226-1286), a Syrian Ja-
cobite scholar, famously related that a local queen had had two Orthodox painters
brought from Constantinople to paint a Greek church with frescoes and that he
himself retained one of them to paint at a Jacobite monastery.15 This reference is
precious testimony to the potentially boundaryless world of the late medieval art-
ist and scribe that these Trapezuntine manuscripts also belong to.16
Another vivid illustration of the movement of people and goods in the

medieval world is the life of the rascal Paul Tagaris Palaiologos, who was born
probably in the 1320s and died after 1397.17 Few Byzantine scoundrels rise off
14 Sec the fascinating study by Géhin, 1997: 161-75. A companion piece in the same volume (Troupeau,
1997: 223-31), is very interesting and helpful in this regard, too.
15 Buchthal, 1939: 150.1 do not know of any comparable text that describes the movements of artists and/
or architects between Byzantium and Egypt in the late Middle Ages, but contact between the two powers
certainly took place. See Schraid, 1956; Dölger, 1952: 60-79; Lammens, 1904: 151-87,359-92: esp. 171-5
бе 359-62 on Byzantine aspects. Suggestively, Khouzam, 2002, describes a trilingual manuscript (Greek
phonetically transcribed into Coptic and Arabic) from 1389 for which he gives a provenance of either
r
prus or Egypt.
16 On the movement of painters in this period, see Immerzeel, 2009; Hunt, 2007: 55. On manuscripts see
Brubaker, 2004: 182.
17 The source material is the precious stenography of the deliberations of the patriarchal court: see Miklosich
Sc Müller, 1860-90, vol. 2: cccclxxvi: 224-30. O n Tagaris, see Korobeinikov, 2005: 11-13; Trapp, 1976-96,
vol. 11: 166 (27401); Vryonis, 1971: 335-7; Nicol, 1970: 289-99.
113
Trebizond andits World through Manuscripts, Glenn Peers
the page quite like Tagaris does. He was a mighty traveler: he left his wife in
Constantinople to become a monk in Palestine and from Jerusalem, he went to
Antioch and then to Persia and Georgia. He became bishop of Taurezion, but he
was in Trebizond when the patriarchal authorities tried to take him into custody.
By 1376, he was in Rome, where he was appointed the Catholic patriarch of Con-
stantinople; then he journeyed to Paris and to Cyprus and back to Rome, where
he was thrown into prison. Finally, he was apprehended and brought before the
court of Patriarch Antonios IV (r. 1391-1397), by which he was found guilty of
various crimes. His final sentence is not known, because the text breaks off, but
thankfully not before this extraordinary life was recounted.
In the first place, this breathless list of stops reveals how much travel a
Christian monk and official could accomplish, across the borders of Muslim, Lat-
in and Byzantine lands.18 This itinerary also demonstrates that in the fourteenth
century manuscripts could indeed travel, perhaps with just suchfigures.In the sec-
ond place, Tagaris accumulated gifts at his various stops. He even left two monks
on shore in the south of France after stealing away in the night with treasures that
he was to have traded for relics of St. Dionysios, which he claimed to be able to
procure. In the third place, his first infraction appears to have been pretending an
icon he had brought from the Holy Land back to Constantinople could perform
miracles. Severely doubting the authenticity of Tagaris's claims, the representa-
tive of the patriarch confiscated the icon and stopped his income consequently.
Finally, although he pleaded an old mans penitence for all the other sins he had
committed, even such a scoundrel denied the ultimate misdeeds of fornication,
falsifying miracles and magic. In other words, authentic icons were serious things,
and magic was a terrible charge. The apparent ease of movement across the world
where Christians lived is an impressive lesson to bear in mind when considering
the movement of small objects like icons, manuscripts and amulet rolls.
The formal qualities of illuminations in these manuscripts can also be (ad-

mittedly imprecise) measures of the movements of objects, both illustrated books
and other media. The manuscript of the Romance of Alexander the Great—now
in Venice (Hellenic Institute, codex gr. 5)—represents the challenges of using
comparisons of style and form to assign provenance to the manuscripts of this
18 On travel in this world, see Kuezler, 2002:149-61; Kuezler, 1994. The story of Armenians traveling west
to France and of Frankish painters traveling to Armenia is instructive, even if the events were of an earlier
period than the thirteenth century. See Redgate, 2007: 83-98.
114
period (Fig. 8). As Andreas Xyngopoulos (1891-1979) has argued, the Romance
manifests strong Palaiologan, Frankish and Islamic tendencies. Xyngopoulos was
himself uncertain as to its place of origin, as he suggested Syria or Palestine,
with Crete and Cyprus also as possibilities.19 However, more recent scholarship
by Nicolette Trahoulia has established a provenance in the kingdom of Trebizond
during the reign of emperor Alexos III Komnenos (1349 1390).20 Not only has
the provenance of the manuscript proven challenging, but the manuscript itself
also betrays extraordinary range in its cultural references. The presence of Geor
gian script in the manuscript indicates a strong probability that the artists were
originally Georgian,21 the Greek palaeography is of a high quality, and the later
addition of Turkish rubrics—probably after 1461 when Trebizond fell to the Ot
tomans—provides a further cultural and linguistic overlay.
Hellenic identity was also an important aspect ofTrapezuntine self-fash

ioning in the midst of this diverse region. For example, a typikon—or monastic
charter—for a foundation dedicated to St. Eugenios, was written in 1346 by John
Argyros (Mount Athos, Vatopedi Monastery, MS 1199). The typikon contains a
number of images, including one of Eugenios himself alongside the monastery s
patron, and a set of illustrations depicting the months and labors of the year (Fig.
7).22 Each of these illustrations pair a sign representing the month and an activity
related to it. While the portrait of the patron saint and another folio, with Sts.
S abas and John of Damascus, have some of the frontal, hieratic style so often
associated with sacred figures, the months partake of a different formal regis
ter. The latter enter a classicizing tradition that goes back to antiquity. The two
types of illustrations, then, reveal the possibilities available to artists working on
monastic commissions, possibilities that refer to the long Hellenic traditions of
Trapezuntine Christianity.
Close in date to these manuscripts is a chrysobull issued by Alexios III

in September 1374, now in the Dionysiou Monastery on Mount Athos.23 The
19 Xyngopoulos, 1966: 155-8.

20 Trahoulia, 1997a; Trahoulia, 1997b; Karathanases, 1999: 75-6; Gallagher, 1979: 170-205.
21 See Mouriki, 1981: 725-57, with remarks on the fourteenth century at 747-51; Belting, 1979: 103-14, here
late-fourteenth century. On linguistic issues raised by this region, see Drettas, 2001: 183-93.
22 Spatharakis, 1981: pis. 461 бе 162; Spatharakis, 1976: 206-7; Bryer, 1978; Weitzmann, 1963: 109-11;
Chrysanthos, 1936: 411-21; Strzygowski, 1890: 241-63.
23 Trahoulia, 1979b: 60; Spatharakis, 1976: 185-6; Oikonomides, 1978: 305; Oikonomides, 1968, vol 1:
50-61, vol. 2: pis. VI-IX; Pelekanides, Christou,Tsioumis & Kadas, 1974, vol. 1: 40; Chrysanthos, 1936:
506-13. See also Zakythinos, 1932: 21.
115
Trebizond andits World through Manuscripts, Glenn Peers
chrysobull—a document of imperial donation—is a roll on paper measuring 298

χ 38 cm. In the document, the emperor promises a sum to the monk Dionysios of
Athos with which to pay for the construction of a monastery, named the Mon
astery of the Grand Komnenoi. On the upper part of the roll, Alexios is depicted
with his wife Theodora (Fig. 9). Stylistically, the figures reveal little overt connec
tion to the handling of figures in the other manuscripts discussed so far. They are
flat, shaped strongly by outline, show no particular modelling of the face or body,
and the colours are likewise bright and unmodulated. The presentation is undeni
ably grand and impressive—as befitted an imperial document—but at the same
time, its frontality and stasis are distinct from both the narrative and iconic forms
utilised in other examples.
These manuscripts show a range of stylistic traits, formats, and audiences,

and they point to a diverse cultural context. A Muslim-Christian context was a
determining aspect of social and religious practice in the empire of Trebizond.
Trebizond relied more on Tabriz for its cultural and commercial livelihood, than
it did on Constantinople. After all, it was a small Greek emirate in the middle of
a largely Muslim region.24 While Trapezuntine manuscripts reveal their Christian
pedigree, they also disclose contacts with the world of Anatolia, the Caucasus and
the Middle East. The horoscope of 1336 showed that the worldview of Trebi
zond, with its essentially Christian Hellenic content, was formed through con
tact with the broader Arabic and Persian intellectual worlds.25 It represented an
"orientalisation of daily interests," as Rustan Shukurov has written.26 Another ex
ample of such contact is the career of the Greek intellectual Gregory Chioniades
(e. 1240/50-1320).27 In a text written before 1347, the by-then famous Chionia
des was said to have been an avid mathematician and scientist, who went from
his home in Constantinople to Persia with the help of the Komnenian emperor
at Trebizond. He studied then in Persia, but eventually returned to Trebizond
with astronomical manuscripts, which he translated into Greek.28 Clearly, such
linguistic and intellectual exchanges in the fourteenth century—aided by com
mercial and political considerations as well—must have been a regular feature of
Trapezuntine life, indeed a necessary one for such a small kingdom.
24 Shukurov, 1994: 20-72.

25 Again, see Shukurov, 1999; Mercier, 1994.
26 Shukurov, 1999: 14.
27 Sáliba, 2006: 366-70; Magdalino, 2006: 148-50. On the travels in 1385 of John Abramius to Egypt looking
for medicine for the emperor and its historical context, see Shepherd, 2006: 26.
28 Pingree, 1964: 133-60, esp. 141.
116
Not only did Chioniades sojourn in Tabriz and master translation from
Arabic and Persian into Greek, he was also a bishop in Tabriz and his work was
interested in Christianity. 29 O n account of his lengthy stay in the Muslim world,
he was asked to make a public "proclamation of faith", the text of which survives.
In it, he re-stated essential articles of orthodox Christianity in opposition to the
beliefs of the Persians, Chaldaeans and Arabs. Ishmaelites (i.e. Muslims) and Jews
were also singled out, and beyond largely generic professions of Christian be-
lief—like the holiness of the seven councils—the text of Chioniades was largely
interested in clearing ground between Christianity and its competitors in religion
and history.
Such caution was surely merited in Trebizond during the Komnenian era,
because devotional exchanges amongst Christians and Muslims appear to have
been a common feature of life. Anthony Bryer has argued that a fresco at Palapan-
tos from 1265 or 1268 represented Athanasios the Demoncrusher, metropolitan
of Trebizond (r. 867-886) as the church father Athanasios the Great (c. 293-373).
Bryer claims the reason for this was the healing from possession of a wife of an
emir of Sivas, who came during the reign of Manuel I (1238-1263) to the Trap-
ezuntine shrine of Athanasios to seek respite from demons. 30 In such border areas,
on the shifting frontiers of southern Trebizond, such interactions were surely a
natural outcome of the social coexistence of different communities.
The Christians and Muslims of Anatolia shared many venerable sanctuar-

ies and figures, including what might appear to be an exclusive Christian devo-
tion to the Mandylion as a wonder-working relic. The roll discussed above has
the longest cycle dedicated to the legend, and it shows the significance of this
legend concerning Jesus's self-representation (in word, too, through his letter to
King Abgar) for Christians in the Chalcedonian tradition (Fig. 10). One legend
related that the Mandylion had created a new miracle-producing spring, where it
had touched the ground on the way to Edessa. Muslims and Christians believed
that the water cured certain skin diseases and that, if mixed with a little clay, it
killed destructive insects when sprinkled over infested fields of wheat and barley.31
This spot may be either Kerasa—the place the Abgar legend stated the king and
his house were baptised—or the place where the healing of the paralytic occurred,
29 Westerink, 1980: 233-45, text at 243-5.

30 Bryer, 2009: 519-52.
31 Badger, 1852, vol. 1: 326. On the use of the Veronica for stopping nosebleed, see Barb, 1948: 42-3.
117
some six miles from Edessa.32 In any case, the sites connected with the Mandyl-
ions arrival and time in the city must have maintained some traces of the sacred
for Greek-speaking Christians in Trebizond, and Melkites and Muslims as well.
Jesus himself had a history of appeal not only to Christians, but also to
Jews and Muslims, and so he appeared in non-Christian, or multi-denomination
al, documents of magic: the letter of Jesus to Abgar, which is on the roll, often
worked towards protection and healing.33 Jesus and St. George had long been
seen by Muslims as the most venerable of men and thus praiseworthy as extraor
dinary exemplars of humanity. In a fascinating study, Shukurov has shown how
Turkmen used Christian figures on their coinage, not because of long-established
use by Christian monarchs—though this may have been true also—but because
those figures represented eternal life and life-giving power.34 Among Anatolian
Sufis, in particular, religious syncretism was a strong defining element in popular
piety. George s shrines became dedicated to Khidr, a still-popular saint. In the
sixteenth-century, the degree of Turkish devotion to George/Khidr astonished a
Western visitor:
When [Turks] enter a church, the presence of images of the Virgin Moth
er, St. Peter, St. Paul, and the other saints has but little interest for them;
but there is always one picture for which they look, that of St. George on
horseback, and before this they prostrate themselves in adoration and im
print kisses all over it, not omitting even the horses hoofs. St. George, they
declare, was a man of might, a famous warrior, who often in single combat
fought with the Evil Spirit on equal terms and was victorious, or at least
left the field unbeaten.35
This phenomenon was far more complicated than can be described here,36 but
such texts are extremely evocative of societies in which faith communities knew
a great deal about the faith of their neighbours. One could participate in com
munal devotion to proven-powerful saints—Christian or Muslim—or pay close
attention to the defining elements of one s immediate community. Such options
32 Segal, 1970: 73.

33 Bohak, 1999: 27-44; Schimmel, 1999: 207-17. For a fascinating study of how magic can cross boundaries
in the creation of amulets for Jews and Muslims in West Africa, see Prussin, 2006: 332-4.
34 Shukurov, 2004: 707-64; Necipoğlu, 1999-2000: 70-1.
35 Forster, 192:, 131. See also Brotton, 2005: 50-65.
36 Excellent are Cuffel, 2005: 401-19; Wolper, 2000: 309-22; Wolper, 2003. See also Hasluck, 1929.
118
Trebizond and its World through Manuscripts, G l e n n Peers
remained for much of the Middle Ages where Christian populations had been
longstanding, and in places Muslims and Christians gradually and mutually ac-
culturated.37 Piety factored in such decisions, but of course other social, political
and personal causes also determined self-identification in one's group. Individuals
may have been motivated differently at various moments, and the persuasion and
co-opting of adherents belonging to the other group may have been as important
as attraction to a saint or shrine where needs were directly satisfied. As James
Clifford has written:
Stories of cultural contact and change have been structured by a pervasive

dichotomy: absorption by the other or resistance to the other...Yet what if
identity is conceived not as a boundary to be maintained but as a nexus of
relations and transactions actively engaging a subject?38
It is worth bearing in mind the open question of Trapezuntine adaptation to

dominant neighbours, trading partners and to the ever-present, yet ever-fading,
ideas of "Rome-Byzantium." As Clifford makes clear, discrete identities are elu-
sive, and the contests that these manuscripts put up for that discretion are perhaps
a sign of the difficulties faced.39
These manuscripts belong to that world of intermingling and suspicion,

of knowledge of each other and faith in one's own. Chioniades represented each
direction that the manuscripts travelled, in ways that take into account the larger
world and define itself against it. The images and texts in these manuscripts were
statements of personal and communal beliefs in fourteenth-century Anatolia and
the Middle East. They were able to assert an Hellenic identity—a glorious past
which was not only Christian but pagan—and they acted out a self-defining cul-
ture and heritage in these fragmentary and scattered remnants that make Trebi-
zond a little less ghost-like for us today.
37 For this process, see Meri, 2002; Dalrymple, 1998.

38 Clifford, 1988: 344.
39 Scholars of Trebizond have begun to research identities, social, ethnic, Unguistic and devotional, because
such self-fashioning has many compelling features in the region. See, for example, on Islamicised Arme-
nians of northeastern Turkey: Simonian, 2007; Bryer, 2009: 59-66; Framgedaki, 1984-85: 221-4.
119
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124
The Prayer of Cyprian on the Reverse of the Amulet Roll
Barbara Roggema
Kings College, London
The reverse of the amulet roll with its prayer to St. Eugenios of Trebizond that
was discussed in Glenn Peers' chapter, (see Figs. 2-6 in Peers' chapter) leads the
reader and viewer into a very different cultural world. It helps us to explore the
range of beliefs that were followed across the Eastern Mediterranean, and the
distance a manuscript could travel in the fourteenth century.
Underneath a decorative cross in black and red ink, there are several Chris-
tian apotropaic prayers on the reverse of the roll, written in Arabic by three dif-
ferent hands. These texts do not seem to have formed part of the original design
of the roll, since they are executed in a much less refined style and do not fill
the entire length of the roll. Nevertheless, the interval between the production
of the original Greek object—most likely in Trebizond in the third quarter of
the fourteenth century—and the additions on the reverse was not long, since
the colophon at the end of the first Arabic prayer contains the date 1694 of the
Seleucid calendar, which equates to 1383. The person for whom it was written, i.e.
the person for whom protection against evil spirits was sought, is Sulayman ibn
(son of) Sarah, so presumably he was the owner of the roll at the time the prayer
was written. It is impossible to trace this person, since, in observance of the age-
old rules of apotropaic exercise, his name is not given in the normal full form, but
follows the pattern oí first name - son of- mothers name}
In contrast to the ensuing prayers—which lack diacritical punctuation and

are purposefully scribbled to enhance their perceived magic efficacy—the open-
ing prayer of 193 lines is clearly legible, except in stretches where the ink was
badly absorbed by the vellum or has worn off, and where the illuminations of
the obverse shine through. It is the prayer of Cyprian, which survives in various
forms in the languages of Eastern Christianity. The name Cyprian refers here to
Cyprian of Antioch, who was a sorcerer turned Christian martyr and who is of-
ten confused with St. Cyprian of Carthage, both in medieval and modern sourc-
1 Viaud, 1978: 40; Canaan, 1914: 105-6.
127
The Prayer of Cyprian on the Reverse of the Amulet Roll, Barbara Roggema
es.2 His name comes from his alleged position as bishop in Antioch, but since no
bishop with that name is recorded in historical sources, scholars have concluded
that this Cyprian is legendary. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the legend is
old: Gregory of Nazianzus (d. 389) had already confused the saints in his Oration
on Cyprian.3
Legendary accounts surrounding Cyprian's sorcery, conversion and mar-

tyrdom have been elaborated upon in a variety of texts from the fourth century.
In the mid-fifth century the legend was given shape by the Byzantine empress
Eudokia, wife of Theodosius II (r. 408-450), who merged the stories in a long
poem of which 801 hexameters have survived. A short Greek legend has survived
too, which also circulated in Arabic.4 It describes how Cyprian was commissioned
by a man to obtain the love of the virgin Justa, a pious Christian. He conjured up
a demon that was meant to capture her heart, but when the sorcerer realised that
Justa's spiritual weapons were stronger than the demon, he converted to Christi-
anity and was ultimately martyred. This radical break with his famed witchcraft
was symbolised by his public burning of his sorcery books. In a more dramatic
account in Coptic, the story is cast as a long confession. Cyprian describes all his
evil deeds from the time he was journeying through the pagan world and partici-
pating in the polluted rituals of the Greeks, Phrygians, Egyptians and Chaldeans,
from whom he learnt astrology, love sorcery, the language of birds and the magic
to cause earthquakes and floods. His conversion symbolises the outright rejection
of pagan beliefs and gnosticism. Nonetheless, and paradoxically, the potent mix-
ture of piety and arcane powers is what makes his Christianised "magic" convinc-
ing. Still knowing the tricks of the trade, Cyprian was believed to be capable of
successfully counteracting the demons, and hence was an obvious candidate for
an apotropaic and exorcistic prayer.
Prayers of Cyprian exist in almost every eastern Christian language. The

prayer on the reverse of the scroll is closely related to a prayer in Greek. Al-
though this Greek prayer has been discovered in a manuscript not older than the
fifteenth century, both the known Latin prayers and the many oriental versions
that exist in older manuscripts appear to be ultimately dependent on an older
2 Delehaye, 1921: 314-32. Another confusion is with Cyriacus and his mother Julitta, who were also both
legendary martyrs. See Graf, 1944-53: vol. 1,500.
3 Coman, 1961: 363-72.
4 Dunlop Gibson, 1900:185-203.
128
version of that Greek prayer.5 Shorter and longer forms of it exist in Syriac, Ar
menian, Georgian, Coptic, Ethiopie and Christian Arabic.6 The Coptic church
still publishes a Cyprian prayer today and in Armenia and Ethiopia the name of
Cyprian is so strongly associated with protective magic that a prayerbook con
taining a variety of apotropaic prayers and binding spells is called "Kiprianos"
and "Qoprayanos" respectively.7 Cyprians name is also frequendy evoked in other
prayers for protection against demons.8 The ubiquity of his prayers is but one
of many indications that eastern Christian communities freely exchanged texts
of this genre and application.9 Another example of such well-known apotropaic
prayers that travelled from community to community is the prayer of St. George
against the evil eye.10 These prayers, beneath their Christian veneer, are products
of an ancient and more-or-less worldwide conceptualisation of evil and demonic
influence on humankind, against which common forms of ritual practice evolved
over the millennia.11 Despite questions about the acceptability and efficacy of
exorcistic and apotropaic practices in early Christianity, pre-Christian traditions
were not transformed but rather absorbed into the world of Christianity.12 The
accompanying culture of exorcism, charm writing and healing was part of the ec
clesiastical world and not a separate "popular" culture. This also explains why one
finds apotropaic texts among seemingly more mainstream pieces of Christian lit
erature in some Christian-Arabic manuscripts. The widespread use of such texts
is, however, not clearly reflected in the collections of Christian-Arabic manu
scripts. What often survives is the anonymised exemplar which time and again
is copied and provided with the name of the person commissioning the prayer.
In contrast to most texts written by monks and priests, the prayers were texts
which ordinary people took with them and wore on their bodies or stored in their
5 Schermann, 1903: 303-23.

6 Grohmann, 1917-18: 121-50. For further literature, see Bausi, 2003-10.
7 Macler, 1908: 28-9; Bausi, 2003-10; Wingate, 1930: 169-87. Armenian prayer rolls often include parts
of the prayer of Cyprian. See, for example, Fogg, 1996: 42-4,50. Cyprian also was an inspiration for love
spells and black magic throughout the western Christian world, for example, among the Scandinavians,
Portuguese and South-Americans. See Kristiansen, 2013: 7; Barreiro, 1973; Rio de Janeiro, 1941.
8 See, for example, the sixteenth-century Syriac magic scroll from Lebanon described in Briquel-Chatonnet
et al., 2003: B:16-B:17. From the Ethiopie tradition, see a prayer against the power of black smiths, a
formula with which Cyprian could open the prisons of Peter and Paul, and a prayer to Cyprian against
spellbinding. See scrolls 154,258,293 and 408 in Raineri, 1990.
9 Macler, 1908.
10 Macler, 1908: 14-15; Gollancz, 1897: 86-7.
11 Comparative studies on magic and apotropaic practices around the world abound. For a recent example, see
Armitage бе Houlbrook, 2015.
12 There are numerous studies that address these continuities, especially in relation to Egypt. See, for example,
Shandruk, 2012: 31-57.
129
houses and graves. For example, of four copies of the prayer of Cyprian in Arabic,
three are anonymised exemplars and only one (besides the one on the reverse of
the Trebizond roll) mentions the name of the owner.13 It is clear, therefore, that
we cannot gauge the frequency with which they were copied from the rate with
which we find them in manuscript collections.14 Interestingly though, they seem
to have been in such popular demand that they were the first texts for which a
form of block printing was invented in the Arabic speaking world.15 From the
Fatimid period block-printed magic rolls from the Muslim tradition have sur
vived which resemble the layout of rolls such as the Trebizond roll, with a decora
tive heading that clearly marks the religious identity of the creator, followed by
long apotropaic prayers.16
Unlike many magic spells and apotropaic prayers that target one specific
desire (e.g. to be guarded against the evil eye), disease (e.g. rabies) or condition
(e.g. infertility), the prayer of Cyprian has a more general scope in protecting
the carrier of the amulet against all kinds of demons and possessions, including
against evil thoughts, shameful acts, demons entering the home and demons hid
ing (notoriously) in ruins and at crossroads.
A close reading of the text of the prayer reveals how the worlds of Chris
tian piety and magic power are blended. The opening passage emphasises Cypri
an's subservience to God and creates a sense of orthodoxy and familiarity by
means of its inclusion of Luke 2:14 ("Glory to God in the highest"), which was
well-known from the greater doxology in the liturgy. Cyprian appeals to the di
vine power and evokes the names of biblical prophets and Christian saints to
ward off evil spirits. Yet, at the same time, he addresses the evil spirits directly and
casts them out under the threat of what they fear most: molten metal. In real life,
this threat is brought into action during the rituals that accompany prayers of this
kind, for example when people throw pieces of lead into boiling water with the
13 Anonymised exemplars: MS Sinai Ar. 501 (unedited, longest version of the prayer); MS Vatican Ar. 51,
fols. 45v-59r (handwritten edition and German translation by Grohmann in Bilabel бе Grohmann, 1934:
260-93); MS Paris Ar. 309, fols. 104v-lllv (unedited; rough French translation in Basset, 1896: 38-52.
With the name of its owner: MS Heidelberg PSR 818 (Bilabel and Grohmann, 1934: 260-93). Arabic
prayers of Cyprian unavailable to me are: MS Antiochian Heritage Library 10, fols. 194-7 (Noble, 2013: 6)
and MS Muski 23 (Macomber, 1984: 6).
14 The scarce survival of this genre of Christian-Arabic literature in monastic libraries is also the cause of its
underrepresentation in the monumental study of Christian-Arabic literature by Georg Graf, who devoted
just two pages and a handful of footnotes to it. See Graf, 1944-53: vol. 1: 661-2.
15 Bulliet, 1987: 427-38.
16 Barrucand, 1998: 155.
130
aim of warding off the evil eye.17
The quotidian nature of apotropaic writing and practice makes it hard to

