John S. Ott
Spring 2003
UNST 245G – Intro to Medieval Studies

For next week: Please read: Books 10 and 11 (read all); and Book Fifteen (pp. 505 [bottom]-515).
I would also like you to read the document concerning Islamic perspectives on the crusades that is found at the link below.  If necessary, I will adjust the syllabus to leave more time for discussion of the Alexiad next week.

Usmah Ibn Munqidh (1095-1188): Autobiography

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/usamah2.html

If you are feeling a bit lost:

Note that there are genealogical tables and a list of emperors at the back of the book, pp. 520-523.  Note also that Alexius I, Anna’s father, and Anna, were linked to the House of Ducas by marriage: Alexius through his wife Irene, Anna through Irene (her mother) and her first betrothed, Constantine.  Maps appear on pp. 24-29, and don’t forget the textbook.

Notes to text:

Anna Comnena, daughter of Byzantine Emperor Alexius I Comnenus (r. 1081-1118) and “born in the purple” in 1083, was the oldest of seven children.  Her brother, John (II, r. 1118-1143), succeeded their father to the throne.  For this, and because Anna’s first husband Constantine had had a lawful claim to rule after Alexius, she had a fair amount of emnity toward him.  At any rate, Constantine died at an early age and Anna married a second husband, the learned Nicephorus Bryennius, who was also of imperial stock.  Owing to her privileged birth and status, Anna was exceptionally well-placed, and well-educated, to comment on the affairs of her father’s reign.  The Alexiad itself she composed at an advanced age, in the late 1140s, and in addition to it she wrote poetry and a surviving will and testament.

 The Alexiad is the history of a political rule, and the domestic and foreign affairs, of the Byzantine Empire during an important phase of its history.  At the center of many of the selections we will be reading is Alexius’s ongoing military campaigns against the Norman Robert Guiscard (the “wily one,” d. 1085).  Robert and his brother Roger had gradually conquered southern Italy and formed from it the kingdom of Sicily (see the map on p. 145 of Rosenwein, A Short History).  Southern Italy was at this time religiously and culturally pluralistic, including Frankish, Italian, Muslim, Jewish, and Greek peoples and languages.  Guiscard had long-standing designs on the lands of the Byzantine Empire, and launched a series of attacks on Byzantine possessions in North Africa and Byzantium proper.  We will also be reading in these chapters about Alexius’s political career, his family (including Anna’s brief passages about herself), religious heresy, and about imperial intrigue.  In future readings we will read her descriptions of the first crusaders to arrive at Constantinople (1097).
 

Questions:

(1)  How would you evaluate Anna as a historian, and by what specific standards would you judge her?

(2)  What people, personal characteristics, and events interest Anna the most?  What does her subject matter tell us about her interests as an historian?  Who or what does she disregard or look down upon, and who or what does she admire (think here in terms of conduct, behavior, morals, and so on)?  Why?

(3) What is Anna’s view of the Roman (Byzantine) empire?

(4) How does Byzantine society and politics differ from that in the Iceland of Njal’s Saga?  Are there any similarities?

(5) What is Anna’s attitude toward the crusading “Franks” who come to Byzantium?

(6)  What is Usama Ibn Munqidh's view of the Latin Franks?  Which of their qualities does he praise, and which does he disparage?