pinpoint the circumstances that led to the elaboration on the reverse of the roll.
Two mysteries are as yet unsolved: where the Arabic prayers were added to the
roll and along which route the roll travelled, so that in due time it ended up in
Egypt where it was bought in the early twentieth century.18 Although there is
little to be said with certainty here, a few observations can be made. First of all,
it is unlikely that the Arabic texts were added in Trebizond, where there was no
Arab-Christian community, as far as can be determined today. Obviously, it can-
not be excluded that some Arabic-speaking Christians travelled to the empire of
Trebizond, but in the colophon the scribe identifies himself as a "priest-monk."
This suggests a monastic setting. No Arab monasteries are, however, known to
have existed in the environs of Trebizond. It is therefore more likely that the roll
had moved before the Arabic prayers were added. I would argue that we do not
need necessarily to look for a bilingual Arabic-Greek area (e.g. Cyprus or Mount
Sinai),19 nor even for a bilingual owner.20 The original roll, impressive in size and
sumptuous in illumination, must have been appealing to anyone who could afford
to buy it and who had the desire to do so, whether he/she knew Greek or not.
Whoever believed in the necessity of protection against the evil eye and demons,
would have been convinced of the roll's talismanic properties. The date used in
the colophon can tell us something more, albeit only in terms of probabilities. The
date is given according to the Seleucid dating system (the "years of Alexander
son of Philip"). This is but one of many dating systems that were in use among
Arabic-speaking Christians. In manuscripts from the same era, one may also find
dates according to the years of creation, the martyrs, the Hijra, the resurrection,
and combinations of these. The Syrian-Orthodox community and the Church of
the East had a clear predilection for the Seleucid dating system; it is rare to find
other dates in manuscripts from these communities. Copts favoured the so-called
"Years of the Martyrs" (beginning in the year 284), and sometimes included the
Hijri date. In the few rare cases where they used the Seleucid dating, it was be-
cause the scribes lived in Syria.21 Melkites had a variety of dating systems.22 At
17 This is still witnessed today among some Christians in Lebanon. See Canaan, 1914: 41,83-4: cf. 124-5.
18 See Kavrus-Hoflfmann, 2008:138.
19 Hunt, 1997: 305. Hunt claims that "St. Catherine's Monastery" is included in the Arabic text, but this is
erroneous. St. Catherine is mentioned as one among many well-known saints.
20 See Kavrus-Hoffmann, 2008: 138.
21 Samir, 1982:40-1.
22 Samir, 1987: 352-87.
m
the time the roll was produced, dates according to the Era of the Incarnation, the
Byzantine World Era, and the Hijra were the most common in Melkite manu-
scripts, but in very rare cases one finds the Seleucid dating. We can say, therefore,
that it is most likely that the scribe belonged to one of the Syriac Churches.
The possibility of a Melkite copyist is remote, but cannot be entirely excluded. A
Coptic setting cannot be dismissed either, but the fact that the Copts produced a
separate recension of the prayer with an emphasis on Egyptian saints, also makes
it less likely that the prayer on the Trebizond roll was written by Copts. It would
be fascinating to gain insight into the circumstances that led to the wandering of
the roll around the Near East but, as of yet, we are left guessing.
In the following pages, the translation of the Prayer of Cyprian is pre-

sented. The clearly legible parts of the prayer are edited and translated here. Some
interpolations in brackets are based on MS Paris Ar. 309 and MS Sinai Ar. 501;
dots in square brackets refer to illegible words.
132
The Prayer of Cyprian
In the name of the Father and the Son and ¿aJj oVi ^>аа11 £JJJ ù i ^ J S - ^ ?+4
the Holy Spirit, One God,
we commence and write, with the aid of jLe (JAJJÄII ^ t.ïfiij ¿ЈУЧ if^P
God, the story of the Holy Mar
Cyprian the Martyr. 'Glory to God in the сИ»Ј ^ -k J ^*^ цИ ^ *^' . \ц "^ ¿feji*
highest, and on earth peace, and good will
toward men!' [Luke 2:14]
On Sunday, which God blessed and ц^^ІІ -і*ЛИ <»JJ ^ Ј OÛIAÎ! ^ U l i ^ j ^bLJi
sanctified,
all evil acts [were obliterated] <J£ [ J ^ ] <**< Аліс <* 1 £ j b
I, Cyprian, servant of Jesus Christ, ^¿ПІЛІІ J*İJ ¿JC ¿ Ul ^ P j ^ JtacVl
I was in obedience to the devil and I did not 4->j <ЛАЈ\ uij&l ¿ß\ flj ¿ ) \ \\ <&IL ^â
know Your name, О Lord!
I used to bind heaven, so rain would not ^ЈЉЈ)Ј\ ^С 1 -β l$l<> j-iaJj Ыэ LAAJI -LUJ) ^
come down from it onto the earth
and the earth would not give her riches nor ^ Ч ' ^ U JUJI !1 V j Ц Ј ^ О cr^*-* ^ c H 0 ^ ' J
the trees their fruits and Ükewise
I barred pregnant women from bringing y*A\ j l l p J j ¿^JJV ^2 btá ^VbaJ ¿1»1 Cû£
their children to term and I barred fish from
living
in the sea. And on account of my many sins ^"nl ^ ¿JAJ ЈЛА\ ^ ¿ - <jl £І«І
and my
Ш
evil all this happened. Now, my Lord and ѵ*ИJ <^ U*»j < IJA ^ ¿l£
my God,
since I acknowledged Your Holy name and tiljâ fuj Сшл.1 ^pj^Üil lilául d à j c aa j |
love the name of your pure remembrance
and returned to You and to obedience to g-^Jajl Lilj ¿IjftUa ^ ! j «¿Lit C ı ^ j j jAlkll
You, I beseech
You, through the love of Your only Son, who [...] J£U i.1%^1 . I Ä J I I 1 1 <ŁL^ All
loves all, [...]
to loosen heaven and let rain come down

from it onto the earth, and let the earth
give her crops and the trees their fruits. And ¿11 U Ju¿\ j U - W l j l«£*è. ^^LaÚ
also let the
the barren women give birth to perfect ¿j^jJajjj ¿JJIAIJ J V J I (jj-4i t ^ J ^ V I ^ ^

children, and let them suckle
the breasts of their mothers and loosen the JJ^°J Ј*Ч^\ ј Ц ^ c b ^ J <*¿V*' ϋάΐ^
fish of the sea and the birds
of the sky and the beasts of the earth. And (JAC- ла tjLuül (J£j ^jiajVl cpj^jj ЬйллІІ
all people who have committed
evil; loosen all that evil, whether it be a Sâuuj \\ ¿y* <lš tžUJ L J ^ J LŞ^J L U ^
spell and
an evil eye or something shameful. And [...] 0A ^J&J * ЦГ^ J1 < P j ú ^ J

chase away from (Sulayman) ibn Sarah
every unclean thing and the cursed devil will V J ¿)J*AA ¿ j U a ^ J 0*^ ^Δ J š I jLui <JJ
not be able to withstand the one
134
who has this prayer on him; or rather: may [...] JaJj J J ôbL-all *< j l £ ¿у*
He loosen [...]
every evil thing and every unclean deed and J j l l Îx-aJj }^ J A C J £ J Ц £ Ј Ј ^Ji J £
may the Lord restore
[...] and every [...] and his noble nature and ¿iiïj Acjjj * £ J$j [...] JSJ [...]
His offspring and You,
О Lord, protect him from the devil and all CŽLOJUAJ AJIjâ ( J £ j > > ^ ¿У* <LbÄ^l C-Jj Ь
his forces through the name of You, the
living, extolled in heaven and on earth. Seal SJÄJ b!>L-all ¿1± о^ЈУ^Ј ^0^ ^ Л
> ΛΔ\ ^ \
this prayer with the power of
Emmanuel, the interpretation of which is

'God is with us', and just as the rock was
opened
and You made water sprout and the Sons of Jj} jx*j| - I J J J A I J Lall <JjĄ.jaJj a j 4 n * i l i
Israel could drink,
likewise, О Lord, spread out Your hand full \fc ^ eJİAİI LİİJJ £x*íjl U J J С*ІБ£
of mercy above
Your servant Sulayman ibn Sarah and above jiAJ ^ ¿у* ¿ ^ \Ј^ ¿Я (ј л Ј' м 1 \**
those living in his house.
This is the prayer: Yes, O Lord, as You ^ J J j â İ l Ł-ł<-^< t i l j l - J J ) Л * ј 0ν\ ι rflli ÓJA
planted paradise
in Eden from the beginning and at the «uà C I 1 * Ą . J J A J İ I J j ł лј& j «.Jail ¡ j * ¿)jc ^ â
commencement of time and placed
a great source in it and divided it into four ¿)jaaa.j ¿ЈЗ^ \ AJUJ\ - (-\jkr> J¿¿
rivers, Sihon, Gihon,
135
the Tigris and the Euphrates, that give water ¿jWb.u V o^jVi y ^ ^ ^ ^ ^J^J ^V^J
to the whole earth, and that no one can
withstand; just like that, no cursed ¿jUao^ gjb*b«j V ¿ - 1$ЦІ* ^-¿*á J^l
unclean devil can withstand this loosening j^^> V -^c V =\ \ »JĄ** <-* ^>^>J ÛJ*^·
and no knot, no spell, no
binding, no evil eye can withstand this ц£^ JaJl <JJUA t-iL ЧЈЈЈ ¿jjc V Jabj V j
loosening that I [perform]
today on behalf of Your servant. May You ^ jN JU& VI J £ olijj ^ & ¿je ^joll [¿ЛЩ
protect him, his roads and his paths
and his body and all its joints, from all evil 4¿A Ъ Jšj ^ ALUJJ AâjJa
deeds, through this force from Him!
О Mighty, and by the power of the Holy Aldi ^ \ ^jjÜ SJÄJ ^jfcHI 1$JI
Spirit and by the power of the six
angels that descended onto Aghrunius, the ^ !! ^ U j ] AİUAII ^ J ^ J Ć - I ^ l \^ЈЛ ¿Jill AŠabL»
city, [and in the name of the cherubim]
and the seraphim, who sang praise before (>jhHl * Ç£ÛJ ¿ J ^ I J-ÂÌ ¿#Δ\ ^ jLuJI
the great throne,
which no one can withstand and before ¿J^»»J V ІДДДА ^-¿ лл.1 ^jWimj V ^
which no
devil can stand, either by night or day or ¿1 j¿*> J £ ^ V J¿Í ^ V А^Ы <jUa¿*i
early morning, and by the saddle of every
beast,
the cursed, he and all his hosts and his ¿јиил*л ^J*J ¿#*jj*^* AJI ^іл. J £ j jA ¿ ***
powers are anathematised by the anathema
of Simon
136
the Rock, Head of the Disciples, and by the ^ JJjbUil obL-aJj Jxabüll ^ l j libali
praver of those on high and the supplication
of those below, the perfection of the saints,

[by the utterances] of strangers, by the life
of Adam and the sacrifice of Abel and the

imprisonment of Seth and the hope of
Enoch
and by the humility of Mahalaleel, by the

sacrifice of Isaac whom H e [rescued]
from slaughter through the Lamb, [by the

priesthood of Melchizedek],
the Prophets, by the longing of Jacob, by the

beauty of Joseph, [...]
by the secrets of Jacob, by the binding of <iaûj ^-Lyüjj j L a S j j (ј^жЈ - ^ J J ^ Ј Ц З Já J***

Isaac, by the perfection of Joseph, by the love
of Benjamin, by the humiïity of Moses, by

the might of Joshua bar Nun, [...]
Loosen from the carrier of this writing of

mine
új* Ся ^ ^ЈЈ^ ÍS** * zy^ ¿*

[...] О Lord,between [...]
His Word, by the truth of the rays of the

Sun and the light of the moon and the
brightness
[...] ** [...]
of the stars, by the four Evangelists,
Matthew,
137
Mark, Luke and John, and the intercession O\IMI]1 4£.\ U^jj lâjlj ^ ^ ^
of the virtuous
Lady, mother of the Light, the Virgin Lady Γ .] *¿J¿JA Jj¿¿ll (sljàjJl ЈУ^ ^ SjAÜaJl
Mary [...],
the twelve holy [apostles], and all the ¿ J \\ Mili Я . ^ > J J J ^ A J J V ¿JJmjVlll
martyrs
Stephen and Mar George and Sergios [and [...] o^J^J O^J*- J**J <Ј"ЈЈЦР*Л
Backchos]
and Cosmas and Damian and Saint [...] J^J 0*j№ J^J ¿) * ^ЈрЈ
Theodore and Saint [...]
[...] and her seven sons and the holy \ * [...] Ялци- [...]
martyrs Martha and Marina
AndThekla[..]andall A¿A2bJ Г 1 CJ\ \\Ą k%\\ ^ J J J
the holy women whom we mentioned and <JUUJAÌ1 J jSJü flj U j S û ц ^ CJLUÜÛİİI
whom we did not mention and the holy
Katherine and the repentance of the * . J â j ì-Idìlli ¿j±±Ay¿\ д-İJj U J J J J I £
martyred believers. And this
writing is sealed with the power of the ^ U ^ \ <ЈУ\ Љ\ ¿ДА! S J L <- 11 \'
faithful of God, the Father, the Living and

Giver of Life
and the mighty life-giving cross and with * ! >& * ôUaJl ^ Ь » * ôİâatİl - -ЛИ
the seal of Peter
the Rock and John, master of the desert, and jlx-â-uo j b o j A J ^ J J I ι i%\**i U a . j J j -âüt
Saint Symeon the Stylite,
138
Ђе Prayt of Cyprian on the Reverse of the Amulet Roll, Barbara Roggema
and Symeon the Wonderworker, the first

[...]
Anthony, head of the monks, and Daniel the

Prophet and Abraham
and by the power of Kyriakos and by the

truth of the prayers of all prophets
and apostles and martyrs and the saints, I

loosened
[...] J j ^ ^ ¿ b t ^ j ùy»l\
in the name of the Father and the Son and

the Holy spirit [one] God
I drive you out, О unclean spirit, and I bind

the eyes [...]
by the name of the true eternal God, like

whom there is no one,
to whose kingdom there is no beginning

and that lasts until eternity, whose dwelling-
place
is on the clouds, while he walks on the wings

jjjt f>lj ** \ £ j j V l ^ ^ J ^ " 1
of the winds, while the [angels], fearing to

stand before Him, hide
Ялоа.1 <^]& ^*ДЈЈ <—d-*^ cs^" 4 ^ > , 1 Л
their faces, lest they see the frightening

spectacle and the river of
¿ ^ A-IJS ^ j â j Яіі^и [...]
streaming fire, with all unclean spirits

burning in it,
j¿ll ^ j ^ l j b i J I ^ l > ! } bU ^ J ^ J
^ \ c l j j V I J£ <ЦЗЈ ^ j L J I jUll
ш
And before Him descends the fire, licking

up the water and
drinking it. And with the might of this God, jA ц^Ыі 4İV1 IÂ Ô J L J Uli
who is
the [...] God and the Lord of Lords, I

adjure you and bind
you and cast you out О unclean spirits! [...]
Every unclean spirit, whenever you come

close, О unclean
spirit, this formula will come onto you
as darkness and a cloud. It will descend onto fri лмііі ¿ j j f ł j j ÚjijlJ -oLuĆ. л!љ
you and heaven above you will be

come copper and the earth below you iron
and you will be untied!
О you evil spirit! Just as wax melts before

fire,
you and all forces of the enemy will be

brought to naught, О you unclean spirit!
This prayer is fixed with the seal of the

Father, the Son
and the Holy Spirit, One God, through the

intercession of the mother
of God, Lady Mary the Virgin, and all the ô ^ · ^ <â^j Ј Ј У LŞ j**Ü fèj* ' * 1 * \ <Wt
saints
and prophets. Amen. ¿&*\ W ^
Completed at the end ^ ^ *-* ¿Ijftll ¿1
of the month June of the year one thousand ^-^ <*** C^jèj* J* "1
six hundred and ninety four u ¿ * ^ j ** AJLU^J
of Alexander son of Philip o* Oí ^ - ^
Its scribe was, in name only, the monk S-Û f—»Vb 4JJ\£
priest al-Bashunï ^ Ј ^ У ^ U^
141
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143
The Tower Frescoes: Art at the End of the Empires
Ioanna Rapti
Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes
PSL Research University
UMR 8167 - Orient et Méditarranée
At the northwest of what was once the vast monastic complex of Hagia Sophia at
Trebizond, a prominent square tower punctuates the skyline of the city alongside the
main church (Fig. I).1 These surviving vestiges became the starting point for the study
of the Byzantine monuments of Trebizond in the late nineteenth century, when Ga-
briel Millet recorded the medieval remains and inscriptions of the city in two pioneer
studies.2 At the time of Millet s visit, the interior of the main church was still mosdy
covered in plaster and so his attention was drawn instead to the wall paintings of the
tower chapel. Millet assigned these paintings a crucial significance in the development
of Byzantine iconography. This is apparent from the systematic use of the pictorial
evidence from the tower in his magnum opus, Recherches sur Viconographìe de Vévangile,
published in 1916.3 In this work, composed to provide a framework for understand-
ing the Byzantine frescoes at Mistra, most of the thirteen scenes of the life of Christ
depicted in the tower chapel find a place in the discussion of the creation and dissemi-
nation of gospel iconography. Millet illustratedfiveof the episodes (using drawings to
clarify the iconography) as evidence for the continuity of an ancient pictorial tradition
in the Christian East, thereby stressing the importance of the Trebizond tower frescoes
in art history.4 His interest in discerning the geographic sources of the imagery in the
tower chapel is clear throughout the Recherches sur Viconographìe de Vévangile which
includes a chapter on this issue entitled "Orient ou lltalie." Millet thus joined a debate
about the eastern or western origins of Christian art which had been set out in 1901 by
his controversial colleague Joseph Strzygowski in his book Orient oder Rom?
Millet inaugurated research on the art of Trebizond and exercised a major

influence on further scholarship. Thanks to his interest, the results of the Russian
1 Talbot Rice, 1969: 28-9.
2 Millet, 1895; Millet, 1896.
3 "St. Sophia at Trebizond" refers to the tower frescoes in Millet's Recherches. Millet, 1916.
4 Millet, 1916: 74, Fig. 18 (Annunciation): 108, Fig. 47 (Nativity): 251, Fig. 231 (Raising of Lazarus): 258,
Fig. 235 (Entry into Jerusalem): 512, Fig. 559 (Lament of Christ).
5 Millet, 1916: 625-30; Strzygowski, 1901. These issues have been of fundamental importance for the
development of Art history, cf. Elsner, 2002: 370-79.
145
The Tower Frescoes: Art at the End of the Empires, Ioanna Rapti
investigation at Hagia Sophia were immediately published in the journal Byzan-

tion in 1928.6 In the following issue of the journal, David Talbot Rice contributed
data from his own fieldwork carried out in the same year and stressed his debt to
Millet's "admirable study," whilst also warning of the serious risk to the buildings
after the departure of the Greek population.7 After the cleaning and restoration
of the frescoes between 1957 and 1962, Anthony Bryer and David Winfield sup
plemented the observations that Millet and Talbot Rice had originally published
in their Byzantine Painting at Trebizond* with only a few additions to Millet's
"very adequate record of the inscriptions."9
Written half in French and half in English, Millet and Talbot Rice s book
is a gathering of independent studies rather than a co-authored monograph. The
two scholars discuss the most important churches of the city separately, often
stressing their differing opinions and disagreements.10 Nevertheless, their per
spectives and their primary concerns were similar: to record the paintings, to
identify damaged or missing parts of the decoration and, finally, to place them
within the framework of Byzantine art history. In his concluding comment on
the chapel frescoes, Talbot Rice noted their "considerable interest, though, artisti
cally, they cannot compare with those of the main church of St. Sophia or with
those in the grottoes of St. Savas [Sabbas]."11 He also suggested some western
influence, via Venetian or Genoese traders, for the general sense of depth and
space in the images and the explicit attempt to model the figures. Millet, who,
unlike Talbot Rice, did not discuss the main church at all in his part of the book,
proved even more descriptive than his colleague. Instead of commenting on the
character of the tower frescoes, he added to the record a note on the "technique
6 See Baklanov, 1927-28, on the church St. Eugenios and the Virgin Chrysokephalos; Brounov, 1927-28, on
the architecture of H. Sophia; Alpatov, 1927-28, on the Genesis sculpture; and Protasov, 1927-28, on the
monuments of Cevizlik.
7 Talbot Rice, 1929: 47.
8 Millet 6cTalbot Rice, 1936.
9 Bryer & Winfield, 1985: 235.
10 Millet бе Talbot Rice, 1936: passim, esp. Millet s introduction. A series of letters between David Talbot Rice
and Thomas Whittemore around 1930 and 1933, now in the Whittemore archives at the College de France
(nos. 207-14), trace the long adventure of the making of this book (www.salamandre.college-de-france.fr).
Initially Talbot Rice considered publishing his study with "a short postscript or introduction" by Millet who
would also fill in omissions in the study (no. 209). The publication of the book by the Byzantine Institute
as envisaged by Talbot Rice and Whittemore failed and the project evolved into its actual form. As he
complains to Whittemore, Talbot Rice was planning to present the book for his degree at Oxford and
Millet's delay caused him much anxiety (no. 214). It was apparently during the making of the book that the
divergences between Millet and Talbot Rice were enhanced.
11 Talbot Rice, 1968: 252.
146
The Tower Frescoes: Art at the End of the Empires , Ioanna Raptı
des peintures," which is in fact a discussion of the stylistic devices used for the
rendering of the garments, hair and beards as well as the modelling of the faces
and skin tones of the human figures.12 Millet outlined his appreciation of the
tower chapel in his overall conclusion. Unlike Talbot Rice, he highly valued the
decoration of the Theoskepastos as a fine artistic creation appropriate to its royal
patrons.13 He suggested that the Theoskepastos, with its exquisite refinement and
classical overtones, could be compared with high-ranking monuments elsewhere
in the Byzantine world that showed the power of the Byzantine tradition. The
chapels frescoes—along with those of St. Sabbas—were representative of the av
erage or prevailing local tradition and did not respond to Italian influence, as
Talbot Rice had suggested.14 For Millet, the tower chapel was the touchstone of
a very different tradition, a witness to the unwavering strength of ancient Anato
lian practices.15
The work of Millet and Talbot Rice on the tower paved the way for study of the
main church but, ironically, there has been no comparatively substantial development
in the investigation of the tower and its frescoes, despite the cleaning and subsequent
photographic records.16 The exceptional thirteenth-century decorative programme of
the main church overshadowed the chapel which, with its doors shut to visitors and
scholars, has been consigned to oblivion. In addition to questions about style and ico
nography, this small though complete and comprehensive iconographie programme
raises many issues about the art of the empire ofTrebizond; its relation to other paint
ings of the city and its environs, and of course to those the main church; the function
of the paintings and the space within the so-called bell tower; and the identity of the
commissioners and intended users. The reasons for building the tower itself and the
circumstances under which the chapel was arranged and frescoed are themselves quite
obscure, despite the chronological limits of 1429 to 1444 provided by the inscriptions
of the exterior and the frescoes in the interior, which have now disappeared.17 Quite
surprisingly, no ground plan of the chapel has ever been produced and the decorative
programme has not been considered as an ensemble arranged in a specific space. The
12 Millet & Talbot Rice, 1936: 86-8.

13 Millet & Talbot Rice, 1936: 21-2; 89-92,173-177.
14 Millet бе Talbot Rice, 1936: 252. In his short note on the tower frescoes, Talbot Rice (1968: 314) did not
take up the Italian connection and just emphasized the decline of art the paintings represented compared
to those in the main church.
15 Millet briefly quotes at this point his previous comment on the depiction of the Raising of Lazarus in
Millet, 1916: 90: "Il nous montre la force indestructible des vieilles traditions en Anatolie."
16 The cleaning and restoration was carried by David Winfield in 1962.
17 Millet, 1895: 432; Bryer Oc Winfield, 1985: 234-5.
147
The Tower Frescoes: Art at the End of the Empires , Ioanna Rapti
short note by Talbot Rice in his later monograph on Hagia Sophia is merely a brief re
appraisal of the style and palette, while Bryer and Winfield introduced minor updates
and arbitrated between Millet and Talbot Rice s differing opinions, whilst retaining the
earlier scholars'perspective and approach.18
Towers and Chapels
The strange character of the tower (Fig. 2),rightlypointed out by Bryer and Winfield,
may not atfirstsight appear very striking. Yet, it is true that there are scarcely any close
parallels for its conjunction of architectural and decorative elements.19 Recent research
on Byzantine towers has demonstrated the increasing use of free-standing towers in
the Balkans from the late thirteenth century on, and up to the early Ottoman period.
These towers have similar proportions with four orfivestoreys, although they are often
badly ruined or heavily restored. They seem to have held multiple functions such as
serving as watch towers, storage spaces and landmarks for agricultural estates. They
also provided residence for the keeper of the properties and they usually had monastic
connections, even if they were often located in dependencies away from their patron
monasteries.20 The combination of various functions suggests potential uses for the
Trebizond tower which are perhaps more plausible than modern interpretations of
it as either the observatory of a hypothesized school of astronomy, or as a bell and/or
clock-tower asfirstproposed by Julien Bordier in 1609.21
The Hagia Sophia tower shares only some of the features with its Balkan
counterparts and even fewer with those elsewhere in Greece.22 It does not present
the projections or blind arches that characterise the ambitious tower of Khrielo
in Bulgaria and that of the Dionysiou monastery at Athos. The masonry, covered
18 Talbot Rice, 1968: 252; Bryer & Winfield, 1985: 234-6.

19 Bryer & Winfield, 1985: 234. For the architecture see the note by Selina Ballance in Talbot Rice, 1968:
27-8.
20 Bogdanović, 2012; Bakirtzis, 2012; Popović, 2000. Parallel with this obvious defensive role, there was also a
symbolic/spiritual reading, within the framework of monastic spirituality, connected to the isolation found
in heights which was prevalent in early monasticism of the Holy Land. Among the variety of temporary
functions was that of a refuge. See Popović, 2000: 104.
21 The various contentions related to the function of Hagia Sophia are summarised by Bryer Oc Winfield,
1985: 234-5.
22 Curčić, 2010: 519-27. Towers appear in monastic compounds, such as in Mistra, but they are lower with
usually two stories.
158
)v white plaster, was perhaps mostly built with blocks of stone and some brick.23
3n the other hand, the active patronage of the Great Komnenoi dynasty at Dio-
îysiou—the founder of which (Alexios III Grand Komnenos, r. 1349-1390) was
)uried and venerated at the Chrysokephalos—established strong connections
hat may have inspired the architecture and aesthetic of towers in the area of Tre-
)izond.24 A square tower, three storeys high, stood by the church of the Armenian
nonastery of the All-Saviour alias Kaymaklı vank' at the southeastern edge of
greater Trebizond, in the suburbs which were thriving since the early fourteenth
:entury outside the walls of the city (Figs 3,4). The similarity between the two
owers, already noticed by Talbot Rice and stressed by Bryer and Winfield, is
nost obvious in the large, arched windows of both buildings. The stairway on
he exterior of the Kaymaklı tower had a counterpart at Hagia Sophia, according
о the remains visible in the late nineteenth century.25 The photographic record
)f the Kaymaklı tower indicates that it is unlikely that the stairway continued
urther. Communication between the upper storeys was most likely operated by
vooden ladders, either fixed or removable, as has been suggested for Hagia So-
)hia. Regarding the interior, the evidence of chapels on the first two storeys at
Caymakli parallels interestingly the account of the nineteenth-century local anti-
juarian, Sawas Ioannides, who mentions "four superimposed chapels in the bell-
ower" at Hagia Sophia.26 Unlike the 1334 Rila tower at Pyrgos and the monastic
owers on Athos—where chapels adorned with frescoes topped the buildings—at
)oth Kaymaklı and Hagia Sophia the chapel was located at first-floor level and
vas marked by a slightly protruding apse, visible in a photograph taken in the late
ıineteenth century by the local photographer Konstantinos Kakoulis.27 Across an
magined axis extending east-west across the city and its surroundings, the towers
narked the approaches to Trebizond by sea and land respectively, and overlooked
he trading quarters on either side of the main city. Acting more as watch tow-
:rs than proper military defences, they supplemented the numerous high towers
3 The thick layer of plaster did not hide the masonry that impressed Bordier who noted it as "à la façon des
Romains." For the quote and the building see Bryer бе Winfield, 1985: 234.
4 Oikonomides, 1968:10-13.
5 École Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Photothèque Gabriel Millet, Collection chrétienne et byzantine, cl.
A19.
6 Iôannidês, 1870: 234. He also mentions that the tower was filled with paintings and that at that time it was
used as a minaret. There is some approximation in the account and unfortunately this local erudite teacher
does not say if he had visited the tower. The four chapels may echo evidence, or legend, for the earlier use
of the tower.
7 See Fig 9 on p. 40: EPHE, Centre Gabriel Millet, coll. chrétienne et byzantine, Album, Turquie 15: 76).
On the contrary, as Asen Kirin noticed at the Rilha tower that, the whole space turned inwards upon itself
with the protective shell of the walls. Kirin, 2005: 99. See also Popović, 1995: 103 and Mylonas, 1964: 243
159
'lhe Tower Frescoes: Art at the End of the Empires, Ioanna Rapti
around the city walls. Both forms of tower combined ideas of protection and au
thority, made explicit through the monumental inscriptions declaring the name
of the emperor (Fig. 5). 28
Monastic and Secular Memories
According to the records of the now-lost paintings on the exterior, the Hagia
Sophia tower was certainly a means for the display of imperial authority. The por
traits of John IV (r. 1429-1448) and his father Alexios IV (r. 1416-1420) flanking
the child-bearing Virgin on the eastern exterior wall, accompanied by an inscrip
tion dated 1429, support the hypothesis of the imperial patronage of the tower,
or of other privileges for which the emperors were acknowledged and honoured
within the monastic space.29 The tiny dimensions of the chapel and the towers
interior were perhaps less suitable spaces for praising the rulers. However, the
importance of commemorative portraits among the frescoes indicates that the
chapel was a place of commemoration. The entire iconographie programme has
been carefully structured on the walls and vault of the chapel, gathering holy
and monastic figures under the major feasts of the liturgical year and the most
important episodes of Christ's life, while the apse focused on Eucharist and in
tercession.
Even within the diminutive scale of the chapel, the sanctuary decoration
is imposing and commands the space (Figs. 6-8). The regular folds of the white,
embroidered textile—painted as hanging on the lower register—give rhythm and
invigorate the interior through the reflection of the incoming light. At the top of
the apse, an impressive Pantokrator is enthroned at the centre of a composition
that conflates the Majestas Domini and the Deesis. His open book quotes John
8.12. 30 The usual intercessors at the Deesis, the Virgin and John the Baptist, are
here depicted with thinner proportions and squeezed to the edges of the conch.
Two seraphim standing by the throne allude to the liturgical prayer of the trisa
gion} while the bright green background may evoke the freshness of paradise. The
Deesis is often depicted in the apse in Cappadocian and Georgian churches of
the central medieval period where the same difference in scale between the Christ
28 Bryer & Winfield, 1985: 184; Millet, cl. B204 and C853; cf. Bryer бе Winfield, 1985: II, Fig. 113.
29 Bryer & Winfield, 1985: II, Figs. 178a-b.
30 I am the light of the world, those who follow me [won't walk in the dark].
160
and the intercessors is observed.31 It also occurs often in provincial churches and
chapels of modest dimensions with a similar discrepancy in the proportions of
the three figures but also in ambitious buildings such as the church of the Holy
Apostles at Pec.32 The seraphim are common in Georgian apse depictions of the
Deesis, sometimes accompanied or replaced by wheels or the symbols of the
evangelists. The middle registers below the conch follow an established iconog
raphy widespread in the Palaiologan period throughout the Byzantine world. In
the Communion of the Apostles, the apostolic processions approach the altar, set
against a background wall with square projections and hangings; beneath this, the
celebrant hierarchs hold scrolls (now illegible) and turn to face the Melismos, the
Christ child on the altar, now almost vanished. These figures look disembodied
and unconfident in their postures, suggesting a different hand from the master
of the top of the conch. From an iconographie point of view, the paintings of
the sanctuary have interesting parallels throughout the empire, such as in the
late fourteenth-century church of the Taxiarchai-Kurt Boghan (Fig. 9), Cevizlik
(Dikaisimon) or the churches of Genoese Crimea.33 The apse is enhanced by a
double-pointed arch that provides a double frame to the sanctuary. On the front
of this arch nine prophets, unfolding scrolls and turning towards the centre (Fig.
10,11), appear in medallions. Above them, two angels flanked a central medal
lion, now lost: probably either the throne of the Etoimasia or Christ Emmanuel.
On the underside of the arch, a finely painted floral garland is among the
few ornamental elements of the decoration and shows the mastery of the skilful
painter of the Pantokrator, to whom should be ascribed the series of prophets
as well. The inscription running against a white background on the triumphal
arch was read and completed by Millet as deriving from the heirmos (the opening
stanza of a liturgical canon) of the Hypapante (the Presentation of the Christ in
the Temple): the words τω τιμίω σου α'ίματι are legible, as well as the date 1443
at the end of the inscription.34 This verse of the heirmos of the Presentation in the
Temple often appears in this place, conveying an additional Eucharistie overtone
31 Jolivet-Lévy, 1991: 78,123,126 бе 258; Velmans, 1996: 31,34; Jolivet-Lévy, 2001: 125-6.
32 Durić, Ćirković бс Korać, 1990: Fig. 9
33 Bryer ctWinfield, 1985: vol. 1,288, col. 2, Fig. 215a; Protassof, 1928: Fig. 422. The zone with bowing
angels in the chapel of St. Elias at Vazelon makes likely the presence of a Majestas and perhaps the Deisis
in the—now destroyed—conch of the apse. See Bryer ôcWinfield, 1985: II, Fig. 218.
34 The northern part of the arch was destroyed by the time of Millet's visit but the space available is much
larger than that required by the nineteen letters he completed.
161
rather than a reference to the specific feast.35 For the users of the chapel, the text
on the arch may also have resonated with the glorification of the house of God in
the main church in Hagia Sophia, where Psalm 92:5 is quoted around the conch
of the apse and Haggai 2:9 on the face of the eastern arch.36 On the upper angles
of the chapel's triumphal arch, the two angels who turn to the apse contribute
to the glorification of the Lord and carry the transition to the Ascension on the
eastern part of the vault.
The Annunciation introduces the cycle of the life of Christ which encircles the
chapel in afriezeof eleven scenes, beginning in the southeastern corner. Thefinaltwo
episodes, the Ascension and Pentecost (Fig. 12) —now lost with the vault apart from
a few remains on the lateral walls—operate both as a conclusion to the narrative and
in harmony with the theological and Hturgical content of the apse. The arrangement
of both compositions, which can be determined from the preserved lower halves of
thefigures,is common in vaulted churches. Both scenes stressed the central axis of the
vault through the heavenly rays of light and the radiating mandorla of the Christ.37
Although the order of the scenes is chronological, their display is not strictly linear. The
continuity of the pictorial surface is interrupted by the architectural arrangement of the
chapel, notably the entrance on the south wall and the windows on the north and west
walls. These break the continuity of the narrative depicted on the walls, but simultane
ously create complex relationships between scenes and figures.The gathering of half
of the narrative images on the south wall clearly privileged this side of the chapel. The
Incarnation, visualised in the Annunciation and the Nativity, and the recognition of
Christ s divinity, conveyed in the Presentation, Baptism and Transfiguration, provided
particular solemnity to the entrance, especially as worshippers crossed the threshold
35 Millet, in Millet бе Talbot Rice, 1936: 67, copied the same heirmos from the apse of the eastern St. Sabbas
chapel. This text does not usually introduce the dedication of the churches as Millet assumes about St.
Sabbas, where indeed this heirmos is combined with the founders' inscription. However, the display of
dedications around the apse is rather rare and the conflation of the heirmos with the dedication appears
more commonly in later times. The available space at the tower chapel suggests that the northern part of
the arch contained the beginning of the hermios: το στερέωμα των επί σύ πεποιθότων στερέωσον τήν
έκκλησίαν ην έκτήσω τω τιμίω σου αϊματι.
36 Eastmond, 2004: 99 бе 102. The psalm verse was supplemented by an inscription, of which only a few
letters have survived. See Talbot Rice, 1969: 108. Psalm 92:5 is used extensively in the liturgy, particularly
for the consecration of the church. The quote could also have recalled the preceding verses referring to
water and the sea, which would have been particularly significant for the audience given the location of the
monastery and its close ritual connections to the sea. The mention of Panaretos's son drowning there at the
feast of the Transfiguration suggests such a close relation of the monastery to its environment and this is
further evidenced by David Winfield's observation in 1960 of Turkish women bathing there on the eve of
the feast of St. Eugenios. See Bryer ôcWinfield, 1985:178 бе 234.
37 Cf. the layout at St. Elias at Vazelon, Bryer бе Winfield, 1985: vol. 1, Fig. 97 and vol. 2, Fig. 217a
162
The Tower Frescoes: Art at the End of the Empire , Ioanna Rapti
into the chapel between the two latter theophanies.The distribution of the subjects
is also balanced thematically and liturgically since the west wall hosts the preparation
for Easter, with the Raising of Lazarus and the Entry into Jerusalem depicted under
the Dormition of the Virgin (Fig. 13). On the north wall the Crucifixion, Entomb-
ment and Resurrection complete the process of salvation as the viewer turned east
once more to face the sanctuary where the sacrifice was ritually re-enacted ind where
the vision of the Second Coming was expected to appear.
A similar logic may organise the decoration of the lower register. While
it is possible to identify almost all of the figures here, they survive in very poor
condition. O n the wall, to either side of the entrance, mural icons ot St. Basil
and St. Eugenios (Fig. 14)—who are both shown standing frontally—provided
a prestigious escort to whoever climbed up into the chapel. Basil, who probably
also figured in the centre of the apse among the officiating bishops, represents the
entire institution of the Church as pendant for Eugenios, the patron saint of the
city and bearer of secular and sacred authority. Although Basil and Eugenios are
frequently depicted in the churches of the area, this specific honour and such a
close connection between them is unparalleled.38 The two saints are supplemented
by four prominent figures of eastern monasticism: Hilarión and Gerasimos on
the intrados of the window of the west wall, and Euthymios and St. John of the
Ladder in that of the north. The latter face Sts. Constantine and Helena—very
popular saints in contemporary Pontic churches—thus balancing prototypes of
secular and imperial piety and of monastic leadership. 39 The monastic saints face
portraits of monks depicted on a larger scale on the lower part of the walls. This
spiritual kinship seems even more meaningful given the similar relation that links
Constantine and Helena to the pair of portraits on the eastern part of the north
wall, that Millet initially identified as monks, but whom cleaning has revealed to
be two turbaned officials (Fig. 15).40
38 In the chapel of St. Elias at the monastery of Vazelon, St. Eugenios appears on the northern side among
the most popular military saints—Demetrios, Theodore and George—identified by his TrapeTuntine
connection. Bryer бе Winfield, 1985:1,292: II, Fig. 225c. A similar case occurs at Sarmasikli. Bryer бе
Winfield, 1985: vol. 1, Fig. 83. At St. Sabbas chapel, Eugenios appears next to the archangel Michael:
Millet бе Talbot Rice, 1936: 124.
39 See for example Bryer бе Winfield, 1985: II, Fig. 174.
40 Bryer бе Winfield, 1985: 236, Fig. 74. Unlike Millet and Talbot Rice, who both distinguished a single
figure that they interpreted as an anonymous monk, Bryer and Winfield saw two figures and the edge of a
jeweled staff, and noted the similarity between the headgears of these figures and the funerary portraits at
the south porch of the main church.
163
A portrait of an anonymous monk shares the lower zone of the west waft
with the archangel Michael. On the left, Michael, clothed in the imperial loro»
further enhances the solemnisation of the entrance. Archangels often appeal
close to the apse, both as performers of the divine liturgy and as guards of the
sanctuary. Here, the angel's protective presence by the door may be related to hi$
intensive cult in Anatolia and especially to his quality as a psychopomp for the
monks depicted on the other side of the window.41 In fact, Michael introduces
the series of portraits, which counterbalance the holy figures in the north-western
part of the chapel, accompanied by inscriptions recording their deaths. Unfor-
tunately the paintings have vanished and the conclusions rely solely on earlier
records. Drawings attest that the two figures of monks were depicted slightly
turning towards their left, as if engaging in a discrete movement towards the
sanctuary. The sequence of portraits suits the "memorial" interpretation of the
chapel and its programme. The depiction of the two turbaned officials in the
significantly privileged position below the feet of Christ breaking the doors of
hell, conveys their hope to participate in the resurrection. The inscription be-
tween them, that Millet distinguished, is still visible. Even if other reconstruc-
tions of the inscription may be possible, the date giving the first of January and
the seventh indiction, which implies the year 1444, is still clear. Moreover, the
importance of these commemorative portraits is obviously emphasised by their
position, not only next to the sanctuary but also as the focal point of the viewer
when entering the church. Unfortunately, the lack of an informative dedicatory
inscription can only be supplemented partially by the two major ideas that govern
the programme: ceremonial entrance and commemoration.
The subtle hierarchy in the display of the portraits emphasises the lay fig-
ures, who may be considered the patrons of the chapel. The depiction of two
monks—one of them bearing the sophisticated name Kallistratos Phasianos,
perhaps indicating an elite and local origin—might also be understood within
the same project as part of the deal between the patrons and the monastic com-
munity for the commemoration of the former.42 The beginning of the project,
shortly before the death of at least one of the patrons, also fits with this interpre-
41 The attributes of the archangel have not been preserved but his right hand seems to introduce the monk on
the other side of the frame. The archangel Michael appears taking the naked figure of the deceaseds soul in
the Parekklesion at Chora. Ousterhout, 1995: 72.
42 This family name is not attested elsewhere. However, the implied reference to the river Phasis and the
eponymous bird suggest local roots.
164
tation. 43 Almost twenty years after the tower was built, probably under imperial
patronage or with imperial favour, the decoration of the chapel seems to have
been a separate endeavour following the tradition of aristocratic patronage in
monastic institutions. One may wonder about the location of tombs and whether
the chapel was initially conceived as a place of commemoration. It is conceiv
able that burials were located in the lower part of the church, at least when the
chapel became a place for commemoration, but this requires to be documented
by archaeological investigation. Nevertheless, the distribution of the gospel im
ages not only evidences a design with the most traditional means for the simplest
architectural module, but also the unity of the overall decoration. Liturgical time
is implied not only through the unfolding of the programme but also through
the connections between the portraits and the images. Commemorations fixed at
specific days of the year were particularly performed in the period before Lent,
which here coincides on the western wall with the beginning of the commemora
tive portraits.
Gospel Narrative and Rhetoric of Space
Despite its apparent predictability, the sophistication of the entire programme

invites viewers to investigate the content and meaning of the individual gospel
illustrations through their iconography and style. Although at first sight most of
the compositions seem to follow a rather common late Byzantine canon, details
betray a conscious interpretation of a wide variety of available models and strong
connections with the contemporary arts of the region.
The Annunciation (Fig. 16) is shown as a discrete composition framed by a

simple red strip, as are all the scenes in the chapel. Its iconography follows a pat
tern widespread in late Byzantine painting which includes the maid sitting by the
Virgin as in the mid-thirteenth century Iviron manuscript (Athos, Iviron, M S 5,
fol. 222r) or in the Chora mosaics.44 Its inclusion in the narrative of Christs life
occurs in other painted ensembles around Trebizond—including the chapel of St.
Elias at Vazelon monastery, where the placing of the archangel and the Virgin on
either side of a window is more reminiscent of the frequent placement of Annun
ciation images around apses. In the tower paintings, the rather flattened figures of
43 Brooks, 2004: 210-218.

44 Pelekanides, Christou,Tsioumis бе Kadas, 1974, vol. 2: Fig. 27; Underwood, 1966, vol. 1: no. 85.
165
lhe Tower Frescoes: Art at the End of the Empires, Ioanna Rapti
the protagonists are projected in front of a rich architectural background which

emphasises a conflicting highly slanted perspective. This differs from the most
ambitious paintings of the period and suggests a different stylistic taste. Moreo-
ver, the Virgins mantle crossing in front of her chest reveals a slightly prominent
belly which evokes her pregnancy, while her touching heels belong to an eastern
tradition that can be traced without interruption in Armenian art. The availability
of Mediterranean models in the Black Sea has been little discussed, but it can be
quite well traced in a series of Armenian manuscripts produced in Crimea dur-
ing the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.45 Byzantine painting in Anatolia also
attests to a wide circulation of eastern Mediterranean or Crusader art, while a
further impact may be detected in paintings on the north of the Black Sea, as at
Boboševo and Zemen.46
The frieze of Christ s life continues with the Nativity (Fig. 17), set in a broad-
er frame than the Annunciation. The image is dominated by the opening of a large
grotto and the recliningfigureof the Virgin who noticeably differs from many of the
contemporary images where she appears almost sitting by the manger. Many of the
standard elements of the narrative are visible, including the adoration of the Magi,
thefirstbath of Christ and the annunciation to a shepherd. Joseph, shown turning his
back to the scene, as usual, is here depicted at the right edge of the panel taking the
viewer s gaze to the next feast, the Presentation at the Temple, rendered according to
the traditional symmetric formula in front of a ciborium.
The distribution of the scenes on the walls is meaningful beyond their sym-
metry. The increased width of the panel depicting the Nativity matches that of the
Lamentation opposite it on the north wall (Fig. 18). The parallel between these
compositions is further stressed by their organisation around a central reclining
figure. Moreover, the antithetical relation of the Passion to the Infancy and their
connection within an economy of sacrifice and salvation is here further stressed by
the role of the exceptional architectural background of the Lamentation. In middle
Byzantine iconography, landscape was often used to play a dramatic role in enhanc-
ing the emotional tension of the episode, whether through the sorrow and sense of
loss evoked by naked hills or by theflowersscattered on the earth to become Christ s
shroud.47 In the chapel image, nature is totally absent. The panel is enlivened by the
45 Rapti, 2007: 283-285.

46 Mavrodinova, 1980; Rousseva, 2009.
47 For the influence of literary laments on the role of the landscape, see Maguire, 1981: 104 &c 108.
166
impressive silhouette of the mourning woman extending her hands in despair and
her mantle blowing behind her. The body of Christ lies on a stone or sarcophagus
arranged at the top of a masonry wall on which the Virgin is sitting, attended by a
badly damaged figure. Two men, allegedly Joseph and John, are respectfully hold
ing the feet and hand of Christ on the right. Johns deep bowing is accentuated by
the round tower with a conical roof rising behind him. This tower joins a square
building with a window which echoes that behind Mary in the Annunciation. The
meaning of this rich, although unspecified, architectural background is unclear and
may have had many resonances for viewers. It could have been evocative of the Holy
Sepulchre in Jerusalem or of the sanctuary of any church as a place of sacrifice; but
it could also have been an allusion to the tower s broader urban surroundings. Ar
menian miniatures of the same period sometimes signal Christ s tomb by a tower
like building, while similar masonry walls with protruding towers often distinguish
Armenian-Anatolian depictions of Jerusalem or the Temple. Beyond its particular
setting and its rather rare insertion among the usual feast cycle images, however, the
content of the Lamentation is further characterised by its unusual label: ο θεόσωμος
τάφ[ος]. Millet transcribed ή θεόσωμος ταφή as likely after the eariiest parallel of
the legend observed in the church of St. Anne. 48 Whether the inscription reads in
approximate Greek as ο θεόσωμος ταφ[ή] or, more correctly, θεόσωμος τάφ[ος],
this title is unparalleled in painting and establishes a strong connection with both
the local tradition and exegetical literature.49 The expression θεόσωμος ταφή came
into use in post-Byzantine art and liturgy. Its appearance in the Byzantine period
is rare and it does not occur in art. It is traced with variations to the earliest discus
sions of Christs burial, which may have contributed to the development of related
imagery. These include the writings of Anastasios of Sinai (d. after 700), Theodore
Stoudite (759-826) and pseudo-Epiphanios (eighth century) who proclaimed the
marvel of the deadness of Christ s body in support of theological arguments about
his human nature and against Monophysite beliefs.50 Closer in time to the date of
the tower frescoes, the theologians Nicholas Kabasilas (1319/23-1392) and Mark
of Ephesos (1392-1444) reuse the term θεόσωμος ταφή, again in the service of
Orthodoxy but this time in the context of the controversy between the Greek and
Latin churches. The parallel between the tower Lamentation and that at St. Anne
(Fig. 19) is certainly not a coincidence. The use of the inscription may reflect a local
48 Millet бе Talbot Rice, 1936: 31, 84,104 бе 167-8. Both authors did not discuss the inscription in the few
lines they wrote on the Lamentation in the chapel.
49 Millet, 1916: 496 n.3 related the title to the inscription "Λαζάρωσις" in a pilgrim's guide , which means,
rather, the shrouding of the corpse.
50 Kartsonis, 1986: 52-7.
167
liturgical tradition without straightforward record in the sources. Moreover, both

churches have in common a commemorative function evidenced by continuous bur-
ials at St. Anne (Fig. 20) The inscription in the Lamentation image and its place in
the chapel provide the explanation for its unexpected inclusion among the illustra-
tions of the life of Christ, independent of its inspiration or roots. The bodily burial
on the north wall resonates with the physical birth on the south; it emphasises the
miracle of the Descent into Hell that follows it in the cycle, and it also acts as a
visual bridge to cross the long liturgical time between the Crucifixion and the Res-
urrection.
Since Millets earliest record of the frescoes, our understanding of Byzantine

art has progressed enormously, revealing—especially for the period after 1204—
much more complex phenomena of interactions, patronage and identity than formal
analysis and the study of scriptural sources implied. The intimacy of the small tower
chapel can by no means compare to the achievements of the main church, nor do
its frescoes compete with the paintings of the Theoskepastos nunnery, which also
deserve a reappraisal (Fig. 21). They also are different from the frescoes of the St.
Elias chapel at Vazelon, which is now dated to the early thirteenth century, and from
the impressive decoration at Kaymakli, perhaps closer chronologically to the tower
(Fig. 22).51 The sophisticated organisation of the small decorative programme in the
chapel as discerned through analysis of the remains and records, however, invites us
to seek the significance of its specificity within the context of mid-fifteenth century
Trebizond. The years 1443-1444 and the short period before when the ensemble
may have been commissioned, coincide with a period of stability and prosperity in
the pocket empire, a moment of intense interaction with Constantinople to the west
and the empires neighbour to the east, Iberia/Georgia.The strong Venetian and Ge-
noese presence in the city as throughout the Black Sea, which suggested to Talbot
Rice a possible explanation for some of the frescoes' peculiarities, is also paralleled
by an increasing Armenian component crossing the Pontos from Bayburt and Tokat
either to settle in Trebizond or to travel on to La Tana or Caflfa. The elegant lace-like
border around the apse (Fig. 6), as well as the cubic rocky volumes and the narrative
scenes with figures set in front of massive architectures reflect not only artists with
different skills and training, but also the meeting of tastes and traditions responding
to individual, secular, monastic and religious sensibilities.
51 Millet and Talbot Rice considered them post-byzantine. For the issue of the date see Bryer ôcWinfield,
1985:208-11,289-94.
168
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Alpatov, M. 1927-28. "Les reliefs de la Sainte-Sophie de Trébizonde." Byzantion 4: 407-418.

Bakirtzis, N. 2012. "Between the Mountain and the Lake: Tower, Folklore, and the Monastery
at Agios Vasileios near Thessalonike" in Approaches to Byzantine Architecture and
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Ousterhout, and Amy Papalexandrou 165-185. Farnham: Ashgate.
Baklanov,N. 1927-28. "Deux monuments byzantins de Trébizonde." Byzantion 4: 363-391
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Millet, G. 1916. Recherches sur Viconographie de VEvangile aux XlVe, XVe et XVIe siècles, d après les
monuments de Mistra de la Macédoine et du Mont-Athos... Dessins de Sophie Millet. Paris :
Éditions de Boccard.
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Millet, G. and D. Talbot Rice. 1936. Byzantine Painting at Trebizond. London: Allen бе Unwin.
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170
The Chronicle of Michael Panaretos
Annika Asp-Talwar
University of Birmingham
Michael Panaretos' late fourteenth-century chronicle, "About the emperors of

Trebizond, the megaloi Komnenoi, how and when and how long each of them
ruled," is the single most important source for the study of the empire of Tre-
bizond.1 It survives in one manuscript in the Marciana Library in Venice (Cod.
Marc. Gr. 608). Its discovery in the early nineteenth century by Jakob Philipp
Fallmerayer (1790-1861) marked a turning point in the study of Trapezuntine
history, for it is the only surviving chronicle for the Trapezuntine state.2 It has
been published in four editions, most recently by Odysseus Lampsides in 1958.3
Prior to Lampsides' edition, it was translated into French, German and Russian,
although these translations contain inaccuracies given that they relied on previous
editions.4 This is its first published English translation.5
The chronicle provides an almost complete list of the succession of Trape-

zuntine rulers and it is the only source that provides their dates of rule until 1390.6
Some of the Trapezuntine rulers mentioned by Panaretos are not attested in any
other source.7 Moreover, the chronicle gives exact dates to a number of key events
in Trebizond and provides a chronological framework that facilitates the study of
other sources that refer to Trapezuntine events.
Lampsides observed that the chronicle provides accurate information

about the identity, origin and kinship of the people it presents; the locations of
imprisonment or arrest; methods of execution; the provenance, number and types
of ships; the exact date and time when events took place; and information on
1 Many thanks to my supervisor Ruth Macrides for all the help provided. All errors naturally remain mine.
2 Although Panaretos'chronicle also was edited by Tafel 1832, Fallmerayer 1843 re-edited and translated
it. He also used it as the main primary source for his history of Trebizond (Fallmerayer, 1827). Before
Fallmerayer, the major works on the history of Trebizond were Afzelius, 1824; Du Cange, 1680.
3 Lampsides, 1958.
4 Brossét, Histoire Du Bas-Empire, 1834: 255; Fallmerayer, 1843: vol. 2, 41-69; Khakhanashvili, 1905: 39.
5 Recently, Panaretos has been translated into Polish by Marcin Cyrulski and into English by Scott Kennedy.
Neither has been published to date.
6 The chronicle provides information about some events until the rule of David I Komnenos (r. 1459-1461),
but not the dates of rule.
7 For instance, Theodora I or Manuel II (apart from numismatic evidence).
173
The Chronicle ofMichael Panaêtos, Annika Asp-Talwar
military threats, rebellions and campaigns.8 The chronicle clearly provides a local
perspective on Trapezuntine events, counterbalancing the biased perspective on
Trebizond easily formed when relying on Constantinopolitan sources. It is also
the most valuable source for the study of factions within the Trapezuntine elite.
The chronicle can be divided into three distinguishable parts. Paragraphs

1-15 comprise the period preceding Alexios III Komnenos (r. 1349-1390), para-
graphs 16-54 cover his rule and paragraphs 55-57 mark a brief continuation that
provides a few events from the rules of his successors.9 The style of the chronicle
is brief and laconic, especially for the period preceding the rule of Alexios III. The
bulk of the content concerns events from the rule of Alexios III, which are nar-
rated in greater detail than the preceding parts.
Context
The chronicle was written during the rule of Alexios III, who took the throne
from his predecessor Michael I Komnenos (r. 1344-1349) at the age of eleven,
ending nearly a decade of civil war and instability in Trebizond. The conflict had
begun in 1340 after the death of Alexios'father Basil I (r. 1332-1340) when his
first wife, Irene Palaiologina, had exiled his second wife, Irene of Trebizond, to
Constantinople with her two sons, of whom Alexios was the younger.10 Alex-
ios spent his childhood in Constantinople and was connected to a number of
Trapezuntines who had fled or been exiled to Constantinople during the civil
unrest. He was sent to rule Trebizond by the Byzantine emperor, John VT Kan-
takouzenos, with the support of a faction of the Trapezuntine elite led by the
Trapezuntine megas doux,11 Niketas Scholarios, and their allies on the eastern
Black Sea coast.12
8 Lampsides, 1954: 52-4; Lampsides, 1958: 24-9.

9 Lampsides 1958,10-14. See below under 'Authorship.'
10 The chronicle testifies that Basil I had two sons, Alexios and John. The Trapezuntine ruler Alexios III was
John, who had himself renamed Alexios before or soon after his arrival to Trebizond.
11 Megas doux was a high court title, originally for the head of the navy although rarely so in the Palaiologan
period. See Lampsides, 1975: 71-2; Macrides et al., 2013: 71: . 110; Kyriakidis, 2008: 254: . 54.
12 The fourteenth-century traveller Andrew Libadenos mentioned that on its way to Trebizond, Alexios
Ill's retinue stopped at the cities of Sinope (Sinop), Aminsos (Samsun), Kerasous (Giresun) and Tripolis
(Tirebolu). The date of Niketas Scholarios'birth is unknown, but he had an adult son in 1354. He held the
title of megas doux from 1344 until his death in 1361. Lampsides, 1975.
174
The Chronicle ofMichaelPanaretos, Annika Asp-Talwar
Alexios' key achievement was to establish stability in Trebizond by control

ling his internal and external enemies. H e managed to overcome the opposition
that his rule faced: in addition to unrest among his officials in the years imme
diately following his accession, he repelled two rebellions against him in 1354/5
and 1363 .Through a successful network of marriage alliances, he made his Turk
men neighbours and potential threats into his sons-in-law. Alexios also created
increased ecclesiastical connections to Mount Athos and was known as a great
patron of the arts. H e re-founded the monastery of Soumela in 1364 and the
monastery of Dionysiou on Mount Athos in 1374. It has been argued that Alex
ios III was the patron of'the Alexander Romance, now in the Marciana Library in
Venice (Cod. Marc. Gr. 5). Courtly literature, notably poetry, was also written for
him by Andrew Libadenos and Stephen Sgouropoulos. 13
Panaretos
W h a t little is known about Panaretos' life comes solely from his chronicle. Pana
retos belonged to Alexios' court, and at the time of writing he held the titles
of protonotarios and protosebastos. Thus, he belonged to the Trapezuntine elite
{archontes):14 A fourteenth-century treatise of titles and offices—by an anony
mous author conventionally referred to as Pseudo-Kodinos—qualifies the proto
notarios as "the first of the notaries, that is, of the secretaries."15 Whilst the title of
protonotarios existed from at least the tenth century, the title οι protosebastos was
introduced to the Byzantine court hierarchy during the rule of the Byzantine em
peror Alexios I Komnenos (r.1081-1118). 16 Initially intended for the emperor's
male relatives, by the late Byzantine period, it was awarded to a more diverse
group of individuals. 17
13 Andrew Libadenos was a Constantinopolitan ambassador, who arrived in Trebizond during the rule of Ba
sil I and remained there at least until 1361 and most Hkely until his death. Stephen Sgouropoulos held the
Trapezuntine title oí protonotarios at the beginning of the rule of Alexios III. Miklosich бе Müller, 1860:
vol. 5,276-80; Papatheodorides, 1954: 262-82; Oikonomidès, 1968: 59-61: also 50-8; Lampsides, 1975;
Trahoulia, 1997.
14 The term could have two meanings, either as a general term for anyone in a position of authority—in-
cluding aristocratic, social and ecclesiastical elites—or as a holder of an 'office', as opposed to the holders
of dignities who ranked higher. Pseudo-Kodinos used the term archontes for the holders of court titles.
Macrides et al., 2013: . 64.
15 Macrides et al., 2013: 111; Guilland, 1971: 38-40; Oikonomidès, 1985: 170-1.
16 Macrides et al., 2013: 87: n. 156: 301-2.
17 Originally, it belonged to a small set of titles based on sebastos awarded to the imperial family through
blood and marriage, such as pansebastos and panhypersebastos. In the twelfth century, the dignity of protose
bastos was awarded to the emperor's nephews. Macrides et al., 2013: 291-2.
175
The Chronicie of Michael Panaretos, Annika Asp-Talwar
Both Pseudo-Kodinos and a fourteenth-century Trapezuntine list of titles

and offices rank the protosebastos high—thirteenth in rank after the emperor—al-
though Pseudo-Kodinos does not attribute to it any specific function.18 Pseudo-
Kodinos reports that the protosebastos wore gold-green everyday headgear {skiadi-
on) and festive headgear (skaranikon)19 of apricot-coloured, gold-embroidered silk
with the emperor's image painted under glass.20 The twelfth-thirteenth century
author Niketas Choniates wrote that the protosebastos used green ink.21 It should
be noted that practices at the Trapezuntine court may have differed from those
described for Constantinople, although there is evidence of similarities in ritual
between the Trapezuntine and Constantinopolitan courts in the fourteenth cen-
tury such as the ceremony of prokypsis or wearing white for mourning.22
Panaretos refers to himself in the chronicle in a few incidental remarks.

However, it is noteworthy that he included personal details, which is unusual in
Byzantine chronicles that are more frequently characterised by the absence of
an authorial voice.23 It has been suggested that the period 1340-1390 fell within
Panaretos' personal experience, for the chronicle becomes more detailed after
1340.24 From 1351 onward, Panaretos'use of the first person reveals that he per-
sonally participated in the events, and thus that he was active at the court 1351-
1379. It has been argued that 1379-1390 he was still alive but retired from his
active role.25
Panaretos lists his involvement in seven campaigns and five other events
and his duties evolved during his career. He did not hold his title of protonotarios
immediately upon Alexios Ill's accession. His predecessor was Stephen Sgouro-
poulos, who wrote court poetry addressed to Alexios III during the early years
of his rule.26 The first events in which Panaretos participated, between 1351 and
1361, were all campaigns: in 1351 against a rebellious governor, and in 1355,1356
and 1361 in encounters with the neighbouring Turks which sometimes included
18 Macrides et al., 2013: 87: 456: also 306: . 127.

19 Macrides et al., 2013: 326-36.
20 Macrides et al., 2013: 55-7.
21 Macrides et al., 2013: 57: n. 77.
22 Lampsides, 1958, 72-3.
23 There were certain exceptions, such as the eleventh-century author and intellectual Michael Psellos.Tocci,
2014: 67.
24 Lampsides, 1958:12-13.
25 Lampsides, 1958:14.
26 Papadopoulos-Kerameus, 1891: vol. 431-7; Papatheodorides, 1954: 262-82.
176
The Chronicle of Michael Panaretos, Annika Asp-Talwar
attacking and pillaging. From 1363 onwards, Panaretos held a more diplomatic
role. In 1363, he participated in negotiating a marriage alliance with the Byzan-
tine emperor John V Palaiologos (r.1341-1391). In 1367 and 1377, he was part of
organising the marriages between Alexios Ills daughter and son and Georgian
rulers, and in 1368 he travelled to Constantinople to seek help against pirate
raids. In 1372, he took part in Alexios IIFs visit to the Georgian king, Bagrat V,
and in 1379 he participated in the arrangement of the marriage between Alexios
Ills daughter Eudokia and the celebiTajeddin. It can thus be suggested that he
received the titles of protonotarios and protosebastos between 1361 and 1363 and
retained them until the end of his career.
The language used by Panaretos is middle register Greek with some Pon-
tic words, which suggests that he was either born or raised from a young age in
Trebizond or the Pontic region.27 However, his family was connected to the Byz-
antine capital. Although members of Panaretos'family made ecclesiastical careers
in Trebizond and Vazelon, out of the twenty-nine people with the family name
of Panaretos in late Byzantine sources, twelve are found in Constantinople or
mainland Greece. Only five appear in Anatolia, including the family of Michael
Panaretos in Trebizond and two other individuals in Vazelon and Paphlagonia.28
Thus most of the late Byzantine Panaretoi lived within the Byzantine empire or
territories under Latin rule. A large number of the Panaretoi held ecclesiastical
positions or imperial titles at the Palaiologan court and the rest are known either
as landowners or from monastic contexts.
In his chronicle, Panaretos emphasised all events related to Constantino-

ple. He travelled to Constantinople at least twice: first in the summer of 1363 for
a betrothal between the Trapezuntine and Constantinopolitan emperors. During
the visit, he met both John V Palaiologos (r. 1341-1391) and the retired John VI
Kantakouzenos (r.1347-1354), then known as the monk Joseph. He also visited
Pera, where he met the Genoese podestà. Panaretos' second visit took place under
unfortunate circumstances. In July 1368, he was charged with travelling to Con-
stantinople to seek help after the coast of Kerasous (Giresun) had experienced a
number of raids by corsairs, who may have been Sinopitans or early Ottomans.
While he was away, during the feast of the Transfiguration at Hagia Sophia, his
fifteen-year-old son Constantine fell into the sea and drowned. Before his return,
21 Lampsides, 1958: 16-20.

28 Trapp et al., 1989: vol. 9.
177
his elder son, the seventeen-year-old Romanos died from a urinary disease. Pana-
retos laments this tragedy with the words "woe is me, the wretched sinner!" It is
not known, whether he had other children.
It is also evident from the chronicle that Panaretos was close to the influ-
ential family of the Scholarioi.The Scholarioi are by far the most discussed family
in the chronicle: Panaretos even recorded the death of the megas doux Niketas
Scholarios, as the only death of an archon in a chronicle primarily concerned with
the members of the ruling family Panaretos did not participate in the rebellion
of 1354/5, for he expressly indicates that he was unaware of the exchanges that
took place between Alexios III and the dissenting faction. When he travelled to
Constantinople in 1363, however, it was with the parakoimomenos George Schol-
arios, who later that year rebelled against Alexios III. This suggests that Panaretos
may have been aware of the rebellion, if not involved. Participation in rebellion
need not have signified the end of his career, as indicated by the fates of other
rebels from Trebizond. Niketas Scholarios and his son George were reinstated
after having led rebellions against Alexios III. A participant in the 1354/5 rebel-
lion, Andrew Libadenos, also continued with a career at Alexios Ill's court.29 As
demonstrated by the chronicle, Panaretos remained in Alexios' and his family's
favour until his death.
Authorship
Previous scholarship argued that the chronicle was written by Panaretos up to the
events of 1382 and that it was then completed by an anonymous continuator.30
More recent research contends that the events covered by Panaretos end in 1390,
at the death of Alexios III. Lampsides has observed that the Venice manuscript
was not written by Panaretos at all, but by an entirely different copyist, based on
errors in the text which reveal that the copyist was not highly educated.31 On the
last page of the manuscript there is a gap often lines, which shows that the copy
was not rendered correctly, although the reason for the lacuna is not known.32 The
omission affects the interpretation of the last entry in the chronicle, which men-
29 See above, notes 12-13. Libadenos delivered a profession of faith in 1361. Lampsides, 1975: 88-96.
30 Lampros, 1907: 265.
31 He argued that the original chronicle was thus entirely written by Panaretos. Lampsides, 1954: 41; Lamp-
sides, 1953: 365-8; Lampsides, 1958: 10-14.
32 Lampsides, 1958: 34-51.
178
The Chronicle ofMichael Panaretos, Annika Asp-Talwar
tions the marriage of David Komnenos (r.1459-1461) and begins "in that year".
Because of the preceding gap in the text, the year cannot be deduced from the
previous entry (1426), but probably refers to a later event recorded in the now lost
section between 1426 and 1437, when David married Helena Kantakouzene.33
The copyist of the first pages of Panaretos' chronicle added comments in

red ink in the margins marking the beginning of the reign of seven Trapezuntine
rulers and the death of the Byzantine emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos.34 The
Trapezuntine rulers are in succession from Alexios I to Alexios II, with the ex-
ception of George I and Theodora I, who are not mentioned.The second copyist
added red bullet points to divide the text into paragraphs.35
Sources
That written sources were used for events that took place before Panaretos' time,
evident from the accuracy of the dates provided.36 Owing to his position at the
court, Panaretos would have had easy access to the imperial chancery.37 In addition
to documentary material, written sources may have consisted of short chronicles,
and marginal comments and colophons in manuscripts.38 The written material
may have been supplemented by oral sources. When describing the reason for the
death of John I Komnenos Axouch (r. 1232-1238), for example, Panaretos re-
ports: "It is said that he fell while playing in the Tzykanisterion," while of George
Komnenos, who attacked Trebizond in 1284, he relays that "they also called him
'the wanderer'."39
The fragmentary material thus obtained was not always carefully edited.
The entries for the thirteenth century, in particular, contain errors and inconsist-
encies. In some entries, numbers were written out as words, whereas in most of
33 See Lampsides, 1953; Lampsides, 1958: 35-7.

34 The copyist added similar 'margin headers' for the text preceding Panaretos' chronicle in the manuscript.
Lampros included these headers in his edition, but Lampsides relegated them to the footnotes. These
headers have been excluded from the translation. Lampros, 1907: 266-9; Lampsides, 1958: 61 6.
35 Alexios I, Andronikos I, John I, Manuel I, Andronikos II, John II and Alexios II. Also see Lampsides,
1954: 45-7; Schreiner, 2009: 618.
36 Lampsides, 1958: 39-40.
37 It has been suggested that Panaretos'office involved organising the archives. Lampsides, 1958: 40 1.
38 Such as those edited in Schreiner, 1975.
39 It is possible that he was the deposed Trapezuntine ruler George I Komnenos (1266-80).
179
The Chronicle ofMichael Panaretos, A n n i k a Asp-Talwar
the chronicle, numbers were written as Greek numerals (letters).40 The record for
John I is problematic. The chronicle records that his brother-in-law and predeces-
sor, Andronikos I Gidos (r. 1222-1235), died in 1235 and that John I ruled for six
years and died in 1238. The overlap has been explained by a co-rule of three years
between the two brothers-in-law. The record of John Fs death at a polo game is
immediately followed, however, by the assertion that "Ioannikios was tonsured
and his second brother Manuel (I) Komnenos began to rule."41 Other sources
confirm that Manuel I was the son of Alexios I.42 Thus, John I must have taken
the monastic name Ioannikios, which is plausible, for it was common for the mo-
nastic name to begin with the same letter as the baptismal name. However, the se-
quence of events is muddled, for neither could a ruler take a monastic habit while
still in office, nor was it likely that a monk would take part in a polo tournament.
Inconsistencies not only appear in the period preceding Panaretos' time:

certain terms are spelled inconsistently throughout the chronicle. The terms for
brother/son-in-law (gamèros) and pinkernes are spelt in two alternative ways, while
the term Genoese takes three different forms (see table).43 Thus, within the period
suggested to have been based on Panaretos' own experience (1340-1390) there
are variations in spelling. These inconsistencies cannot be explained as errors by
the copyist, for they are not misspellings but rather alternative spellings. The vari-
ations do not only relate to spelling: the word γαμβρός signifies brother-in-law
and son-in-law, depending on the year. In 1222 and 1386, it signifies son-in-law,
whereas in 1363, it means brother-in-law. It is unknown which meaning it had in
1351, but since it referred to Píleles, his son and his γαμβρός, it can most likely
be interpreted as son-in-law.
40 Numbers are spelled out in the second paragraph, such as ΐβασίλευσεν δέ ό Γίδων ετη τρεισκαίδεκα...
έκοιμήθη έτους έξακισχίλια επτακόσια τεσσαράκοντα εξ.'Lampsides, 1958: 61.
41 Lampsides, 1958:61.
42 See, for instance, the funerary oration to Alexios II Komnenos by Constantine Loukites in Papadopoulos-
Kerameus, 1891: vol. 1,424-5.
43 The word for Genoese occurs with multiple spelling variants in Byzantine Greek. The form Γεννουίτης
(used in 1342 and 1363) is commonly used, for instance, in short chronicles and by Choniates, Akropolites,
Doukas and Sphrantzes. The form Γενουβίσων was somewhat less common, used by Demetrios Kydones,
Symeon ofThessalonica and the Chronicle of Morea. The form Ίανουαίων is only attested in Panaretos'
chronicle. It differs from common Byzantine spellings and is a Hellenised version of Genoa's Latin name,
lanua. Puncuh, 2003: 20.
180
Table. Variations in spelling
Year 1222 1342 1344 1348 1351 1352 1363 1386
1 Brother/
Γαμβρός γαμβρός γαμπρός γαμβρός
| son-in-law
Genoese Γενουΐτικα Ίανουαίων Γενουβίσων Γενουϊτών
Pinkernes έπικέρνης πικέρνης
These inconsistencies in spelling and meaning challenge the notion of the chroni
cle being the compilation of a single author. Certainly, Panaretos wrote about
the events of 1363, when he included himself in the passage with the words "the
protosebastos and protonotarios Michael Panaretos, who wrote this", and thus the
spellings of γαμπρός and Γενουϊτών in this same entry certainly were by Pana
retos. It would be tempting to use the alternative spellings to construct a date
range and argue that Panaretos contributed to the chronicle sometime between
1352 and 1386. The problem with such an argument would be how to explain
Panaretos' authorial voice. Panaretos spoke in the first person for the first time in
1351, when he wrote "we departed to Limnia ... we returned.. ."44 The last entry
referring to Panaretos'personal participation is from 1379.45 Thus, the date range
of the section written by Panaretos contains two alternative spellings of γαμβρός
and of "Genoese." Panaretos' authorial voice and the inconsistencies can be re
solved by suggesting that Panaretos indeed compiled the chronicle, but instead of
personally writing it, he dictated it to multiple successive copyists. His high rank
may well indicate that he was charged with producing the information for the
chronicle, but that he gave the task of writing it to others.
The complex authorship and the diversity of the sources may account for
the inconsistencies in the information provided.46 The chronicle does not record
births, deaths and successions in the same way for each ruler and remains frag
mentary, especially for the thirteenth century. However, a lack of sources cannot
account for the discrepancies and omissions in information provided for the rule
of Alexios III. Panaretos records the birth and death of Alexios Ills first, illegiti
mate son Andronikos I and the births of his legitimate children Anna, Basil and
44 Lampsides, 1958: 70.
45 Lampsides, 1958: 78.
46 Lampsides, 1958: 28, acknowledges the existence of lacunae, but argues that it is not meant to be a history,
rather a memorandum of the key events that took place.
181
The Chronicle oj Michael Panaretos, Annika Asp-Talwar
Manuel. Yet, he does not record the death of Basil or the births of Eudokia and
one or two other daughters, who remain anonymous. He records the marriage
alliances concluded with the Georgian royal house, the marriage alliances estab-
lished for Alexios Ills two sisters, the marriage between his daughter Eudokia
and Tajeddin celebi and the marriage negotiations with the Byzantine emperor.
Yet, he does not record the two marriage alliances between his daughters and Mu-
tahharten and Süleyman Beg.47 As all of these events occurred during Panaretos'
lifetime, their inclusions and omissions cannot have been accidental.
It has been observed that Panaretos emphasised the relations between

Alexios III and Orthodox rulers: he wrote lengthily about each encounter with
the Byzantine capital and with the Georgian kings.48 Contrastingly, when dis-
cussing the Turkmen neighbours of Trebizond, Panaretos highlighted successful
campaigns and raids against Turks and skimmed over or omitted the multiple
diplomatic negotiations that took place between Alexios III and his Turkmen
neighbours. This bias that Panaretos expressed for diplomacy with Christian rul-
ers distorts the image of Alexios Ills policies. Alexios III clearly favoured mar-
riage alliances with his Turkmen neighbours from the early years of his rule: even
when he did not yet have marriageable daughters, he conducted marriage alli-
ances between his neighbours and sisters.49
A similar bias is visible in Panaretos'use of titles. Two main categories are dis-
cernible for the rulers that Panaretos mentions. Orthodox rulers—that is, the heads
of Trebizond, Byzantine emperors and Georgian kings—are all qualified as basileus.
Most of the Turkmen rulers mentioned by Panaretos are qualified as emir, regardless
of their full titles, even those in high position. Tajeddin celebi, for instance, is quali-
fied as the "emir of Limnia", despite his rule over a large area including the notable
city of Neokaisareia (Niksar).50 It is evident that Panaretos knew the full tides of the
rulers he wrote about because of his position at Alexios Ills court.Thus, his universe
did not include an empire above others, but rather multiple bastíeis—emperors of the
Romans (Byzantines), Trapezuntines and Georgians. Turkmen rulers belonged to a
separate sphere and did not qualify as bastíeis, but were characterised as belonging to
a similar system, as emirs of the neighbouring regions.
47 Zachariadou, 1979: 333-58,348.
48 Lampsides, 1958: 29-32, has observed the care that Panaretos took for writing about Constantinople.
However, he dedicated almost the same level of attention to discussing Georgian rulers.
49 Such as the marriages of Maria in 1352 and Theodora in 1358.
50 Zachariadou, 1979: 345-7.
182
Finally, Panaretos' bias shows on the occasions when he moves from re
cording events to judging them. Thus, he wrote that the raid undertaken in Che-
riana in 1355 failed because it took place "by diabolical connivance," although he
survived "by divine providence". 51 Both Constantinople and Trebizond are char
acterised as providentially "blessed" (ευδαίμων) in the chronicle. 52 He blamed the
negligence of the guards for the attack on Trebizond by Ibrahim Haji Emir in
1357.53 The marriage alliances that Alexios III arranged compelled Panaretos to
change his tone: the same Haji Emir became a family member after his marriage
to Alexios Ill's sister in 1358, and was awarded the appropriate respect.54 To
wards the end of Panaretos'chronicle, the increasing family involvement between
Alexios III and his neighbours altered Panaretos' universe: Alexios III and his
neighbours—both Christian and Muslim—formed a local sphere and enemies
came from afar, notably Timur the Mongol who devastated Tbilisi in 1386.
Remarb about the Translation
Certain terms have either been left untranslated, for the lack of clear English
equivalents, or their translation is commented upon below.
Basileus. Used to refer to Trapezuntine, Byzantine and Georgian rulers, basileus

has been here translated as "emperor". In Byzantine Greek it referred to Byzantine
emperors but in Panaretos' chronicle—as in many other late Byzantine sources—
basileus is a generic term for multiple types of rulers who could be characterised
as "emperors" or "kings", such as the Georgian monarchs. Thus, it does not imply
any assumption of grandeur or pretentiousness on the part of Trapezuntine rulers,
as has sometimes been thought in previous scholarship.55
Megas Komnenos. In Panaretos'chronicle—as well as in other Trapezuntine sourc

es—members of the Trapezuntine ruling family are frequently, although not ex
clusively, called megas Komnenos (or megale Komnene) which is often translated
51 Lampsides, 1958: 71.
52 Lampsides, 1958: 61, 76-7.
53 Lampsides, 1958: 72.
54 Lampsides, 1958: 72.
55 For instance, Miller wrote that Alexios I Komnenos "in the bombastic style of Oriental majesty, styled
himself Grand-Comnenos ... and Emperor, and both the grandiloquent adjective and the Imperial title
survived." Pears described the empire of Trebizond as"this pretentiously named state". Miller, 1926: 15;
Pears, 2004: 386.
183
as Grand Komnenos. Here, it has been left untranslated. The meaning of megas
ranges from "grand, great" to "famous, brilliant", or even 'senior, elder/ 56 The us-
age of the term was not systematic: fifteen members of the imperial family ap-
pear solely with their surname Komnenos, a double name or another surname, 57
whereas nineteen members always receive the designation megáss Four other rul-
ers are called megas inconsistently.59
Kyr. The term kyr frequently occurs in relation to Trapezuntine emperors and lo-
cal notables. It was originally a word used to characterise prominent persons and
became widespread from the eleventh century onwards. The usage of the title was
not related to the title or office held by the person to whom it was attributed, but
it was used with discretion to give added value or respect to a person in relation
to his peers.60
Archontes. This was a term used for the powerful elite. The archontes in Trebizond
consisted of officials at the Trapezuntine court and members of influential fami-
lies, who were often governors.
Ships. Panaretos mentions six different types of ships, both large and small. The
larger types were the katergon, barkas and karabion. (Figs. 1-3). The term katergon
as an emulation of the Western galea replaced the earlier dromon in the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries.61 From the twelfth century, it refers to a separate ship
type and became a general term for a warship. 62 Although it is conventionally
translated as galley, the term was used very loosely during the late Byzantine
period and the galley was little used in the Black Sea. The katergon in Panaretos'
chronicle was more likely the navis bucius, introduced to the Black Sea by the
56 Lampsides, 1967:125. See also the usage oí megas in the miracles of St. Eugenios in Rosenqvist, 1996.
57 Andronikos I Gidos, John I Komnenos Axouch, Andronikos II, George I,Theodora I, Manuel II, Michael
Azachoutlou, George Achpouga, Irene I Palaiologina, Anna I Anachoutlou, John III, Alexios (elder
brother of Alexios III), Theodora, Basil I and Eudokia.
58 Alexios I, Manuel I, John II, Alexios II, Andronikos III, Basil I, Michael I, Alexios III, Theodora Komnene
Kantakouzene, Maria, Andronikos despotes, Manuel III, Eudokia, Alexios IV, Theodora Kantakouzene,
John IV and David I.
59 John II, Basil I, Michael I and Alexios III. Several scholars have sought tentative explanations for this in-
consistency. Lampsides claimed that megas was always associated with members of the imperial family, but
not used for men who married into it. Yet, not all blood members of the family are designated with megas,
such as John I Axouch (r.1232-8). See Lampsides, 1967: 117.
60 Kontogiannopoulou, 2012: 16.
61 Pryor & Jeffreys, 2006: 418,444.
62 Pryor бе Jeffreys, 2006: 419.
184
Genoese.63 Barka/ba/ka/barkopou/on was a very common term used for ships in

general. The karabion was a war galley introduced to the Byzantine empire from
Muslim Egypt.64 The karabia in Panaretos' chronicle were similar to the caravels
from Caffa in Crimea.65 They could either be small vessels used by traders or small,
fast Ottoman warships, similar to the Venetian coque. In speed and comfort, they
surpassed the more cumbersome navis bucius.66 The smaller types were the gri
parton, paraskalmion and xy/ariony the two latter ones being old Pontic boat types.
The griparion was a medium-sized—and usually single-masted—coastal trading
or fishing boat, although in Panaretos' chronicle it is also used in war.67 The par-
askalmion was a rowing-boat with a curved bow and stern, allowing either end to
be used for beaching. The xy¡on/xy/arion was a general term for small boats.68
Names. Panaretos mentions various people groups in his chronicle. In addition

to Trapezuntine emperors, he mentions members of the Trapezuntine elite, the
emperors of Constantinople and the Byzantine elite, rulers of Georgia and neigh-
bouring Turkmen emirates, such as the Ak Koyonlu, the Çepni and Sinope. West-
ern individuals are also mentioned, such as Genoese traders. Greek forenames
have been anglicised where conventional: thus, Ioannes is translated as John. Sur-
names have not been latinicised—for instance, Komnenos instead of Comnenus.
All non-Greek names have been transcribed, while more accurate spellings of
their names are given in brackets. Ordinal numbers for rulers are given in brack-
ets, as well as any other clarifying information.
Numbers. The numbers in the chronicle are indicated inconsistently: sometimes

numbers are spelled out, sometimes written in numerals.69 These inconsistencies
have been corrected in the translation to improve the readability.
63 Bryer, 1966: 6-8.

64 Pryor & Jeffreys, 2006: xlii, 188-9.
65 Bryer, 1966: 8.
66 Bryer, 1966:
67 Bryer, 1966: 11.
68 Bryer, 1966: 12; Zakythinos, 1932: 53-4.
69 Also see above, p. 179.
185
The Chronicle oj'Michael Panaretos, Annika Asp-Talwar
Translation
About the emperors of Trebizond, the megaloi Komnenoi, how and when and
how long each of them ruled.
Kyr Alexios megas Komnenos departed from the blessed Constantinople and began
his campaign from Iberia, with the determination and effort of his paternal aunt
Thamar.70 He arrived in Trebizond and took it in April 6712 (1204), in the seventh
indiction, when he was twenty two years old. He ruled for eighteen years and passed
away on the Sunday of Orthodoxy, 20 February 6730 (1222), at the age of forty.
In 6730 (1222), his son-in-law kyr Andronikos Gidos Komnenos began to rule.71
In 6731 (1223), in the second year of Gidos' rule, the sultan Melik attacked Tre
bizond and almost everyone there perished.72 Gidos ruled for thirteen years and
died in 6743 (1235) after bequeathing the realm to his brother-in-law, the first
born son of Alexios megas Komnenos, kyr John Komnenos Axouchos (Axouch).
He ruled for six years and passed away in 6746 (1238).73 It is said that he fell while
playing in the Tzykanisterion (polo grounds) and was trampled to death.
Ioannikios was tonsured as a monk and his second brother, the great strategist and
most successful kyr Manuel megas Komnenos, succeeded to the throne in 6746
(1238). In the fifth year of his rule, in January 6751 (1243), in the first indiction,
a great fire broke out. He ruled fairly and piously for twenty-five years and passed
away in March 6771 (1263).
By his behest and choice, kyr Andronikos Komnenos, his son from the despoina
kyrb Anna Xylaloe, ruled for three years and passed away in 6774 (1266).
70 Queen Tamar of Georgia. See Vasiliev, 1936: 3-37; Toumanoff, 1940: 299-312.
71 The spelling is inconsistent: Γίδως and Γίδων are used, see commentary. The Trapezuntine author Joseph
Lazaropoulos uses the form Γίδος [του Пбои, τω Γίδω]. Lampsides believes that Gidos was not Greek and
that his name was not of Greek origin, but that Alexios I Komnenos had concluded a marriage alliance
with a neighbouring ruler. See Lampsides, 1954: 48-50; Lampsides, 1956: 6; Lampsides, 1958: 114-5;
Rosenqvist, 1996: 310,318,334.
72 For a discussion of the different identities of the Melik, see Sawides, 1994: 79-88. The late fourteenth
century Trapezuntine metropolitan Joseph Lazaropoulos provides a more detailed account on this event.
Rosenqvist, 1996: 309-35. The problems with this account have been discussed, for example, by Peacock,
2006:133-49.
73 There is a discrepancy in the dates, which Lampsides explains by the co-rule between Andronikos I and
John I. See commentary. Lampsides, 1958: 115.
188
The son of kyr Manuel by kym Irene Syrikaina, kyr George Komnenos, ruled for
fourteen years. He was betrayed through a plot by the archontes at the mountain
ofTaurezion and captured in June. 74
That year, his second brother, kyr John megas Komnenos, received the insignia.
After one year, the revolt of Papadopoulos came upon him; but after he was freed,
he departed to the City and was wed to kyrz Eudokia Komnene Palaiologina, the
purple-born, who was the daughter of the emperor kyr Michael (VIII) Palaiologos
and the sister of the emperor kyr Andronikos (II) Palaiologos. It should be known
that the emperor kyr Michael Palaiologos was still alive, when the marriage be
tween John megas Komnenos and Palaiologina took place. After (Michael VIII)
Palaiologos died on 10 December, his son kyr Andronikos succeeded him after
publicly condemning his father for being a latinophile. 75
After the year 6790 (1282), in April, David the emperor of Iberia came and be
sieged Trebizond, but he was turned back fruitless.76
On 25 April 6791 (1283), in the eleventh indiction, kyr John megas Komnenos
arrived in Trebizond from Constantinople together with Palaiologina, who was
pregnant, and kyr Alexios megas Komnenos was born in 6792 (1283). 77
Then the attack and occupation by kyr George Komnenos occurred; they also
called him 'the wanderer/ 78 Along with him came the usurpation, rule and sudden
flight of kyrz Theodora Komnene, the first daughter of Manuel megas Komnenos
by Rousoudana of Iberia.
Kaloioannes (John) was again restored to the throne and after ruling altogether
for eighteen years, he died in Limnia on Friday 16 August 6805 (1297), in the
tenth indiction.
74 Bryer 1973: 332-50, discusses this problematic passage and interprets Taurezion as Tabriz.
75 The word Latinophile (λατινόφρον) refers to the Lyons church union between the Catholic and Orthodox
churches, conducted by Michael VIII Palaiologos in 1274.
76 The Greek sentence begins 'Μετά δέ το ,ς"ψ'Υ' έτος, Απριλίου μηνός...'Thus, the siege occurred in 1283.
The genitive construction Απριλίου μηνός is missing the date.
77 The anno mundiyzzr 6792 translates to the period between 1 September 1283 and 31 August 1284. Since
Eudokia Palaiologina's pregnancy was known already in April 1283, Alexios II was born in late 1283, after
1 September.
ι Η George Komnenos has usually been understood to refer to the deposed George I, although it is also pos
sible that he was another member of the ruling family.
189
During his rule, the Turks took Chalybia and caused a great raid that made all the
territories uninhabited.79 His body was brought to Trebizond immediately after
his death and buried in the church of the Chrysokephalos.80
His son, kyr Alexios megas Komnenos, began to rule and married the daughter of
Pekai (Века Jaqeli) from Iberia.81
The widowed kyrà Palaiologina left for Constantinople on 13 June 6806 (1298),
in the eleventh indiction, and returned—still without a husband—in March 6809
(1301), in the fourteenth indiction.82
The emperor kyr Alexios campaigned against the Turks and when he arrived to
Kerasous, he captured Koustouganes (Küçdoğan) in September 6810 (1301),
when many Turks were also killed.83
That year, on Wednesday 13 December, despoina Eudokia Palaiologina passed

away.
On Friday 30 November 6811 (1302), a conflagration took place in the Middle

City.84 The following year, the Lower City was burned by the Latins when there
was a severe conflict.85
79 In the district of Ünye, see Bryer, 1975: 143; Bryer & Winfield, 1985: 101.
80 Lampsides confirms that the text in the original manuscript says that John body was carried to Trebi
zond when it was ΐ π ε ί και ζών ετι' or 'while still alive'. Lampsides understands the reference to signify
that John lis body was carried to Trebizond right after his death, without him having been buried. He
rephrased the passage in his own words: 'John II died and, since the Turks had captured Chalybia and there
was great lack of security, the dead John was carried into Trebizond immediately after his death.' However,
it is difficult to resolve why the chronicler would have used the word ζών, 'alive', with reference to a body.
Two alternative readings can be suggested. Firstly, it may pertain to the errors of the copyist which were
first noted by Lampsides. Alternatively, it is possible to correct ζών to σών, meaning 'fresh/uncorrupted', as
suggested by Lampros. Alternatively, the participle ζών may be formed from the verb ζέω 'to be hot, boil',
thus signifying that he was carried to Trebizond immediately after his death, when his body still was warm.
Both Lampsides' reading and the two alternative readings proposed here retain the same meaning used in
the translation. Lampros, 1907: 268; Lampsides, 1956: 21-2.
81 Века I Jaqeli, ruler of Meskhetia in Georgia 1285-1308, protomandator of Georgia.
82 On Eudokia's return to Constantinople, see Pachymeres IX:29-30 in Failler, 1999: 297-301.
83 See Bryer, 1975: 143: n. 129.
84 Bryer & Winfield, 1985: 183.
85 The Patristic Greek Lexicon (Lampe, 1961: under 'έξάρτησι,ς'), and Lampsides understand the word
έξάρτησις as a shipyard. Bryer бе Winfield: 1985: 183, understand it as referring to the Lower City, which
still at this time was unwalled. Bryer concludes that the wall around the Lower City was completed by
1324. Pachymeres (Bekker 1835: 417-9) wrote about the incident in more detail.
190
Bayram seized the tents on Tuesday 2 October 6822 (1313), in the evening.86
In 6827 (1319), the Sinopitans caused a conflagration and the flames destroyed all
the marvels of the city, both inside and outside. 87
The megas Komnenos, kyr Alexios, passed away on Thursday 3 May 6838 (1330), in the
thirteenth indiction, after he had ruled for thirty-three years save three months.
His son, kyr Andronikos megas Komnenos, began to rule and killed his two broth
ers, kyr Michael Azachoutlou (Azakutlu) and kyr George Achpouga (Akbuğa).
Kyr Andronikos ruled for one year and eight months and passed away on Wednes
day 8 January 6840 (1332), in the fifteenth indiction.
His son, the kyr Manuel received the rule when he was eight years old and he
ruled for eight months.
Indeed, Pariames (Bayram) entered his territories all the way to Asomatos with a
numerous army; many Turks were killed and everyone fled. Many Turkish horses
were also captured on Sunday 30 August 6840 (1332). 88
On Tuesday 22 September 6841 (1332), in the first indiction, kyr Basil megas
Komnenos came from Constantinople and took the throne. He was the son of
kyr Alexios megas Komnenos and the second brother of kyr Andronikos (III). H e
then took the lives of the megas doux, Lekes Tzatzintzaios, and his son, the megas
domestikos Tzampas; he imprisoned his nephew, kyr Manuel, and stoned the meg-
ale doukaina Syrikaina.
On 21 February 6841 (1333), the Sunday of Orthodoxy, in the first indiction, the megas
doux]ohn the eunuch created uproar and kyr Manuel was killed with a sword.
On Tuesday 12 September 6844 (1335), in the fourth indiction, the despoina kym
Irene Palaiologina, daughter of Andronikos Palaiologos, arrived and on Sunday
the 17th of the same month, she was wed to kyr Basil the emperor.
86 Fallmerayer: 1843: 15, interprets the term τζεργα as summer-huts for cattle. Lampsides, 1958: 94, explains
it as tents with a soft roof instead of a wooden one. Bryer ôcWinfield, 1985: 143: . 130, understand it as
'tented stalls' [turk. çergi].
87 Lampsides, 1956: 8.
88 Mod. Hamsiköy. Bryer, 1975: 144 n. 131.
191
'lhe Chronicle of Michael Panaretos, Annika Asp-Talwar
After Friday 5 July 6844 (1336), Sichasanes (Sheikh Hasan-i Küçük), the son of
Tamartase (Temürtas), came to Trebizond, and a battle took place at Achantaka
of St. Kerykos and on (Mount) Minthrion. 89 By G o d s will, a flood made him
turn away and they fled. Then Autouraimes (Abdurrahïm), the son of Roustames
(Rustam), was killed.90
On Monday 3 March 6845 (1337), the second day of Lent, a solar eclipse oc-
curred from the fourth to the seventh hour. The people rose in turmoil against the
emperor so that they gathered outside the Citadel and threw stones at it.
On 5 October 6847 (1338), in the seventh indiction, kyr John Komnenos—the

second son of kyr Basil—was born; he was renamed Alexios.
On 8 July 6847 (1339), the emperor kyr Basil married the despoina kyra Irene of
Trebizond. 91
Kyr Basil megas Komnenos died on Thursday 6 April 6848 (1340), in the eighth
indiction. He ruled for seven years and six months. His sons, kyr Alexios and
Kaloioannes (John), were sent to the City (Constantinople) with their mother.
The widowed kyra Irene Palaiologina took over the rule. Soon, there was uproar
among the archontes and two factions were formed. The megas stratopedarches, kyr
Sebastos Tzanichites, together with the Scholarioi, the Meizomatai, kyr Constan-
tine Doranites, the Kabazitai and Kamachenos, some of the common people and
some of the imperial allagia, took possession of the [monastery of] St. Eugenios. 92
The Amizantarantai, some of the archontes and some of the imperial allagia held
the Citadel together with the despoina^
89 Sheykh Hasan-i Küçük ruled the Cepni from 1327-41/7. He was the son of Temürtas, ruler of the Cepni
from 1318-27. Bryer, 1975: 144: n. 131a. Shukurov, 1994: 24-5: 28-9; Lang, 1955: 83-4.
90 Mod. Boz Tepe. Bryer, 1975: 144; Shukurov, 1994: 28-9.
91 Irene Palaiologina was still the despoina in Trebizond.
92 Some scholarship understands Tzanichites and kyr Sebastos as different individuals. The Vazelon Acts
mention a certain Alexios Kamachenos in the late fourteenth century. The name Kamachenos refers to
the location of Kamachon (mod. Kemah), near Erzincan. The allagia were special military detachments.
Guilland, 1967: 524-26; Uspenskiy Oc Beneshevich, 2007: Act no. 121 (fol. 85v.); Trapp, vols. 10,1990:
no.25091 (Sebastos), vol. 12,1994: no. 27771 (Tzanichites).
93 The Amyrtzantarantai (spelled in various ways, here spelled as Amizantarantai' in the Greek text) were
a collective noun for the holders of court titles, also referred to as the 'senators.'The term should not be
confused with the court title amyrtzantarios. See n. 102.
192
On Sunday 2 July 6848 (1340), the megas doux, John the Eunuch, arrived from
Limnia with a large army and war broke out; they used siege engines against the
monastery; the monastery was set aflame and all its adornments were consumed
by the fire. Tzanichites and the other archontes were imprisoned in Limnia, where
they lost their lives.
The same year, in August, our army set out to the summer pastures, ravaged the
Amitiotai and took away plenty of loot.94 The sons of Dolinos were killed.95
On Friday 15 June 6849 (1341), in the ninth indiction, the emperor of the Ro
mans, Andronikos Palaiologos, died. That month and year, the archontes in Limnia
were executed.
The same year, on Wednesday 4 July, the Turkish Amitiotai returned and the Ro
mans were made to retreat without a fight. Many Christians were killed and all of
Trebizond was burned, both inside and outside. Plenty of people perished in the
fire, including women and children. After this calamity, a sudden pestilence was
caused by the foul stench of the burnt animals and people.96
Before these events, the daughter of kyr Alexios [II] Megas Komnenos, kyrz
Anna—known as Anachoutlou (Anakutlu)—had divested herself of her monastic
robe; she then set off to Lazica and took possession of it.97 After the conflagration
and the attack, Anachoutlou arrived with Laz troops and gained control over the
empire on Tuesday 17 July that year. Palaiologina descended the throne after rul
ing for one year and three months.
On Monday the 30 July that year, the brother of kyr Alexios, kyr Michael Kom
nenos, arrived from the Great City with three galleys, kyr Niketas Scholarios and
kyr Gregory Meizomates. In the evening, the archontes descended with the text
94 The Amitiotai Turkmen have been generally identified as the early Ak Koyonlu. See Woods, 1976: 46-48;
Zachariadou, 1978: 339-41; Bryer, 1975: 133-35, Shukurov,2001: 231-49.
95 Shukurov 2001: 243: n. 235, has suggested that Dolinos could possibly have been a corruption of the name
of the Ak Koyonlu chieftain Duhar. He points out that it was not a Greek name despite its Greek appear
ance. In the account byTihrani, the killing of Duhar led to the revenge of Kutlu Beg and the killing of
Greeks.
96 In the expression 'αιφνίδιος θάνατος', Lampsides defines the word θάνατος as a deadly disease. Lamp-
sides, 1958: 91.
97 She is also mentioned in the typikon of a certain Gerasimos in Jerusalem. Note that she was the sister of
the aforementioned Michael Azakutlu and George Akbuga. Papadopoulos-Kerameus, 1891: vol. 1,255-7;
trans, in Thomas бе Constantinides Hero, 2000: 1404-7.
193
The Chronicle of'Michael Panaretos, Annika Asp-Talwar
for oath-swearing and the metropolitan bishop, kyr Akakios, with the book of
Gospels, and they received him as their ruler.98 In the morning, the people tool
him captive, I do not know how." The Laz plundered the galleys and killed тащ
people with arrows.
On Friday 3 August of the same year, 6849 (1341), the Amitiotai Turks returned
By God's will they could not defeat us, and they left without success.
On the seventh day ofthat month, the same year, kyr Michael Komnenos was sent
as a prisoner to Oinaion, then to Limnia. On the tenth of the same month and
year, kyrà. Irene Palaiologina was sent with a Frankish galley to the City.
On 10 September, kyr Niketas Scholarios and kyr Gregory Meizomates, kyr Con-
stantine Doranites, his son John, Michael the brother of Meizomates and others
from his side fled and set out with a Venetian galley to the City. After spending a
year there until 17 August, they returned with kyr John Komnenos, the son of kyr
Michael, two galleys of their own and three Genoese ones. They reached Trebi-
zond on Wednesday 4 September 6851 (1342).
He was crowned on 9 September at the ambo of the church of Chrysokephalos.

During his arrival, people from all the lands had gathered at the event, when a
heavy persecution and large-scale capturing took place. The Amytzantarian ar
chontes lost their lives and Sargale, the mother of George,100 was handed over to be
strangled.101 Anachoutlou was strangled along with her, after ruling for one year,
one month and eight days.
In June 6851 (1343), the Amitiotai came to attack but they left empty-handed.
After the megas doux—the eunuch, who was holding Michael Komnenos impris-
oned—was killed in Limnia in March, the megas doux Scholarios departed and
brought kyr Michael. He [Michael] arrived and took the rule on Monday 3 May
98 Lampsides, 1958: 92, explains the term όρκωμοτικόν as a text used for swearing an oath. It is possible that
it was a scroll. Svoronos, 1951: 106-42.
99 Here, Panaretos possibly emphasised how he was not involved in the events. Thanks to Anna Calia for
checking the manuscript reference.
100 She may have been the mother of George Achpouga, Anna Anachoutlou's brother, who was killed
together with their brother Michael upon the accession of their brother Andronikos III.
101 The "amyrtzantarian archontes" (spelled as "amytzantarian" in the Greek text) is synonymous to
"the Amyrtzantarantai," see n. 93.
194
6852 (1344). H e was crowned on the 21 s t ofthat month. H e overthrew his son
and imprisoned him in the cave of St. Sabbas, after kyr John had ruled for o n e
year and eight months.
After the archontes of first rank lost their lives, kyr Niketas Scholarios was h o n
oured as megas doux, Gregory Meizomates as megas stratopedarchesy Leo Kabazites
as megas domestikos, Constantine Doranites as protovestiarios, his son as the epik-
ernes, John Kabazites as megas /ogariastes, the son of Scholarios as parakoimome-
nos, Michael Meizomates as amyrtzantarios™1 and Stefanos Tzanichites as megas
konostau/os.m
In November 6854 (1345), the megas doux Scholarios, the megas domestikos M e i
zomates and others on their side were detained by kyr Michael the emperor. A t
that time, kyr John Komnenos was sent to Constantinople. In 6855 (1347), St.
Andrew and Oinaion were captured.104
In September, in the first indiction, a sudden pestilence (the Black Death), a c o m

plete ulceration, came and caused the loss of many children and wives, brothers,
mothers and relatives. It raged for seven months.
In January of the same year, 6856 (1348), Kerasous was captured and it was en
slaved and burned by the Genoese.
That year, on 29 June, in the first indiction, many Turks came to Trebizond: Aches
Aynapak (Ahi Ayna Beg) from Erzincan, Mahmat Eikeptaris (Muhammad the
Rikabdar) from Bayburt, Touralipek (Turali Beg) from the Amitiotai and Pos-
doganes (Boz Doğan) and the Tziapnides (Cepni) with them. They waged war
for three days and left disappointed, wounded and fleeing, leaving behind many
Turks on the way.105
On Tuesday 5 May 6857 (1349), two Frankish galleys came here from Caifa and
one large and one small galley of ours set off from Daphnous with enough small
boats. They made war and because of the absence of God, the Franks won and
102 The court title of amyrtzantarios (emir candar) was a Trapezuntine equivalent to the Byzantine
protospatharios. See Macrides et al., 2013: 282,458.
103 On the Kabazitai, see Beldiceanu, 1981; Bryer, 1984: 309-27.
104 According to Bryer, 1975: 144, St. Andrew was probably on Cape Jason.
105 Bryer, 1975; Shukurov, 1994: 32-5; Shukurov, 2001: 228.
195
the megas doux John Kabazites, kyr Michael Tzanichites and many others were
killed. Our galley was burned and the Franks on the mainland were captured and
imprisoned, whereas their galleys escaped.
On 15 June 6857 (1349), three galleys arrived again from Caffa and one small-
er boat from Aminsos, and after many negotiations, battles and claims, friendly
terms were reached and Leontokastron was handed over to them. After Niketas
Scholarios married the daughter of Sampson and arrived from Kechrina, he be-
came megas doux. At that time, the emperor kyr Michael was overcome by illness.
Kyr Michael ruled for five years and seven and a half months.
On Sunday 13 December 6858 (1349), ¿yr Michael Komnenos was deposed from
the throne and on Tuesday the 22 nd ofthat month, the second son of Basil Kom-
nenos, kyr John—who had been renamed kyr Alexios after his grandfather—ar-
rived in Trebizond and took the rule, together with the despoina and his mother,
kyra Irene megale Komnene. H e was crowned in the church of St. Eugenios on
21 January, during the feast of the saint. H e imprisoned kyr Michael in the cave
of St. Sabbas and had him tonsured as a monk. After one year, he was sent to the
City with the tatas Michael Sampson, when also the betrothal of the emperor
took place.
In the same year of 6858 (1350), confusion and tumult arose amidst the archontes:,
and in June, the megas stratopedarches kyr Theodore Doranites, who was called
Píleles, and his brother—the protovestiarios Constantine Doranites—and their
whole family were arrested, and they were all confined in the houses of the ar
chontes, after the 7th ofthat month, they were recalled.
In January 1351, Leo Kabazites, who had become protovestiarios, was detained
and Píleles was promoted as protovestiarios. At that time, the tatas Michael Samp-
son set out to Constantinople with one galley to perform the betrothal, to bring
the despoina and to return.
On Thursday 5 May that year, the citadel was taken by Píleles and his men, and
the megas doux Scholarios was taken captive. Since the people created uproar, he
was freed and the emperor departed to Tripoli. Píleles, his son and brother-in-
law, and the children of Xenitos were gathered together, sent to Kechrina and
imprisoned there.
1%
On 3 September 6860 (1351), in the fifth indiction, the despoina Komnene Kan-
takouzene arrived with a galley from the City; she was the daughter of kyr Nike-
phoros Kantakouzenos the sebastokrator, who was the first cousin of the emperor
of the Romans, kyr John Kantakouzenos. On the morning of 28th, her wedding
with the emperor took place in the monastery of St. Eugenios.
On 22 September ofthat year, 6860 (1351), we departed to Limnia with the de
spoina, the mother of the emperor, against the brother of the protovestiarios Píleles,
Constantine Doranites, who was governing there. After spending three months
there we returned.
In January 6860 (1352), the pinkernes John Tzanichites came and took hold of the
fortress of Tzanicha through rebellion.106 In April ofthat year, the emperor and
the despoina departed there, and they concluded peace.
In July that year, Píleles, his son and his brother-in-law were handed over to be
strangled in the fortress of Kechrina.
That year, 6860 (1352), the sister of the emperor—kyrà. Maria megale Komnene—
departed and was married to Choutloupekes (Kutlu Beg), the son of Turali, the
emir of the Amitiotai, in the month of August.
The same month and year, Venetian galleys were unleashed against the Genoese
and they burned many karabia (warships).
The same month of June, in 6862 (1354), Scholarios fled to Kerasous. What hap-
pened there through the means of messages and legations, who can write?
On 25 March 6863 (1355), the megas doux Scholarios and his son, the parakoi-
momenos, attacked Trebizond with one katergon and eleven balkas (smaller boats),
when also the protovestiarios Basil Choupakas joined him. After many negotia-
tions and battles, peace was reached and they departed to Kerasous.
In May of the same year, 6863 (1355), in the eighth indiction, the emperor armed
two katerga and a suitable number of xyla (small rafts) and departed with his
mother and the despoina and the metropolitan against Scholarios in Kerasous. At
106 Lampsides, 1958: 94.
197
that time, [Niketas] Scholarios was in Kechrina and the parakoimomenos in Kera-
sous. After the battle and the war, peace took place and Kerasous paid obeisance
to the emperor.
The parakoimomenos departed and went to his father in Kechrina, and all the men
of Scholarios were there. The emperor sent his fleet and the despoina to Tripoli
and arrived here, and took his mounted army and set out. Everyone in Kechrina
was surrounded by the sea and the land forces. Then, war took place and even
they paid obeisance to the emperor and proclaimed him. The emperor and all his
men returned, but Scholarios and his men remained there; at that time, also the
protovestiarios and his men returned from Limnia.
In August 6863 (1355), the doux of Chaldiajohn Kabazites, went on campaign. 107
He set out, captured Cheriana and subjugated it; then, even Sorogaina was freed
and was placed under imperial command. 108
That year, Michael megas Komnenos also departed from the City. He reached
Soulchation and turned back.109
In October 6864 (1355), in the ninth indiction, the megas domestikos Meizomates
and the megas stratopedarches Sampson departed for Tripoli and reached Kechrina,
seizing Scholarios and his men. After they arrived, a peace settlement took place.
On Friday 27 November 6864 (1355), in the ninth indiction, we departed with

the emperor against Cheriana out of diabolical connivance. First, we ravaged,
besieged and enslaved, but at the sixth hour we escaped in a disorderly flight, for
a few Turks were chasing us. Then, approximately 50 Christians lost their lives
and even many horses were killed. The doux of Chaldiajohn Kabazi tes, was taken
captive and, if God had not been with us, even I would have met my end; but by
the grace of God, my horse was strong. Following the emperor, we escaped to
safety and after three days, we reached Trebizond.
At that time, the son of the emperor was born, kyr Andronikos. He was born to
another woman, not the despoina.
107 This was not the same John Kabazites as the megas doux who was killed in 1349.
108 Şiran-Uluşiran: Bryer, 1975: 144.
109 Soulchation referred to Eski-Krim, the administrative and commercial capital of the Crimea and the seat
of the governor of the Golden Horde. Vasiliev, 1936: 164; Ciodltan, 2012: 109.
198
On 19 December 6865 (1356), in the tenth indiction, we moved towards Limnia

with the emperor, performing the prokypsis of the birth of the Christ in Kerasous
and that of Epiphany in [Cape] Jason, where 14 Turks were killed. After depart-
ing to Limnia, we returned after spending three months there in total and reached
Trebizond safe and sound.
On 6 April, on Maundy Thursday of the same year, 6865 (1357), in the first indic-
tion, a daughter, kyrz Anna, was born to the emperor by our despoina kyra. Theodora.
In May 6865 (1357), in the first indiction, the emperor left with his army to the
summer pasture and surrounded all ofthat summer pasture.
On Saturday 11 November 6866 (1357), in the eleventh indiction, the despoina of

Sinope, kyra. Eudokia, the daughter of the kyr Alexios megas Komnenos arrived.
On Tuesday the 13th of the same month, in the eleventh indiction, the same year,
6866 (1357), because of the negligence of our guards, Chatzymyris (Ibrahim Haji
Emir)—son of Pairames (Bayram)—entered Matzouka with a large army. He
seized plenty of loot, both animals and objects, which were taken from Palaiomat-
zouka all the way to Dikaisimo.110
In January of the same year (1358), the envoy John Leontostethos arrived from
Constantinople.
On Wednesday 22 August 6866 (1358), in the eleventh indiction, the despoinachat

{despoina hatun) kyrà Maria, the sister of the emperor, came to Trebizond; she was
the one who had married Kutlu Beg of the Amitiotai.
On Wednesday 29 August, the daughter of kyr Basil the emperor, kyrz Theodora,
departed to be wed to the emir Chatzymyris (Haji Emir)—the son of Pairames
(Bayram). She had kyr Basil Choupaka Scholarios as her bridal escort. It was the
eleventh indiction, 6866 (1358).
On Monday 17 September, in the twelfth indiction, year 6867 (1358), after din-
nertime, a son was born to the emperor. He was called Basil after his grandfather.
110 Hamsiköy and Cevizlik-Maçka: Bryer, 1975: 145.
199
In April 6868 (1360), in the thirteenth indiction, the emperor entered Chaldia to
build the fortress of The Cuckoo, after Chotzialatifes (Hodja Latif) had returned
from Bayburt against him with a cavalry of 300 men; he then relieved John Ka-
bazi tes from his duty as governor.111
On Wednesday 5 May, in the fourteenth indiction, 6869 (1361), at the fifth hour,
such a solar eclipse happened that had not taken place during our generation. The
stars appeared in the sky and it lasted for one and a half hours. The emperor kyr
Alexios and his mother, kyrà. Irene, and some of the archontes, I among them, were
staying at the time in the monastery of Soumela in Matzouka, performing many
prayers and supplications.
That year, 6869 (1360)—before six months had passed—on 6 December, the em-
peror departed to Limnia, where he spent approximately three and a half months
and returned.
In 6869 (1361), the envoy Leontostethos came from the City, sent by the emperor
kyr John Palaiologos to request a marriage alliance with our emperor.
That year, 6869 (1361)—on Wednesday 30 July, at dinnertime—the megas doux Ni-
ketas Scholarios passed away. The emperor was present at his funerary procession
and grieved excessively, wearing white for mourning, as is the custom for rulers.
On Friday 23 July 6869 (1361), in the fourteenth indiction, the ruler of Bayburt,
Chotzialatifes (Hodja Latif), took approximately 400 selected soldiers and at-
tacked Matzouka, passing Lacharane and Chasdenicha.112 However, the Mat-
zoukans had prepared the passes and they killed approximately 200 Turks or
more. They seized many animals and weapons and they beheaded Hodja Latif
himself. The next day, they displayed their heads in triumph over all Trebizond.
On 13 December, in the fifteenth indiction, 6870 (1361), we departed to Cha-

lybia with the emperor to the home fortress of Chatzymyris (Haji Emir), son of
Bayram, or rather, after he had arrived to Kerasous and joined us. From Chalybia,
we went to Kerasous by land, accompanied by the emir Chatzymyris and Turks,
111 Bryer, 1975: 145.

112 Lacharane (Akarsu), Chasdenicha (Yukariköy). Bryer, 1975: 145.
200
almost in a servile manner.113
In October 6870 (1361), in the fifteenth indiction, Achi Ainapak (Achi Ayna
Beg) from Erzincan arrived and besieged the fortress of Golacha for approxi-
mately sixteen days, after setting up a siege engine and waging vehement bat-
tles. W i t h God's help, he was unable to accomplish anything and he departed
in shame, empty-handed. The emperor then restored the shrine of St. Phokas in
Kordyle and made it into a monastery.
That year, 6870 (1362), the sudden pestilence of the bubonic plague advanced and
lasted the whole year. Towards the summer, it intensified; it harmed and drove
many people out of their homes.
In March of the same year, 6871 (1362), the emperor, the despoina and his mother
left to Mesochaldia because of the sudden pestilence and because John Komnenos
had fled from Adrianople and reached Sinope—where he lost his life. W h e n the
imperial family returned from Chaldia, they did not enter the citadel of Trebizond
on account of the vehement spread of the death—for it was the month of June—
but they took up residence at St. John the Most Holy on Mount Minthrion. At
that time, an envoy from celebi Tajeddin reached them, requesting a marriage
alliance. Certain people then came close to rebelling against the emperor. The son
of kyr John Komnenos escaped from prison and departed to Caffa, then to Galata.
In April 6871 (1363), in the first indiction, we departed with the imperial katergon
to the Great city: the megas logothetes kyr George Scholarios and the protosebastos
and protonotarios Michael Panaretos, who wrote this. We performed formidable
obeisances; for we saw the emperor, kyr John Palaiologos and the emperor—monk
kyr Joseph Kantakouzenos—the patriarch kyr Kallistos and the despoinai and the
sons of the emperor and the capetan and the podestà of the Genoese in Galata,
Leonardo Temuntato (de Montaldo). At that time, we performed the betrothal,
so that the son of the emperor Palaiologos might take the daughter of the Trape-
113 The itinerary can be reconstructed followingly: Alexios III was in Kerasous with his retinue, which in-
cluded Panaretos, and was joined there by Ibrahim Haji Emir. Panaretos' reference to the emir travelling
with Alexios III indicates that the journey was made by sea. After embarking most probably at the city of
Oinaion (mod. Ünye), the retinue continued to the inland regions of Chalybia and back to Kerasous by
land.
201
zuntine emperor, Alexios megas Komnenos, in marriage.114 We departed on 5 June

6871 (1363), so that on 15 August the same year 6871 (1363) we might join his
[the emperors] brother-in-law Kutlu Beg, the son of Turali. We were unable to
join them on account of the sudden pestilence befalling the Turks and returned
to Trebizond after the 27th.
On Friday 27 October 6872 (1363), in the second indiction, the emperor had
encamped near the river of St. Gregory—down from Katabatos—when sud
denly some of the archontes surrounded him: the Kabazitai, the megas logothetes
kyr George Scholarios and others. They pursued him from there to his fortress.
The Kabazitai fled by land, but they were seized and arrested, whereas the megas
logothetes and his men left for Kerasous and then for Aminsos. Then, the metro
politan of Trebizond, Niphon Pterygionites, who was an accomplice to the con
spiracy, was confined in the monastery of Soumela in Trebizond.115 On Friday
29 December, the megas logothetes returned through the mediation of Tzianote
Spinoula (Giannotte Spinoula) and Stephen Daknopines.
That year, on 19 March 6872 (1364), in the second indiction, on Holy Tuesday,
the metropolitan of Trebizond, Niphon, expired after suffering from the affliction
of pleurisy while he still was in Soumela. He was buried in the manner of a high
clergyman in the Chrysokephalos, in the tomb of the metropolitan kyr Barnabas.
The skeuophylax, Joseph Lazaropoulos, was elected [as his successor] and he de
parted to the City.
On Monday 16 December 6873 (1364), in the third indiction, at dawn, a son was
born to the emperor; he was called Manuel.
On Easter Sunday, 13 April 6873 (1365), when the emperor was standing on the
Meydan, a row arose between the consul and the baile. The metropolitan kyr]o-
seph, who had been elected on the Trapezuntine throne, also arrived at that time.
He assumed his office on the Tuesday after Easter.
114 The 'sons of the emperor' refers to the sons of John V, who married the daughter of John VI, Helena
Kantakouzene. ТЪеу were Andronikos (IV), Manuel (II), Michael {despotes) and Theodore Palaiologos
{despotes).
115 It has been overlooked in scholarship that Panaretos mentions two monasteries of Soumela in his chron
icle: the monasteries of Soumela in Matzouka and in Trebizond. The latter may have been a Trapezuntine
metochion of the main monastery in Matzouka. It has been correctly read in Trapp, 1976-96: no.23889,
but interpreted as 'Soumela near Trebizond.'Lampsides, 1958: 73, 75; Miklosich бе Müller, 1860: vol. 5,
276-81.
202
On 14 July 6873 (1365), in the third indiction, the emir Kutlu Beg—the brother-
in-law of the emperor—descended with his consort, despoina hatun kyrz Maria
megale Komnene, into this blessed city of Trebizond; he joined the emperor and
he entered the palace. Having stayed below St. John the Most Holy for approxi
mately eight days, he left peacefully, after being received with great honour.
The following year, the emperor went up to the summer pastures. All of us climbed
up with him from Spelia to Fianoe; after passing Gantopedi and Marmara and
crossing St. Merkourios, we reached Achantaka with more than two thousand
footsoldiers and cavalrymen.116 Having spent four days with the emir, we returned
in June 6875 (1367), in the fifth indiction. We descended with the army to Lazica
by land and sea, together with the emperor and his mother the despoina. We also
had with us the daughter of the emperor, kyra. Anna megale Komnene, who was
wed to the emperor of the Iberians and the Abasgians, kyr Pankratianos (Bagrat
(V) Bagratuni),in the region of Makros Aigialos.117 After we had gone there, the
emperor ascended again into the summer pastures of Larachane, into Limnia, and
went all the way to Chaldia.
On 12 November 6876 (1367), in the sixth indiction, the metropolitan, kyr Jo
seph, left the see of Trebizond and went to the monastery of Eleousa.
Around 19 July of the same year 6876 (1368), I went to Constantinople on ac
count of the raids that the azapic paraskalmia (boats) carried out on the Ara-
niotai.118 At that time, my dearest son Constantine—woe is me, the wretched
sinner!—fell into the sea during the Feast of Transfiguration in the monastery of
St. Sophia and died. He was 15 years old. After him, my other dearly missed son,
Romanos—who was 17 years old—perished from a urinary disease. After spend
ing three and a half months in Constantinople, I returned.
In March that year, 6876 (1368), GHtziasthlanes (Kilij Arslan) entered our part of
Chaldia and blockaded it. The emperor marched out and went there.
116 Ispela (Ocakli), Fikanoy yayla. Bryer, 1975: 146, and n.136.
117 Today's Kemalpaşa. See Bryer, 1975: 338.
118 For paraskalmia, see commentary. Άζάπικα referred to corsairs, usually seen as Ottomans. Bryer argues
that, considering the date, they were more likely Sinopitan or local Turkmen corsairs. The Aramotatwere
the inhabitants of the Ares island, later known as Puga or Giresun Adası. Fallmerayer, 1843: vol. 2,90-1;
Chrysanthos, 1933: 253. See also άζάπικα in Moravcsik, 1958; Bryer, 1975: 146, n. 137.
203
In January 6877 (1369), in the seventh indiction, on the Day of Epiphany, Gola-
cha was cunningly taken by the Turks. For this reason, Chaldia was obliterated:
some people lost their lives in the battles, others in the treacherous cave there.
The same year, 6877 (1369), at the end of January, the emperor went to Limnia
with a strong fleet. After spending four months there, he returned.
In May 6878 (1370), in the eighth indiction, the emperor left with a handful of
soldiers into the summer pastures around the region of Marmara. On Wednesday
the 21 st ofthat month, he suddenly encountered some 500 Turkish cavalrymen
and 300 footsoldiers. The emperor had some 100 cavalrymen. After war broke
out, the emperor was formidably victorious and drove them away. He sent their
Hagarene heads and their war-banner here.
On Tuesday 13 August 6878 (1370), in the eighth indiction, the metropolitan kyr
Theodosios arrived in Trebizond and was enthroned. He hailed from Thessaloniki
and had spent 20 years as a monk on the Holy Mountain. He had then reached
the blessed Constantinople, after being appointed hegoumenos in the monastery
of Mangana. After that, he was elected through synodal vote and sent [to Trebi-
zond].
On 6 August we departed to Lazica and towards the end of the month, around
the beginning of the year 6881 [August-September 1372], we joined the emperor
Pankratios (Bagrat). We then departed to the Bathys river, setting up our tents
outside and having also two galleys and some 40 xylaria. There, we made our
acquaintance with Güreli, who had come to pay his obeisance to the emperor.119
After spending six days there, we returned, in the eleventh indiction.
On 13 January, when the emperor was returning from Cheriana, there was deep
snow and a heavy snowfall, which caused them to lose their way and 140 Chris-
tians perished, some as victims to the sword and others—the majority—died of
cold, in the eleventh indiction, in 6881 (1373).
On Friday 11 November 6882 (1373), in the twelfth indiction, kyr Michael—the

son of the emperor of the Romans, John Palaiologos—attacked with two large
119 It is unclear whether Panaretos is referring to the Trapezuntine or Georgian emperor here. Bryer бе
Winfield, 1985: 344-5, argue that Gurieli paid homage to the Georgian ruler Bagrat V.
204
lhe Chronicle of Michael Panaretos, Annika Asp-Talwar
galleys and a smaller one against our emperor. He remained for five days and
retreated without accomplishing anything unexpected. He was accompanied by
the protovestiariosy kyr John Andronikopoulos. When Palaiologos had departed,
he stepped forward and a treaty was made with our emperor.120
On Sunday 16 April 6882 (1374), in the twelfth indiction, Golacha was taken by
the Chaldians, but was again gained under imperial control. Soon thereafter, it fell
again to the enemies.
On Friday 14 March 6884 (1376), in the fourteenth indiction, the son of the
emperor—the despotes kyr Andronikos megas Komnenos—fell from the palace of
kyr Andronikos megas Komnenos, the emperor. He died immediately after being
carried to the imperial palace and was buried in the monastery of Theoskepastos.
At his funeral procession, he was followed by his father, the emperor, and the
despoinaiy his grandmother and stepmother.121 The agreements that he had with
the Iberian—who was the daughter of David (VII), the emperor of Tiflis (Tbilisi,
Georgia) and the niece by the sister of Achpougas (Akbuga)—were carried over
to the younger, lawfully begotten and legitimate son of our emperor, the young
emperor kyr Manuel megas Komnenos. Since the betrothal was preponed, on 10
May, in the fifteenth indiction, 6885 (1377), the emperor and we along with him
set in motion and after we departed to Lazica, we spent the whole summer there
in the region of Makrigialos until 15 August. At that time, she descended from
Gonia to Makrigialos and the next day, we moved on. On Sunday 30 August, we
reached Trebizond. On Saturday, the fifth day of the new year 6886 (5 September
1377), in the first indiction, she was crowned on the imperialprokypsis and named
Eudokia, for her former name was Koulkanhat (Gülhan Hatun).122 The next day,
Sunday 6 September, the wedding took place and it lasted for more than a week.
Theodosios ofTrebizond wed them and the father and emperor carried the crown.
After many letters and embassies, that is to say, of Romans and Muslims, indeed,
between the emperor and the celebi Tatziatines (Tajeddin), on 14 August, in the
120 Michael Palaiologos, the son of John V Palaiologos.
121 The word μάμμη can be translated as 'mother' or 'grandmother'. Grandmother is more suitable here, for
there is no record of the mother of an illegitimate child being awarded the title of despoina and Androni
kos' grandmother Irene, whom Panaretos entitles despoina on several occasions, was still alive.
122 T h e word prokypsis could either mean the prokypsis ceremony, or the stage where it was performed. Here,
it means the latter. Bryer has suggested that prokypseis in Trebizond were performed at the Epiphaneia
court of the palace. Rosenqvist, however, has situated the Epiphaneia court outside the southern gate of
t h e citadel. Bryer бе Winfield, 1985: 184, fig. 44; Rosenqvist, 1996: 444.
205
second indiction, the emperor moved with two large katerga and two paraskalmia,
and his daughter kyrz. Eudokia. We departed for Kerasous. Then, news arrived
from Trebizond that Chlitziasthlanes (Kilij Arslan) was going to attack Trebi-
zond. The emperor sent his daughter to Kerasous, returned with the archontes to
Trebizond, fortified the citadel and made arrangements on land. In the last days
of September, he moved out, collected his daughter from Kerasous and departed
to Oinaion. There, he joined the celebi and wed his daughter kyrà. Eudokia to him
on 8 October, in the third indiction, in 6888 (1379). At that time, the emperor
gained control over Limnia.
In February, the emperor moved forward against the Çepni Turkmen by land and
sea. On Sunday 4 March 6888 (1380), in the third indiction, the army was divided
into two parts. The emperor sent some 600 footsoldiers from Petroma, whilst he
himself took the cavalry and the numerous remaining footsoldiers and spurred them
along the Philabonites river all the way up to the winter dwellings.123 He pillaged,
killed and burned their tents and ravaged them; many of our captured simylika were
freed.124 He turned around and halted for a while at Sthlabopiastes.The 600 footsol
diers, who had departed from Petroma, looted at Kotzauta and performed extensive
slaughter, raiding and burning. After the war, they descended and whenever they
clashed with the Turks that were chasing them, many of the Turks fell.The Romans,
who were fighting and killing arrived ferociously, hoping to find the emperor at the
shore. After reaching the shore of Sthlabopiastes and looking around a little, they
did not find the emperor there as agreed and around 42 Romans fell.The number of
Turkish men, women and children killed amounted to more than 100.
123 The Philabonites river (mod. Harşit Çayı) is situated in a mountainous area, where it crosses Gümüşhane
and has its delta in Tripolis (Tirebolu). It was a difficult route inland. Lampsides corrects the word
έπτέρνιξεν as έπέρνιξεν, with the meaning of περνίζω being 'to cross (a river)'. However, he accepts the
possibility that the verb πτερνίζω in the manuscript is not incorrect, in which case it takes the mean
ing 'to spur'. As an alternative interpretation, Lampsides suggests that Alexios III spurred the Cepni
Turkmen. Bryer and Winfield have also discussed this passage and provided the alternative translation
of Alexios' army crossing the lands of the Cepni. Here, the original verb πτερνίζω is favoured, to refer to
the cavalry and footsoldiers that were commanded by Alexios III. It is even possible that Alexios shipped
his footsoldiers by rowing boats up along the river by boat rather than having them walk along the river,
where presumably there was no major road. Lampsides, 1958: 19,92-3; Bryer бе Winfield, 1985: 140-1.
124 The interpretation of the word σιμυλικά is problematic. Bryer (1975: 147) suggested the possibility that
it referred to the inhabitants of Simikli/Sümüklü. Lampsides (1958:93) remarked that it is an adverb
and thus denotes the manner in which the prisoners were freed. The suggestion that it was a loanword
from the Latin simul is difficult to substantiate, for there is no evidence of any Greek word originating
from the Latin term. It should be noted that πολλά ημέτερα αίχμάλωτα...σιμυλικά is in the neuter case,
with the verb correspondingly in the third person singular. Thus, the phrase may not refer to imprisoned
people, but perhaps to animals and objects taken in loot. Another possibility is that the term is an orien
tal loanword.
206
On 19 June 6890 (1382), in the fifth indiction, the son of the emperor kyr Alexios,
kyr Manuel, had a son with кугъ Eudokia of Iberia. After he was baptised, his
grandfather and emperor kyr Alexios, his great-grandmother and despoina kyrz
Irene and the metropolitan ofTrebizond, kyr Tbeodosios, called him Basil after
his great-grandfather.
On 8 July 6890 (1382), in the fifth indiction, the bubonic plague came and killed
many people inTrebizond until December and January. It also caused great losses
in Matzouka,Trikomia and in a part of Syrmenos all the way to Dryona.
On Wednesday 24 October 6895 (1386), the emperors son-in-law, emir Tatzi-

atines (Tajeddin) of Limnia, moved against the other son-in-law of the emper
or the son of Haji Emir of Chalybia, who was called Soulamampek (Süleyman
Beg) with an army of 12,000 men. After he entered Chalybia, Tajeddin fell and
died there and was cut to pieces. Approximately 3,000 of his men died and the
rest fled naked, after abandoning 7,000 horses and innumerable weapons.
A certain Tatar emir—who held the khanate, as they call it—called Tamourlankes
(Timur Lang) the Mongol, came from the borderlands of China. According to eye-
witnesses, he had an army numbering over 800,000. He arrived and occupied all
of Persia. He then entered the Iberian mountains and by the law of warfare, para-
lysed the marvellous Tbilisi: he captured the emperor and great strategist Pankratios
(Bagrat) and his spouse, the daughter of our emperor, the exceedingly beautiful kyr*
Anna, and her son David. He sacrificed the people to the sword and devastated
them. How many objects he took, how many icons he stripped of their frames and
burned, how many precious stones and pearls and how much gold and silver he car-
ried away, no-one can render in writing. It happened on 21 November 6895 (1386).
The emperor—kyr Alexios megas Komnenos, the second son of kyr Basil megas
Komnenos—passed away on 20 March, on Sunday of the fifth week (of Lent), at
the second hour of the day. He ruled for forty years and three months and was 51
years old in 6898 (1390).
On 5 March 6925 (1417), the emperor kyr Manuel megas Komnenos passed away
and was buried in the Tbeoskepastos. He ruled for 27 years.
On 5 May 6903 (1395), the empress kyrz Eudokia, who was from Iberia, passed
away; she was the mother of the emperor kyr Alexios.
207
On Saturday 4 September 6904 (1395), in the fourth indiction, despoina кутъ

Eudokia megale Komnene arrived from Constantinople to St. Phokas with a kat
ergon and a griparias (warship).125 She brought brides: for her brother, the emperor
kyr Manuel who was a widower, she brought the daughter of Philanthropenos,
kyrà Anna. To her nephew, the emperor kyr Alexios, she brought the daughter of
Kantakouzenos,¿yra Theodora. The next day, a Sunday, they entered Trebizond in
heavy rain. Their bridal escort was the megas doux Amyriales Scholarios.
On Tuesday 12 November 6935 (1426), in the fifth indiction, at the third hour of
the night, the despoina, kyrb. Theodora Kantakouzene megale Komnene departed
this life. She was the spouse of the emperor kyr Alexios and was buried in the
most venerable church of the all-holy Theotokos Chrysokephalos, in the tomb of
Gidos, near the bema.
That year, in November, the òasi/issa kyr2. Maria arrived from Gothia. She was the
daughter of kyr Alexios ofTheodosios and she was wed to the pious despotes, her
husband, kyr David megas Komnenos.
125 Lampsides, 1958: 90.

208
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212
Byzantine Past, Russian Present:
The Russian Archaeological Institute's Trabzon Expedition
during the First World War
Pınar Üre
Istanbul Kemerburgaz University
Throughout the nineteenth century, the Ottoman empire was a frequent destina
tion for European archaeologists. Most of these archaeologists visited the Otto
man lands to discover the wonders of the Greco-Roman civilisation. Compared
to classical antiquities, Byzantine monuments received less attention from Euro
pean scholars. For Russian archaeologists, the opposite was true. Different from
other European scholars, Russian archaeologists visiting the Ottoman empire
focused nearly exclusively on Byzantine and Slavic antiquities. This was partly
because their expertise lay in these fields and they felt more competitive in these
areas vis-à-vis their European counterparts. Considering that academic inter
est in classical archaeology had a longer history in British, French and German
universities than in Russia, it is understandable why Russian archaeologists saw
themselves as less well equipped for competition in relation to classical Greco-
Roman archaeology. However, there was also an ideological justification for Rus
sian interest in Orthodox and Slavic antiquities. Official Russian policy projected
an image of Russia as the protector of Orthodox and Slavic peoples of the Ot
toman Empire, which was symbolically reiterated by a scientific interest in the
archaeological remnants of these civilisations.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, an increasing number of Rus

sian scholars and history enthusiasts visited the Ottoman empire and conducted
studies of Byzantine monuments. This rising interest in Byzantine antiquities
prompted discussion about the usefulness of an archaeological-historical insti
tution in the Ottoman empire to accommodate Russian scholars. The idea of
creating a scholarly institution in the Ottoman empire dedicated to historical
and archaeological studies first appeared in Russian diplomatic circles in the early
1870s, during the diplomatic service of Count Nikolai Pavlovich Ignatiev (1832-
1908).1 Ignatiev, an ardent supporter of active Russian involvement in Ottoman
1 Basargina, 1999: 20.
215
The Russian Archaeological Institute's Trabzon Expedition during the First World War Pınar Üı
affairs, saw archaeology as a way to foster cultural ties between Russia and the
Orthodox population of the Ottoman empire. It was only in the late 1880s that
Russian diplomats finalised their plans for the establishment of an archaeological
institute and contacted Russian historians to discuss their proposals for the struc
ture and academic orientation of the planned institute. It is significant that the
establishment of an archaeological institute was not born out of Russian universi
ties or scientific communities, but that the idea first appeared among a handful
of diplomats. In their personal and official exchanges, Russian diplomats did not
shy away from openly establishing a link between academic interest in Byzantine
history and Russia's contemporary political prospects in the Near East.
The first Russian scholarly institute abroad, the Russkii Arkheologicheskii

Institut ν Konstantinople (the Russian Archaeological Institute in Constantino
ple; hereafter RAIK), was established in 1894 in Istanbul, orTsargrad (the Impe
rial City) as Russians called it; the former capital of the eastern Roman empire
and Orthodox Christianity, and the contemporary capital of Russia's principal
political rival—the Ottoman empire.2 In the following years, RAIK made sig
nificant contributions to the development of Byzantinology with its numerous
studies and publications. On a smaller scale, they also undertook some important
excavations. Although they conducted archaeological studies throughout the Ot
toman empire, RAIK was mainly interested in Byzantine and Slavic antiquities in
the Balkans, Istanbul and on the Black Sea coast. The director of RAIK from its
establishment until its official dissolution in 1920 was Fyodor Ivanovich Uspen-
skii (1845-1928). Uspenskii, a professor of history from Novorossiya University
in Odessa, specialised in the relations between medieval Rus', the Slavic Balkans
and the Byzantine empire.
The Russian ambassador to Istanbul between 1894 and 1897, Aleksandr

Ivanovich Nelidov (1838-1910) was one of the most passionate supporters of
RAIK. Nelidov argued that an institute with a focus on the archaeological study
of Orthodox monuments would definitely have political uses for the Russian em
pire. It would prepare suitable ground for Russian political and cultural influence,
and help develop self-consciousness among the Orthodox population (edino
vertsy) of the Ottoman empire. Serious and independent study of the history of
2 In fact, RAIK opened its headquarters in Istanbul in 1895, a year after it was officially established with
an imperial decree from Tsar Alexander III (1845-1894). Izvestiia Russkogo Arkheologicheskogo Instituia v
Konstantinosok, Otkrytye Russkogo Arkheologicheskogo Instituía ν Konstantinopole 26 go Fevralia 1895
goda, vol. 1 (1896), 1. Henceforth cited as IRAIK.
216
lhe Russian Archaeological Institutes Trabzon Expedition during the First World War, Pınar Üre
Orthodox peoples, according to Nelidov, would facilitate their cooperation with

Russia, and consequently would strengthen Russia's influence in the Balkans and
Near East.3
In the RAIK charter, the institute s mission was described in such a way as
to embrace the history of ancient Greece, Asia Minor and the territories that had
fallen under Byzantine rule at some point in history. The charter did not openly
refer to the history of the Balkan Peninsula and its Slavic inhabitants, so as not to
create suspicion on the part of Ottoman authorities as well as European powers
that Russia was trying to expand its sphere of influence among Balkan Christians
under the pretext of archaeological activities. Uspenskii recalled that in the first
years after RAIK had been established, Russian scholars had to "dispel the opin
ion that originally formed among foreigners that Russia had other than scholarly
intentions in establishing what would be in fact a political Slavic club under the
name of the Institute."4
Once Russian scholars started conducting systematic studies in the Ot

toman empire, they paid special attention to the area around Trabzon because
of the regions rich Byzantine heritage. Among the many Russian archaeologists
who visited the Turkish Black Sea coast, Fyodor Uspenskii and his colleagues
from RAIK stand out for the continuity of their studies from the 1890s to the
First World War years. Immediately after the establishment of its headquarters
in Istanbul in May 1895, Uspenskii received permission from the Ottoman Min
istry of the Interior to conduct studies on the Black Sea littoral, around the cities
of Trabzon, Sinop and Samsun.5 Local officials were requested to provide the
necessary help to Uspenskii and his friends, but at the same time they were asked
to keep an eye on his behaviour and report to their superiors in the event of any
suspicious conduct.6 These first excursions were not systematic, rather they were
intended to familiarise Russian archaeologists with Byzantine antiquities in the
Ottoman empire, and they laid the basis for more systematic archaeological stud
ies in later years. During the first Trabzon expedition in 1895, Russian scholars
3 Sankt-PeterburgskiifilialArkhiva Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk (henceforth cited as PFA RAN), fol. 1, op. la, d.
175,1.133-4 (from the Meeting Protocol of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1926).
4 PFA RAN, fol. 127, op. 1, d. 1,1.162-3 (Uspenskii to the Department of Science in the People's Commis
sariat for Education, 13 August 1918).
5 All three cities are important ports on the Turkish Black Sea coast. Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi (Prime
Ministry Ottoman Archives, Istanbul; hereafter cited as BOA), Bab-ı Ali Evrak Odası (hereafter cited as
BEO), 628/47089,29 Zilkade 1312 (24 May 1895).
6 BOA, Dahiliye Mektubî Kalemi (DH. MKT.), 379/80,04 Zilhicce 1312 (29 May 1895).
217
The Russian Archaeological Institutes Trabzon Expedition during the First World War, Pınar Üre
collected objects of Christian art, including ancient manuscripts and icons with
Slavic inscriptions, which were thought to have been made by the medieval Rus'
in the period when Byzantine rule extended over to the northern shores of the
Black Sea.7 They also conducted research in the monasteries of Soumela, Vazelon
and Perister in Trabzon. Uspenskii and the RAIK staff continued their studies
in these monasteries over the next twenty years. They made textual analyses of
ancient manuscripts, drew architectural plans of monuments and made copies of
ancient icons.
The most important—and considering the context in which it was held,

the most interesting—RAIK expedition to Trabzon was conducted in 1916-1917,
when the region was under Russian military occupation. In the first months of
the First World War, there were dreams of a Russian conquest of Istanbul and
the regeneration of Byzantine monuments in the city. These hopes were not at all
unrealistic; on the contrary, Russian designs for Istanbul were grounded on secret
alliances concluded with the Allies during the First World War. According to the
1915 secret agreement between the Entente powers, Istanbul was promised to
the Russian empire in the case of an Allied victory. Although Russian armies fell
short of capturing Istanbul, they briefly occupied the eastern coast of the Black
Sea. At the time RAIK conducted archaeological studies in Trabzon, the fate
of the region was still indeterminate and annexation of the area by the Russian
empire was not a distant possibility.8 Archaeological activities, therefore, were di
rectly linked to Russia's future designs for the region.
In fact, RAIK's Trabzon expedition was only one of the many archaeo
logical and ethnographical studies conducted in the Russian-occupied regions of
eastern Turkey during the First World War.9 In this period, a significant num
ber of Russian scholars undertook scholarly expeditions mainly in Van, Erzu
rum, Trabzon, and neighbouring towns under Russian military occupation. These
scientific expeditions were such an important component of Russia's wartime
policies in eastern Anatolia that one historian rightly called it Russia's "scientific
occupation."10 Russian archaeologists analysed and documented historical monu
ments and helped transport valuable objects from the war zone to safer places
controlled by the Russian empire. They were supported and funded by their home
7 IRAIK/'Otchet ν 1895 godìi", vol. 1 (1896), 24-8.
8 Reynolds, 2011: 140-1.
9 Akarca, 2014: 151-97.
10 Akarca, 2014: 151-2.
226
Byzantine Past Russian Present:
The Russian Archaeological Institute's Trabzon Expedition during the First World War, Pınar Ure
institutions in Russia, as well as by the military administration in occupied re

gions. Among these war-time scientific expeditions, the expedition of Nikolai
Marr (1865-1934) to Van and his studies on Armenian antiquities became espe
cially famous and produced important results.11
Immediately upon the military occupation of Trabzon, Russian archaeolo

gists started investigations of the most important Byzantine churches in the city,
most of which had been converted into mosques by the Ottomans. The interim
Russian military administration of Trabzon issued decrees to reconvert these
monuments back into churches after archaeological surveys were completed. In a
sense, Russian archaeologists' perceived role as the saviours of Byzantine heritage
was taken to a practical level. With its archaeological studies and the rehabilita
tion of churches to their original purpose, RAIK helped to establish a link be
tween the Byzantine past and the Russian present.
Not only scholars, but also commanders of the Russian army were inter
ested in the antiquities of the occupied regions. Under the auspices of the Rus
sian military administration of Trabzon, there was even a unit responsible for
archaeological preservation.12 The full extent of Russia's war-time scientific ac
tivities falls outside the scope of this article, but suffice it to say that the Rus
sian occupation of the Ottoman empire was much more than a military invasion:
Russian armies were accompanied by ethnographers, geographers and archaeolo
gists who devised projects to rewrite the history of the occupied regions. In this
context, Russian archaeologists presented themselves as the saviours of antiqui
ties. As Austin Jersild pointed out, Russian archaeologists constructed a contrast
between the sacred antiquity of the Orient and its contemporary deplorable con
dition. The "original", "authentic" and "glorious" Orient had to be made known
by Russian scholars so that the Russian empire could legitimise its role as the
restorer of this once-glorious past.13
The decree issued by Nikolai Nikolaevich Yudenich (1862-1933), the

11 Marr ôcOrbeli, 1922.
12 PFA RAN, fol. 169, op. 1, d. 1,1.2 30 (I. Y. Stelletskii to the Military General Governorate of Occupied
Territories, 6 May 1917).
13 Jersild, 2002: 6. Russians were not alone in conducting wartime archaeological activities. For instance, in
the parts of Macedonia claimed by Greece, French archaeologists carried out excavations. Not to be left
behind in competition with the French, the British army also ordered their men to report archaeological
findings to headquarters. Despite the disappointment of the Greeks, these artefacts were transported to the
British Museum and the Louvre after the war. Mazower, 2005: 296-7.
227
Commander-in-Chief of the Caucasian Armies, in March 1916 testified to

this salvific mission. Yudenich stated, '[W]hile our forces enter deep into Tur
key, a rich variety of monuments from the earliest times of human culture are
coming into our hands, the necessity of whose preservation has been brought
to my attention several times by leading people."14 The commander regretfully
acknowledged that he had received information about Russian citizens, some of
them from the ranks of the army, who thoughtlessly caused the destruction of
the monuments and even secretly engaged in the antiquities trade. Yudenich de
clared that this was totally unacceptable and ancient monuments, without excep
tion, were under the protection of the Russian military administration. Churches
monasteries, mosques, both secular and religious buildings, archives, libraries,
museums, ancient manuscripts, books in any language and inscriptions were all
counted in the list of valuable ancient objects in need of protection. Yudenich or
dered that the destruction, plundering, sale, purchase, and unauthorised collection
of ancient books, manuscripts and other ancient objects, were strictly forbidden
in the areas occupied by the Russian army. People who had old manuscripts and
books, inscriptions and religious-historical materials were ordered to hand them
over to military superiors in their districts. These objects were to be exhibited in
the Caucasian Museum in Tbilisi. Excavations were allowed only for people with
the appropriate certificates from district headquarters. Archaeological research
and excavations were strictly forbidden for people who failed to produce the nec
essary documents, even if they had legitimate scientific grounds.
Apart from the convenient logistics of conducting research in an area con

trolled by the Russian army, Trabzon had a particular historical significance for
Russian Byzantinists. The empire of Trebizond, its centre being modern-day Tra
bzon, was one of the three successor states to the Byzantine throne along with
the Nicaean empire and the despotate of Epirus after the fall of Constantinople
to the Latins following the Fourth Crusade in 1204.15 The Trapezuntine empire
was founded by Alexios I Komnenos (r.1204-1222) with the help of the Geor
gian Kingdom in the early thirteenth century. Culturally, the empire brought to
gether various elements—Georgian, Armenian, Greek, Caucasian and Seljukid. It
was also the longest surviving Byzantine successor-state: Trebizond was captured
by the Turks only in 1461, eight years after Constantinople.
14 PFA RAN, fol. 169, op. 1, d. 4,1.1 (Decree by the Commander-in-Chief of the Caucasian Armies 17
March 1916).
15 Miller, 1926: 14-19; Eastmond, 2004: 1-3.
228
The Russian Archaeological Institute's Trabzon Expedition during the First World War, Pınar Üre
RAIK undertook two expeditions to Trabzon during the First World War,
in the summer of 1916 and in the summer of 1917 respectively.16 Uspenskii viv
idly described the conditions in Trabzon when he arrived at the city in June 1916.
He stated that Trabzon was partly devastated by the war but the real reason of
the city's deplorable condition was inter-ethnic conflict. The city's Armenian
population decimated after the massacres of 1915. The Armenian quarter of the
city was deserted; houses were plundered and robbed, doors and windows were
broken. Objects were lying here and there as reminders of the horrendous in
cidents. With the advent of Russian occupation, Uspenskii said, wealthy Turks
left the city and this time local Greeks did to remaining Turks what Turks did
to Armenians a year ago. The plunders of Greek bands against Turkish residents
were facilitated by the limitless power of the local Greek metropolitan, Chrysan
thos (1881-1949). In the first half of June, Uspenskii said that Trabzon was still
haunted by the "horror of pogroms" and the city's Armenian and Turkish quarters
were in ruins.17 Of the extent to which the Russian army was responsible for the
destruction, Uspenskii said nothing.
In the midst of this humanitarian crisis, Russian archaeologists continued

their studies with determination. The major goals of Russian archaeological expe
ditions were defined as follows: to make a detailed architectural and archaeologi
cal study of Christian monuments in the region, to take the necessary precautions
for their preservation and to protect Muslim monuments from plundering and
destruction. Valuable objects in mosques would be brought from the war zone to
safer locations, and Greek antiquities would be placed under the protection of the
Greek Orthodox Metropolitan of Trabzon.18 The report laid particular emphasis
on the preservation of mosques built by the Turks, thereby supporting Russia's
self-ascribed role as the civilised saviour of not only Orthodox, but also Muslim
antiquities.19
Fyodor Ivanovich Shmit and Nikolai Karlovich Kluge accompanied Us

penskii on the first expedition to Trabzon and later S. R. Mintslov and F. M. Mo-
rozov replaced them as Uspenskii's assistants in the summer of 1917.20 Russian
archaeologists especially devoted their attention to the monasteries around Trab-
16 Papoulidis,2010: 190.
17 Uspenskii, 1916a: 1467.
18 Uspenskii, 1916a: 1464-5.
19 Uspenskii, 1916a: 1468.
20 Uspenskii, 1916b: 1659.
229
zon, focusing both on their archaeological study and their preservation. The Rus
sian military administration was of significant help to archaeologists throughout
the expedition. Upon Uspenskii's petition, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Af
fairs made generous donations for the benefit of monasteries in the city of Trab
zon in 1917.21 In line with Uspenskii s request, the Ministry sent 6,000 roubles in
total; 2,000 roubles each were donated to the metropolitan seats of Trabzon and
Rodopolis (today known as Maçka), and 2,000 roubles were divided between the
monasteries of Soumela, Peristera, and Vazelon.22
In Trabzon city centre, the most important archaeological studies were made
in the churches of Hagia Sophia, Panagia Chrysokephalos (Ortahisar Camii) and
St. Eugenios (Yeni Cuma Camii). All three monuments were Byzantine churches
which had been converted into mosques after the Ottoman conquest. In early 1916
the Commission for the Preservation and Registration of Ancient Monuments,
which was affiliated with the Russian military administration, issued a resolution
about these monuments. The resolution ordered that these mosques would no longer
hold Muslim services. The fate of the monuments would be decided after compre
hensive archaeological study and the removal of plaster from their walls.23 A de
cree by the Russian military administration, issued on 30 June 1916, extended the
scope of archaeological research concerned with converted Byzantine churches in
the Trabzon area. According to this decree, all churches that had been converted
into mosques by the Ottomans would be first examined by archaeologists and, later,
Muslim services would be prohibited in these churches. The report counted seven
such churches in Trabzon. In addition, the decree concluded that all mosques con
structed by the Turks should continue Muslim services as usual.24
In his study on monuments and collective memory, Pierre Nora argued that
the physical transformation of places of memory {lieux de mémoire) during critical
junctures of history reflects the struggle among different political groups for the
symbolic capital represented by these sites.25 Therefore, the meanings attributed to
such objects of memory may change and fluctuate. For the Ottomans in the fif
teenth century, transforming the largest cathedral of a conquered city into a mosque
21 PFA RAN, fol. 169, op. 1, d. 4,1.21 (Decree by the Commander-in-Chief of the Caucasian Armies, 17
March 1916).
22 PFA RAN, fol. 169, op. 1, d. 4,1. 24-25 (Decree by the Commander-in-Chief of the Caucasian Armies, 17
March 1916).
23 Uspenskii, 1916a: 1466.
24 Uspenskii, 1916a: 1480.
25 Nora, 1989: 19.
230
The Russian Archaeological Institute s Trabzon Expedition during the First World War, Pınar Üre
signified the triumph of Islam over Christianity, and marked a break with the Byz
antine past.26 On the contrary, for the Russians during the First World War, the
reconversion of these churches symbolised the triumph of Orthodoxy, and heralded
that Russia would repair the severed links with the Byzantine empire.
An interesting conjunction of archaeology, religious practices and daily life was

staged with the discovery of the burial site of the emperor of Trebizond, Alexios III
Megas Komnenos (r. 1349-1390) in the summer of 1916. The grave was found in
the yard of the Panagia Chrysokephalos church, which was used as a burial place for
members of the Trapezuntine dynasty and high-ranking clergymen. At the burial
site, Russian archaeologists first encountered the shrine of a legendary Ottoman hero,
Hoşoğlan, who was believed to have been a janissary soldier during the Ottoman
conquest of the city.27 After investigating the site, Uspenskii concluded that the shrine
originally belonged to Alexios III (Fig. 10). Upon this discovery, the Russian military
administration of Trabzon organised a church service in the late emperor s honour.28
The Russian administration not only acted as the saviour of antiquities but also linked
ancient history to daily religious practice. This tribute, paid to a medieval Trapezun
tine emperor, projected Russia as the representative of Byzantine emperors in the
modern world. At the same time, Russian archaeologists redefined the meaning of a
monument symbolising Ottoman victory over the Byzantine empire and reclaimed it
in the name of Russia and Orthodoxy. Alexios III replaced Hoşoğlan, and the shrine
became a manifestation of Russian, instead of Ottoman, conquest.
In the summer of 1917, Russian archaeologists carried out a second expedi

tion to Trabzon under very different circumstances. In the midst of political turmoil
following the February Revolution, the Russian military was in disarray, making ar
chaeological studies more difficult. In these dire circumstances, Uspenskii worked
hard to save manuscripts and other valuable objects from destruction and plunder
ing.29 Ignatii Yakovlevich Stelletskii (1878-1949), another Russian archaeologist and
a member of the Moscow Archaeological Institute, submitted a proposal to under
take a military-archaeological expedition to the occupied regions in 1917, which
could not be realised due to political developments.30
26 Ousterhout, 1995: 60.
27 Uspenskii, 1916b: 1660-1.
28 PFA RAN, fol. 169, op. 1, d. 4,1. 23 (Decree by the Commander-in-Chief of the Caucasian Armies, 17
March 1916).
29 Starostin, 2014: 287-9.
30 PFA RAN, fol. 169, op. 1, d. 1,1. 2-30 (I. Ya. Stelletskii to the Military General Governorate of the Occu
pied Territories, 6 May 1917).
231
The Russian Archaeological Institutes Trabzon Expedition during the First World War, Pınar Ure
During these war-time expeditions to Trabzon and its environs, Uspen-

skii collected over four hundred manuscripts from churches, mosques and private
residences. Among them, there were several copies of the Quran and Turkish-
Arabic manuscripts. In a report, Uspenskii acknowledged that he found these
books in houses and mosques abandoned by residents during the Russian oc
cupation.31 Particularly valuable Islamic manuscripts were found in the Panagia
Chrysokephalos church, which was used for the storage of antiquities and old
manuscripts during the brief Russian occupation of Trabzon. After the crisis of
1917, Uspenskii—in consultation with the Transcaucasian Committee Interim
Administration—decided to send valuable manuscripts acquired in Trabzon to
Batum.32 While some of these manuscripts were kept in Batum, others were sent
to Petrograd before the conclusion of the First World War. One of the reasons
for Uspenskii's collection of Islamic manuscripts was that he wanted to use these
objects as leverage against the Turks in future talks about RAIK property left in
Istanbul. When RAIK staff evacuated Istanbul in 1914, they left nearly the entire
library of the institute behind in the Ottoman capital. Uspenskii hoped that "in
future negotiations with the Turks [the manuscripts] could be used in exchange
for the transfer of the Institute's books and manuscripts."33
Not only Turkish-Islamic manuscripts, but also Greek antiquities, were

brought to Russia during the occupation. Konstantin Papoulidis has brought to
light a local Greek view about Russian archaeological activities in Trabzon. In
June 1917, a Greek journalist from Trabzon, N.A. Leontidis, accused Russian
scholars of smuggling four trunks of objects with religious and artistic value to
Russia.34 In an age of nationalism, Russian appropriation of Orthodox symbols
was met with local resistance from other groups that had claims over the same
cultural heritage. While Russian archaeologists constructed links between the
Byzantine empire and Russia and pointed to Russia's role as the saviour of Or
thodox heritage, for Trabzon Greeks, Byzantine monuments were part of their
national history. In fact, the relations between local Greek merchants, clergymen
and intellectuals and the Russian military remained tense throughout the Russian
31 PFA RAN, fol. 127, op. 1, d. 1,1.164-165 (Uspenskii to the Department of Science in the People's Com
missariat for Education, 13 August 1918).
32 PFA RAN, fol. 169, op. 1, d. 4,1.22 (Decree by the Commander-in-Chief of the Caucasian Armies, 17
March 1916).
33 PFA RAN, fol. 127, op. 1, d. 1,1.164-165 (Uspenskii to the Department of Science in the People's Com
missariat for Education, 13 August 1918).
34 Papoulidis, 2010: 190.
232
occupation for a number of reasons.35 Chrysanthos, the metropolitan of Trabzon,

and many other Greek clergymen regarded Russian occupation with suspicion.
In turn, the Russian military administration was distrustful towards the leaders
of the Trabzon Greek community. Disagreement about the fate of antiquities was
only one aspect of this tense relationship.
Right before the withdrawal of Russian forces from the region in 1917,
Uspenskii made copies of the materials he found in the monasteries and churches
around Trabzon. He published these findings in 1927 with Vladimir Nikolaevich
Beneshevich under the title VazelonskieAkty?b Uspenskii's Ocherki iz Istorii Trape
zuntskoy Imperii (Essays on the History of the Empire ofTrebizond) was also
based on his research in Trabzon during the war. In addition to Trabzon, Us
penskii also made studies in the Batumi oblast' (region).37 With the defeat of the
Turks in parts of eastern Turkey, Uspenskii had plans to organise a new expedi
tion to the south of Trabzon in autumn 1917, but this plan was not realised given
war-time conditions and domestic turmoil in Russia.38
Conclusion
The outbreak of the First World War and the subsequent Russian occupation of
eastern Anatolian provinces gave Russian archaeologists an opportunity to act as
saviours of the ancient heritage in these territories. With the occupation of Trab
zon, Uspenskii and the RAIK staff had the chance to apply their academic exper
tise to the practical realm. The symbolic funeral service for emperor Alexios III
Komnenos illustrated the image that the Russian imperial administration wished
to project with the help of archaeological studies. Moreover, the reconversion of
Byzantine churches, which had been converted by the Ottomans into mosques,
was a step towards reshaping the landscape of the city. In this sense, the occupa
tion of Trabzon was a showcase of what RAIK stood for: linking the ancient past
to the present, and the Byzantine empire to Russia.
Despite the opportunities lost to the war, the 1917 revolution were an un-
35 Reynolds, 2011: 163-5.
36 Avgustin, 1986: 274-5.
37 PFA RAN, fol. 169, op. 1, d. 4,1.20 (Decree by the Commander-in-Chief of the Caucasian Armies
17 March 1916).
38 Uspenskii, 1916a: 1466.
233
The Russian Archaeological Instituted Trabzon Expedition during the First World War, Pınar Üre
expected blow for RAIK, and more broadly for Russian Byzantinology. In the
aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution, Byzantine studies no longer reflected
the identity of the new regime, and consequentially lost official support. In May
1920, the communist regime officially abolished RAIK and established a bu
reau to oversee RAIK's affairs and negotiate with the young Republican regime
in Turkey for the repatriation of RAIK's remaining property in Istanbul.39 The
transformation of relations between Russia and Turkey in the aftermath of the
First World War and the internal changes in both countries created a sharp con
trast with the imperial period. The fall of Byzantine studies from favour in the
Soviet era makes it clear that RAIK was a political project which reflected Rus
sian imperial identity. RAIK's studies of Byzantine monuments around Trabzon
in 1916-1917 were the most open expression of this imperial policy, immediately
before the Bolshevik Revolution.
39 PFA RAN, fol. 127, op. 1, d. 1,1. 180-181,210 (Uspenskii to the Bureau for RAIK's Affairs, 1 September
1920).
234
The Russia Archaeological Institutes Trabzon Expedition during the First World War, Pınar Üre
Bibliography
Archival and Published Primary Sources

BEO: Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi (Prime Ministry Ottoman Archives, Istanbul)
Bab-ı Âli Evrak Odası (BEO), 628/47089,29 Zilkade 1312 (24 May 1895).
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Otkrytye Russkogo Arkheologicheskogo Insti tu ta ν Konstantinopole 26 Şubat 1895," 1
(1896): 1-21.
"Otchet ν 1895 godu," 1 (1896): 23-53.
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the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg).
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Arkheologicheskogo Instituía v Konstantinopole, 1926."
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g., popytki vosstanovleniia posle revoliutsii)."
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Turtsiiu, 1917."
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Trapezunte." Izvestiia Imperatorskoi Akademii Nauk, Ser. 6, vol. 10, no. 11-18: 1464-1480.
Uspenskii, F.I. 1916b. "Vtoroi Otchet о Zaniatiiakh ν Trapezunte i Okrestnostiakh. Prilozhenie
к Protokołu XII Zasedaniia Otdeleniia Istoricheskikh Nauk i Filologii Imperatorkoi
Akademii Nauk 26 Oktiabria 1916 goda." Izvestiia Imperatorskoi Akademii Nauk Ser. 6, vol.
10, no. 11-18: 1657-1663.
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Archaeological Institute in Constantinople]. Bogoslovskie Trudy 27 . 266-293.
Basargina, Ye.Yu. 1999. Russkii Arkheologicheskii Institut v Konstantinopole. St. Petersburg.
Eastmond, A. 2003. Art and Identity in ЪіПееШЬ Century Byzantium: Hagia Sophia and the Empire
ofTrebizond. Aldershot: Ashgate/Variorum.
Jersild, A. 2002. Orientalism and Empire: North Caucasus Mountain Peoples and the Georgian Fron
tier, 1845-1917. Montreal: Mc-Gill Queen's University Press.
Marr, N.Ya. and J.A. Orbeli. 1922. Arkheologicheskaya Ekspeditsiya 1916 goda v Van: Doklady. St.
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236
A Tale of Two Davids: The Russell Trust Expedition to Conserve the Wall Paintings
of the Church of Hagia Sophia (Ayasofya) at Trabzon, 1957-1962
James Crow
University of Edinburgh
Introduction
Field expeditions overseas, whether an excavation or a conservation programme

like the subject of this chapter, do not happen without a great deal of preparation,
imagination and human endeavour. Money needs to be raised and permits require
long negotiation. Projects require travel and time spent, not always productively,
in distant places and eventually they need publication. So this is the story of such
a project derived very largely from an archive, now housed in the Special Collec-
tions of St. Andrews University in Scotland.The expedition to conserve the wall
paintings of Hagia Sophia in Trabzon was funded by the Russell Trust, a private
Scottish charity (previously the Walker Trust), who throughout the 1930s and in
the decades following World War Two was an exceptionally generous benefactor
for archaeological research in Turkey. The Russell Trust's contribution towards
Byzantine Studies has ensured a remarkable legacy, including the conservation of
the Great Palace Mosaic in Istanbul and the wall paintings of Hagia Sophia in
Trabzon. The latter project was conceived and promoted by David Talbot Rice,
Watson Gordon Professor of Fine Art at the University of Edinburgh (Fig. 1).
The field director from 1957 to 1962 was David Winfield, who worked annual
seasons of a five-month duration, before returning by Land Rover to London.
The papers of the Russell Trust Archive preserve packets and packets of
photographs and drawings—many reproduced in Talbot Rice's 1968 publication
on Hagia Sophia—together with other images and drawings presenting the work
in progress, which have been used to illustrate the exhibition and this chapter.
Especially valuable for gaining a sense of the daily life of the Russell Trust Expe-
dition are the letters, written on blue air-mail paper in blue-inked fountain pen,
by Winfield who reported to Talbot Rice in Britain every fortnight on the prog-
ress and discoveries, and the financial concerns and activities, of the project in
Trabzon. For the most part,Talbot Rices replies do not survive in the archive, but
there is little evidence of micro-management from afar judging from the tone of
239
A Tale of Two Davids, James Crow
Winfield's responses. Once received, the Trabzon letters together with the copies
of the photographic archive were in turn passed on to Major David Russell of the
Russell Trust as regular reports for the project s backers.
The expedition initiated by Talbot Rice in 1957, to reveal and restore the
wall paintings of the mosque of Ayasofya in Trabzon, was his last major fieldwork
project and the only significant programme of conservation of Byzantine monu
ments in Anatolia, east of Cappadocia, in the twentieth century.1 A measure of
Talbot Rice's dedication to Byzantine Studies was that in the same years that the
cleaning work started at Trabzon, he was hugely instrumental in the organisation
of the first major Byzantine exhibition in Britain, Masterpieces ofByzantine Art in
1958. First held as part of the Edinburgh International Festival at the Scottish
National Museum, the exhibition was transferred a month later to the Victoria бе
Albert Museum in London.2
Talbot Rice was appointed as the Watson Gordon Professor of Fine Art
at the University of Edinburgh in 1934, at the young age of 31. He remained in
Edinburgh until his death in 1972, although, as the re-used envelopes from the
Hereford Herd Book Society in the Russell Trust Archive reveal, he was an active
cattle breeder in Gloucestershire in western England as well. Another addressed
to Lieutenant-Colonel Talbot Rice represents his wartime service in military in
telligence. As a student at Oxford he was a part of the same post-First World
War set of "Bright Young Things" as Evelyn Waugh, Harold Acton, and Robert
Byron. Yet on graduation in 1925, he went to excavate at Kish in southern Iraq
and, indeed, excavation and fieldwork preceded his reputation as an art histo
rian. In the following year, he visited Mount Athos with Robert Byron, defin
ing his commitment to Byzantine art and culture. Byron's account of the trip,
perplexingly entitled The Station, recalls his efforts in 1927 to manage tripods
and half-plate cameras around the steep-stepped paths between the Athonite
monasteries.3 The ensuing illustrations provided an enduring legacy for Byron's
fanciful and often prolix musings in The Birth of Western Painting, published in
1930.4 Immediately following Talbot Rices wedding to the Russian emigrée Ta-
mara Abelson, the couple left to join the British Academy's excavations at the
Hippodrome in Istanbul in 1928, where he was to be field director and photog-
1 Talbot Rice, 1968.
3 Byron, 1928.
4 Byron, 1930.
240
rapher.5 On that project's conclusion he was sponsored by Rudolph Messel to

visit Trabzon (then still Trebizond in westerners'reckoning) in 1929, seeing not
just the monuments and churches within the city, but riding into the countryside
and Pontic mountains with their Alsatian dog, Ghost, to record and photograph
the remains of churches and monasteries left deserted following the population
exchange after 1923.6 In 1930, Talbot Rice went to Paris to study with the emi-
nent Byzantine art historian Gabriel Millet and in 1936 they published jointly
two accounts of their visits, thirty-six years apart, to the Byzantine monuments
of Trabzon in Byzantine Painting at Trebizond.7 Whilst the work presents many
images now lost, it is as much a triumph of the Anglo-French principle of Vive la
différence', where the two authors often seemed more intent to document their
disputes about chronology and other details.8
On his return from Paris, Talbot Rice was successful in gaining not one but
two academic posts, firstly at the Courtauld Institute in 1931 and then the chair
at Edinburgh in 1934, although he held both concurrently until 1938. Through-
out this period, he and Tamara were engaged in travels across Iran and excava-
tions at the early Islamic site at Hira in Iraq, as well as publishing the first study
of Byzantine glazed ceramics.91935 saw Professor James Houston Baxter's exca-
vations at the site of The Great Palace in Istanbul. These were sponsored by the
Walker Trust of St. Andrews, in Scotland, which was declared to be a triumph
for "Scottish beneficence" in a headline of The Times in 1935. Under Talbot Rice's
direction further excavations followed after the Second World War, sponsored by
the newly created Russell Trust which was part of the same family endowment,
but set up in memory of a son killed during the war. The new excavations at the
Great Palace were able to resolve many of the questions from the pre-war dig
and the staff included a celebrity team of young scholars destined for careers in
Classical and Near Eastern archaeology, including John Ward-Perkins, Donald
Strong, and four Davids (Oates, Stronach, Wilson and the director). The "Great
Palace Davids" were surely the inspiration for the fictional archaeologists/spies all
named David, who are minor off-stage characters in Rose Macaulay's Towers of
Trebizond, published in 1956. The novelist had visited the excavations in Istanbul
where it is reported that she sat on a column in the House of Justinian, before
5 Talbot Rice, 1947; 1958; Whitby, 2000: 45-56.

6 Talbot Rice, 1929: 47-81.
7 Millet бе Talbot Rice, 1936.
8 See Ioanna Rapti s chapter in this volume.
241
proceeding to Trabzon, (but without the camel that appears as a major character
in the novel!). Her comic, yet subtly profound novel established Trebizond on the
1950s British literary map.
The Team
David Talbot Rice initiated the expedition, but he was only able to visit for short
periods in most years of the project, and the field director in Trabzon was David
Winfield (Fig 2.). He was a new Oxford history graduate who had recendy learnt
the trade of wall painting conservation in Yugoslavia, assisting in the cleaning
of the monuments of Sopoćani. Hagia Sophia was his first project as sole field
director and a sense of anxiety is often apparent in the letters, as he was keen not
to put a foot wrong. But his experience in Trabzon was to be the foundation for
a successful career under the auspices of Dumbarton Oaks on various campaigns
of the 1960s and 1970s in Cyprus. With his wife June (who he met in Trabzon),
he worked with Ernest Hawkins at St. John Chrysostomos at Koutsovendis, and
other churches, and then as director of the work at the Panagia Arakou at La-
goudera and the churches of the Panagia Amasgou and St. George in Monagri in
1970-4. He returned to England to a Visiting Fellowship at Oxford, restoration
work at Canterbury Cathedral and then a position as Surveyor of Conservation
for the National Trust in England. He died in 2013.10
At Trabzon the conservation work was carried out by a small team, com
prised of Winfield himself and, for the first couple of years, Michael Smith who
went on to lecture in medieval art at Bristol University. They were assisted from
1958 by two young Turkish boys—Yakub Kemer and Osman Köroğlu—from the
village of Ayasofya, next to the church. They continued as valued members of the
team over the remaining years of the project. Michael Ballance, a classical epig-
rapher assisted in reading the painted inscriptions, as did Anthony Bryer who
visited in 1958 and 1961 (Fig. 3). In addition to making a detailed photographic
record, a key element of the recording was detailed scale drawings undertaken in
1958 by Anne Powell and from 1960 by June Wainwright, later Mrs Winfield.
Further architectural recording was carried out by Selina Tomiin, who married
Michael Ballance.
10 Eastmond, 2015: 2-7.
250
Later in 1958 the project was joined by Robert Thomson, an Oxford un-
dergraduate. Winfield and Smith had driven from England by Land Rover. The
others came by bus from Ankara, although Winfield notes that Thomson flew in
and out by plane. Later student assistants, such as Richard Clogg in 1960 from
Edinburgh University, travelled the longer route by train to Erzincan and then
bus. Few seemed to have taken the weekly boat from Istanbul to Hopa. 1960
was the year of the military coup against the Democratic Party government. A
photograph dated 1960 shows the team including four students, Clogg, Hale
and Flashtig from Edinburgh, and Richardson from Oxford (Figs. 4,15). Many
of the student helpers, who all received small allowances, went on to academic
success in their own right. Robert Thomson was to become an eminent Arme-
nian scholar at Harvard and later Oxford, while Richard Clogg taught modern
Greek history at King's College London and Bill Hale taught Turkish politics at
the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. None became archaeolo-
gists, nor even Byzantinists. Perhaps Clogg's memories of his time in Trabzon
sum up their general response (Fig. 5):
Perched atop rickety wooden scaffolding, in the humid summer heat of

Trebizond, I must say that I found the work boring, and rapidly aban-
doned any thoughts that I had entertained of becoming an archaeologist.
The work required an infinite degree of patience that I soon discovered I
simply did not have. Of course it was very exciting to uncover tiny areas
of fresco on which no human eye had gazed forfivecenturies, though in
my case the excitement soon wore off. But the company of David Win-
field, who oversaw the work in the church, and of his partner, June, and
that of the three other student assistants was good.
The working days were long, however, it is reported in a letter from Winfield
that "all agreed" to work a nine-and-a-half hour day forfiveworking days to al-
low freedom for travel at the weekends, mainly to visit the ruins and monuments
along the coast and in the mountains behind Trabzon. Winfield's researches were
to constitute much of the field work and recording for the later joint study with
Anthony Bryer, Byzantine Monuments and Topography ofthe Pontos, another legacy
of the Russell Trust Expedition.11
In 1958, the team was joined by Selina Ballance, a young architect whose
11 Bryer & Winfield, 1985.
251
A Tale of Tico Davids, James Crow
brief from Talbot Rice was to plan and study the accessible historic Byzantine
churches. She wrote to him in August 1958:
On the whole the locals are more co-operative than I expected and I find
that if two small boys are made to hold the tape, they keep the rest of the
inevitable crowd in order [...] Life here is much easier than I expected.
And the weather is far more tolerable than I had ever hoped for. The
fresco cleaners all seem to work very hard and I am amazed how much
they have done already. Anne (Powell) found us a very good place to
live in, a house rented by an American engineer and furnished with his
own comfortable Italian furniture: such a ménage à trois might have been
considered a little curious in Edwardian times but fortunately so far the
locals have not indicated their disapproval by lobbing stones through the
windows.
From 1960, June Wainwright recorded the paintings, and the majority of the
published drawings are hers. A complete folio of her preliminary drawings sur-
vive which reveal her skill as a draughtsperson and the care she took to catch
the details of the images, many of which are not easily visible from the ground
(Figs. 6-8) In the following year, Winfield commented that in addition they had
two cats called Pontus and Pontica.
In general there were good relations with the local Turkish community of
the village of Ayasofya—which was then some distance outside of the town of
Trabzon—but there remained tensions which persist even today. Winfield's re-
port in 1958 indicates the level of tact and diplomacy required on such a project.
He wrote: "The Authorities were always helpful in their attitude when I went
to see them"; tellingly he added, "but some time would pass before the work I
wanted was done. However scaffolding was erected and a screen created between
the prayer hall of the mosque and the conservation work (Figs. 9-11). The long
working day from 7am to 5pm allowed for the work space to be vacated during
noon prayers/'Winfield s report continues:
The people who live in the village around St. Sophia have, with the ex-
ception of one family, been very kind and tolerant in their attitude to
ourselves and to the work but nevertheless the great problem of extend-
ing the work into the body of the church is the clash of interest arising
252
from the building as a mosque and work by the Russell Trust expedition.
These are in every way incompatible since it is not only that our scaf
folding is a material obstacle in the way of mosque users, but also that
the very work that we are doing, in uncovering Christian paintings, is
offensive to them. I have pointed this out to both the local religious and
civil authorities and to the same authorities in Ankara and it is a problem
which must be solved either by building a new mosque or by shutting off
a part of St. Sophia, such as the south transept where there are no wall
paintings, for use as a mosque.
At the end of the 1958 season, Winfield wrote to Talbot Rice that he felt he
was now accepted around Trabzon. Robert Thomson, who assisted during the
season, provides a more colourful detail: "David was a well-known figure in Trab
zon, notable for his reddish beard and the smart straw boater and blazer he wore
on festive occasions when we processed to the Italian consulate. Hence a letter
by Anthony Bryer addressed simply to 'o sakkalı ingiliz, Trabzon' ['that bearded
Englishman,Trabzon] reached him promptly."
The Conservation Work
"Never be in a hurry. Go Slow'
Before the project began, Talbot Rice had canvassed a number of respected and
active conservators about the state of the church and the wall paintings. Earnest
Hawkins—probably the most experienced British conservator of Byzantine m o
saics and paintings, then working in Istanbul—had visited Trabzon in July 1956
to assess the state of the building and he was able to recommend the potential
success of such an expedition to Talbot Rice. There is little to record Winfield's
first impressions, but he left an account of the processes he applied in his Annual
Report for 1958, the second year of the project (Fig. 12).
It is headed "Some notes on the cleaning of frescoes in Saint Sophia", and

was clearly intended as a working guide. A short extract reveals the meticulous
nature of the conservation process and the great attention that he was able to give
to this and later conservation projects. It begins with the statement quoted at the
start of this section: "Never be in a hurry. G o Slow," and anyone who knew David
253
Winfield will recognise this firm and measured instruction. It continues:
Always start on a piece of background or other space empty of detail in

order to get the feel of the tools you are using and of the covering which
you are removing ... Use the right tool for the job, i.e. do not try to clean
off large areas of whitewash with a dentist's pick or modelling tool, do not
try to do any finer cleaning with a palate knife.
Elsewhere in the same report he described how the works progressed:
Method of Cleaning
The cleaning operation was carried out in three main stages. The thick
plaster covering was for the most part chipped away with a sculptor s ham-
mer and chisels, but where the covering was already detached from the
painting, as was the case over a large area of the barrel vault of the Bema,
it proved possible to lever away fairly large pieces of plaster (up to 18 in/45
cm across), therefore saving much of the damage which there might have
been caused by the concussion of continual hammering.
The removal of the plaster covering left in most places a layer of whitewash
which still concealed the paintings. This was removed so far as possible by
eroding it down with palette knives. The final cleaning was done with den
tal picks or wooden modelling tools, the delicate points of which are able
to scrape off minute pieces of whitewash while doing the minimum dam-
age. In some parts of the paintings where some parts of the paint were in
good condition, it was possible to put a final finish to the cleaning process
by rubbing gently over the surface of the paint with a soft India rubber.
This removed all fragments of dust or white wash that might have been left
on the surface and allowed the colours of the paintings to glow out with
something of their original freshness. Water was sponged or dabbed on to
the paintings wherever necessary in the course of the cleaning.
For the conservation of the cleaned images, Winfield was concerned to inhibit
the growth of mould as this was a particular "disadvantage of the hot and damp
climate as exists in Trebizond" and he selected "polyvinyl alcohol soluble in water,
so that while forming a protective film on the surface of the pigments and bind-
254
ing the plaster, it does not prevent the plaster from breathing freely and discharg-
ing an excess of moisture." This was selected in preference to Polyvinal Acetate
which he considered "likely to do more harm than good in the long run," adding
that "polyvinyl alchohol has not been used for the purpose of preserving wall
paintings, nor in a climate such as is found at Trebizond, it is impossible to say
how long the protective film will last before being broken up by damp." More
recent conservation of the ship-graffiti, on the walls of the bell tower beside the
church, failed to follow this advice and little now remains following conservation;
but the paintings conserved by Winfield remain in a good condition.
David and June Winfield's work on the scaffolding allowed them to ob-
serve the work of the artists at Hagia Sophia from very close quarters. They were
able to study how the artists built up the layers of paint to model faces and drap-
ery (Fig. 13). They also began to notice how the artists made incisions in the
plaster to model their figures before they started painting, and the places where
the artists changed their minds or made mistakes. Their detailed observations
made them among the foremost experts on how Byzantine artists painted, and
led to some of their most important publications.12 Their concern with technique
and style is reflected in their archive, which tends to concentrate on details rather
than broader views of images. This is invaluable for seeing aspects of the painting
that can only ever be noticed from close up on scaffolding, but can be frustrating
for those seeking a more holistic view of the church and its paintings.
Life in 30 Akçaabat Caddesi
As noted in the excerpt from Selina Ballances letter, the female members of the
team were housed in some comfort in the town of Trabzon but for much of the
project, the male members lived in two apartments at 30 Akçaabat Caddesi in
the Yeni Manale district, close to the church and the sea. Initially Winfield was
concerned that accommodation would be restrictively expensive because of the
American NATO base above the town, however these fears were unfounded. The
men largely cooked and looked after themselves. Winfield on one occasion com-
plains about the shortage of olive oil in the town and, perhaps more seriously, the
absence of wine so that expeditions were sent up the coast.
12 Winfield, 1968; Winfield Oc Winfield, 1982.
255
There were visitors to see the progress and discoveries of the conservation,
although Trabzon was never to become a significant tourist destination. The larg
est number arrived in 1958 when a Swans Hellenic cruise called in to Trabzon
harbour. Robert Thomson describes this in his memoir:
On the appointed day we met the visitors at the port, and dividing them into
three groups, we led them on different paths to the main sites. The morn
ing came to a climax at Hagia Sophia, to be followed by a lunch laid on
by the ship's personnel. Rose Macaulay was the best known of the visitors,
though unfortunately the last tower had fallen down since her "Towers of
Trebizond" had been published. The passengers included Dimitri Obolensky,
Geoffrey Lewis, Stewart Perowne, and various others whose names I forget.
Winfield reported to Talbot Rice that "There were six of us available to cope with
them [The Hellenic Cruise] and in a sort of organised disorder they all saw some
thing of the town and St. Sophia. We much enjoyed showing them around and
I think the people of the town enjoyed having them." He continued with the ad
ditional costs incurred including 100 lira paid to the mufti to ensure the mosques
were open for the visits, although he later noted that the visitors were able to con
vey paints required for Anne Powell's conservation work. The American military
base above Trabzon also showed an interest in the expeditions work and Winfield
was sometimes asked to present lectures on the general history of Trabzon. In
September 1959, a sizeable US naval delegation with other NATO and diplomatic
representatives descended on the town. As he wrote to Talbot Rice:
An American boat packed with technical officers of all sorts was in yester
day, showing the U.S. flag in the Black Sea and they threw a party in the
large room in the Yeşilyurt [hotel] to which the attaché invited us and such
as I never thought to see in Trabzon. All the local dignitaries including the
Vali were present, and 20-30 American officers all covered in gold braid. It
was an odd but pleasing occasion.
A survival from Trabzons nineteenth-century past as a caravan trading city, the

Yeşilyurt retained a ball room suitable for such an event, although when the writer
stayed there in 1972 it had fallen on hard times and has since been demolished. On
other occasions, visitors were less welcome and Winfield was especially concerned
about unauthorised photography of the newly cleaned paintings. He reported:
256
But on the first weekend that the partition was up, the padlock staple was
broken and someone did some cleaning on his own account. I have gath-
ered that was an Austrian Professor from Vienna, whom I met here last
year and who is writing a book on the Pontus. He went with some Turkish
students on a Sunday and they broke the staple for him. I can only think
that it was in order to take photographs since he speaks Turkish and every-
one would have told him we would be back the next day so that he could
look round. Unfortunately I am not able to prove anything about it.
The name of the professor is not recorded.
The 1950s was the first decade of democratic rule in Turkey, when the
elected government of the Democratic Party replaced Ataturk's Republican Peo-
ples'Party. However from 1958 onwards, increasing tensions in Turkish internal
politics—as well as other political crises in Cyprus and Lebanon—figured in the
correspondence, although they had little direct effect on the life of the expedi-
tion. One letter does note, however, that they had contacted the commander of
the American base to help evacuate Miss Powell and Miss Tomiin (Ballance)
"if the necessity arose." As an indication of the increasingly unstable political
climate, Winfield also reports that local opposition politicians were alleging that
"the Democrats have sold Bey Tepe (the US base) to the Americans and now
they are selling the mosques to the English" and there seemed a real threat that
the conservation programme would be stopped. Through the support of the local
deputy and intervention from Ankara, the work continued and, despite his youth,
Winfield was able to show real diplomatic skills as project director in respond-
ing to these challenges. Throughout the summer of 1959, Winfield continued to
note some of these changes and uncertainties, and reports how a large delegation
of Republican deputies travelling by the weekly ship along the Black Sea were
prevented from disembarking at Samsun, to ensure they could not participate in a
demonstration against the Democratic government in the town. The boat eventu-
ally docked after midnight.
In the 1960 report, he wrote with surprising understatement:
The Revolution which happened shortly after the beginning of the season
(27 May 1960) was of some help to the Expedition. We only lost some two
days through the celebrations and the change put an end to the machi-
nations of the Department of Religion in Ankara who were planning to
257
cover up the paintings of Saint Sophia with boarding and reconvert it into
a mosque. The mufti of Trebizond, who has caused us a great deal of trou
ble and anxiety in 1959 was removed from office and the general attitude
of the new regime is such that unless a further revolution happens Saint
Sophia will almost certainly become a museum.
Winfield goes on to recount the changes of personnel in Trabzon and in the

general directorates following the coup. He concludes by recalling that "all travel
outside the town was restricted for some time after the revolution, but I was able
to get some further exploration work done and to record several new castles and
churches in the hinterland.,,
One of the rewards for the many months of meticulous conservation work
was the weekend excursions along the coast and into Trabzons mountainous hin
terland. Over the five years of the project, Winfield was able to document an
extraordinary range of mountain fortresses, painted chapels and settlements rang
ing in date from the Roman empire to the nineteenth century. His field research,
combined with the studies of Anthony Bryer, was to provide the basis for the
unique corpus of the Byzantine and later Christian monuments which survive
in this remote corner of Anatolia. Their study, The Byzantine Monuments and To
pography of the Pontos, was published by Dumbarton Oaks in 1985. It is a work
which combines unmatched knowledge of the history and topography of the re
gion, made at a time when so much still survived. Further publications by Bryer
and Winfield—in a series of long articles in the Greek journal Archeion Pon
tou—documented the large number of Christian buildings from Ottoman times,
found throughout the vilayets of Trabzon and Gümüşhane which had been seen
by Tamara and David Talbot Rice in their first expedition to the high Pontic pla
teaus in 1929.13 Many are now lost due to modern developments and destruction.
There was another attraction in the misty Pontic uplands, however, although
one less frequently mentioned in the letters, but of interest to both the young and
old Davids—the opportunity to hunt and shoot game (Fig. 14). An old friend
of Talbot Rice from his visit in 1929, İhsan Nemlizade, was the connection and
when David Winfield and June Wainwright drove out from England in 1961 they
brought with them in the Land Rover a pointer puppy for İhsan Bey. A letter in the
same year reflects the changing times in Trabzon and those experiences which can
make life on often remote and isolated foreign expeditions rewarding:
13 Bryer, Winfield & Ballance, 2002.

258
Father Leonardo, the head of the Friary and with forty years behind him,
leaves for Italy this week and I think it will not be long before the Friary
closes down. A pity since it is the last surviving link with nineteenth cen-
tury Trabzon ...
I have translated a short note on shooting trips for Ihsan Bey which he has
sent to the 'Field [an established British magazine], so you may shortly see
some notes on Ibex and Snow Partridge shooting. The latter I hope to have
a go at myself one weekend.
The legacy of the Russell Trust Expedition to conserve the wall paintings of the
church of Hagia Sophia in Trabzon, was the long term preservation of rare imag-
es of a lost and unique Christian empire. The publication by Talbot Rice and later
studies by Antony Eastmond and others attest to their continuing significance
and importance at the interface of medieval world cultures. But from these letters
and other memoirs we can also see how such a project offered unique youthful
challenges and experiences, which came to shape lives and later careers.
259
Bibliography
Bryer, A.A.M. 1993. "A Byzantine Duet: Tamara and David Talbot Rice." Cornucopia 1, No. 4:
22-27.
Bryer, A.A.M. and D. Winfield. 1985. The Byzantine Monuments and Topography of the Pontos,
Dumbarton Oaks Studies, 20. Washington D.C.
Bryer, A.A.M., D. Winfield and S. Ballance. 2002. The Post-Byzantine Monuments ofthe Pontos: A
Source Book. Farnham: Routledge.
Byron, R. 1928. The Station: Athos: Treasures and Men. London: Duckworth.
Byron, R. 1930. The Birth of Western Painting: A History of Colour, Form, and Iconography. London:
G. Routledge.
Eastmond, A. 2015. "David Winfield." Dumbarton Oah Papers 68: 2-7.
Millet G. and D. Talbot Rice. 1936. Byzantine Painting at Trebizond, Courtauld Institute
PubÜcations on Near Eastern Art: 1. London.
Talbot Rice, D. 1929. "Notice on Some ReUgious Buildings in the City Vilayet of Trebizond."
Byzantion 5: 47-81.
Talbot Rice, D. 1930. Byzantine Glazed Pottery. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Talbot Rice, D., ed. 1947,1958: The Great Palace of the Byzantine Emperors, First and Second
Reports. London and Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Talbot Rice, D., ed. 1958. Masterpieces ofByzantine Art. Edinburgh and London: Edinburgh
University Press.
Talbot Rice, D., ed. 1968. The Church ofHagia Sophia at Trebizond. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press.
Whitby, M. 2000. "The Great Palace Dig: the Scottish Perspective." In Through the Looking
Glass. Byzantium through British Eyes. Ed. R. Cormack and E. Jeffreys, 45-56. Aldershot:
Routledge.
Winfield, D. 1968. "Middle and Later Byzantine Wall Painting Methods." Dumbarton Oah Papers
22:61-139.
Winfìeld, D. and J. Winfield. 1986. Proportion and Structure of the Human Figure in Byzantine
Wall-Painting and Mosaic. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports.
260
Trebizond, that "long-anticipated city of the Komnenians with its soft and
melodious name" to quote Jakob Fallmerayer, has long lured scholars, attracted by
its unique combination of Byzantine familiarity and Anatolian foreignness.
From 1204 to 1461 the city was at the heart of an empire that proudly proclaimed its
inheritance of Byzantine power, but simultaneously stood apart from it;
a "Greek Emirate" surrounded by Turkish and Caucasian states.
Focusing on the church of Hagia Sophia inTrebizond, with its unusual architecture,
unique sculptural decoration and extraordinary wall paintings, Byzantium's Other
Empire: Trebizond reveals the ways in which these tensions were expressed in риЫіс
in the monuments of the empire. It draws extensively on the photograph and
drawing archives of David and June Winfield, held in the Conway Library at the
Courtauld Institute of Art. The Winfields restored the church from 1959-1963, in a
project masterminded by David Talbot Rice. Here, Talbot Rice's photographs from
1929, as well as those of other early scholars who visited Trabzon, notably Gabriel
Millet in 1893 and Fyodor Uspenskii in 1916-1917 are presented. These scholars
recorded the city, its palaces, churches and monasteries. They provide glimpses of a
lost empire and of the city of Trebizond which has been transformed in the decades
since their visits. This volume also includes the first pubhshed translation into
English of the fourteenth-century chronicle of Michael Panaretos.

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Edited by Antony Eastmond Koç University Suna Kıraç Library

Antony Eastmond Introduction: The Lure of Trebizond 9

Antony Eastmond The Empire of Trebizond 31

Antony Eastmond Hagia Sophia at Trebizond 59

Glenn Peers Trebizond and its World through 103

Barbara Roggema The Prayer of Cyprian on the Reverse 127

Ioanna Rapti The Tower Frescoes: Art at the End 145

Annika Asp-Talwar The Chronicle of Michael Panaretos 173

Pınar Üre Byzantine Past, Russian Present: The Russian 215

James Crow A Tale of Two Davids: The Russell 239

Contributors and Acknowledgements 262

Deborah Swallow Chris Roosevelt

During all my winter walks I always had a wish in my soul to go to Trebizond

Written in the chill of a wintery Constantinople at the start of the seventeenth

We must distinguish between Trebizond, the medieval empire and city of

Trebizond/Trabzon hovers between the worlds of reality and myth. As

5 Xenophon, 1949: 4.7.24.

A generation earlier, the Venetian merchant-traveller Marco Polo (c. 1254-

The Trebizond Cassone, a painted wedding chest now in the Metropoli-

Trebizond's romance grew because it was distant enough to be beyond the

13 Macauley, 1956: 68.

19 Pitton de Tournefort, 1717.

Baskins, C. 2014. "The Bride of Trebizond: Turks and Turkmens on a Florentine

Millet, G. and D.Talbot Rice. 1936. Byzantine Painting at Trebizond. Courtauld

The empire of Trebizond is an important, but largely forgotten outpost of the

The international outlook engendered by these contacts is evident in as­

The History ofthe Empire

In April 1204 the Byzantine empire in Constantinople was in chaos: three

to Jerusalem, but they were diverted to Constantinople instead by their Venetian

9 Cheynet, 1990: nos. 205-23.

Although they lost any hope of regaining Constantinople, within a decade

14 Pachymeres, 1984: V1.34.

Life in the Empire

16 Angold, 1999: 543-68, at 547.

by the exploitation of natural resources and agriculture.18 As a result, our picture

Some emperors emerge as particularly dynamic patrons: recent work has

inations of her brother, the emperor in Constantinople. In the next generation,

21 Hussey, 1995: vol. 1,289-310.

According to the courtier John Lazaropoulos (1310-1369), Alexios

26 Lazaropoulos' Logos in Rosenqvist, 1996: 226.

Lazaropoulos'account of the feast of St. Eugenios reminds us that the em-

29 Lazaropoulos'Lo£Oi in Rosenqvist, 1996:226.

35 Abşık, 2011:1-25; Mango, 1972: 252-3.

The building material of the church is also unusual in a Byzantine context.

The juxtaposition of the human and divine natures of Christ is a major

Educated viewers would have been expected to recognise and understand

12 Caillet бе Joubert, 2012; Vinogradova, 2008; Talbot Rice, 1967.

The theme of exile recurs in a number of places in the church, but it is

Έφύτευσεν ό θεός Παράδεισον εν Εδέμ κατά ανατολάς και εθετο έκεΐ

Έκάθισεν Αδάμ απέναντι του Παραδείσου και την ιδίαν γύμνωσιν

t Adam sat before Paradise and, lamenting his nakedness, he wept.14

14 Millet, 1895: 447, no. 2.

The Cultural World ofTrebizond

Hagia Sophia is an important monument in one final way: it is a crucial document

The church presents one rhetorical response to these encounters. A final,

The appearance of these elements is difficult to interpret: was their incor-

16 See Glenn Peers' essay in this volume.

The empire of Trebizond s culture was largely determined by two elements.

One manuscript, in particular, reveals the "conceptual landscape" of mid-

A very unusual survival also demonstrates the multi-faceted lives of manu-

9 Vikan, 1973:194. See also Belting, 1970: 37, no. 119.

... completed at the end

The international outlook engendered by these contacts is evident in as

Hellenic identity was also an important aspect ofTrapezuntine self-fash

you and heaven above you will be