T. H. Benner’s thesis, Die Syrisch-Jakobitische Kirche under Byzantiner Herrschaft im 10. und 11. Jahrhundert, contains a translation into German of both the Greek text of Demetrius of Cyzicus against the Armenian Jacobites, and of an Arabic version of the same text. I fear that the pseudo-theological noodling is something that I will not turn into English, particularly as the statements about Armenian beliefs are largely false. But Dr B.’s introduction caught my eye.
12.3. The Treatise of Demetrios of Cyzicus on Jacobite and Armenian Doctrine of Faith and Liturgy.
Constantine VIII, the younger brother of Basil II, ascended the throne on December 16, 1025. Only now, as an old man, did he emerge from the shadow of his immensely powerful brother. He commissioned Demetrios, the Metropolitan of Cyzicus, to compose a treatise on Jacobite and Armenian theology and religious practice. This was a sign of the impending changes in imperial religious policy, which under Basil II had consisted in the tacit toleration of heretical groups.
Whereas up to 1025 the Melkite episcopate had been able to take action against Jacobites and Armenians only in isolated instances (at Antioch and Sebasteia in 986), since reasons of state forbade unsettling the endangered eastern provinces unduly, a shift in the balance of power between emperor and episcopate took place over the following few years—to the emperor’s disadvantage, although he himself drove this development forward. The increase in ecclesiastical power since the accession of Alexios, the former abbot of the Stoudios Monastery, who became patriarch on the very day of Basil II’s death, December 15, 1025, manifested itself in the fact that it became possible to persuade the emperor to enforce the state’s legislation against heretics, which had never been repealed. This development was to come fully into effect under Constantine’s successor, Romanos III Argyros.
Demetrios’s treatise, which was preceded by an earlier work that the metropolitan now excerpted, pursued the aim of proving the Jacobite and Armenian churches heretical in two respects: in their doctrine and in their religious practice. It becomes clear that, five hundred years after the great Christological controversies, knowledge of the Monophysite churches had greatly diminished. The metropolitan attributes to them a Monophysite theology that the Jacobites themselves had rejected for centuries.
The bigoted and incessantly quarrelsome Byzantine clergy were not mollified by this foolish, indeed disastrous policy, and the infighting continued. The same patriarch Alexius I was willing to crown Michael IV as emperor, but only in return for a bribe of fifty pounds of gold[ref]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanos_III_Argyros[/ref]. But in June 1037 he was obliged to issue a statement in response to demands for his own resignation by various bishops, including Demetrius of Cyzicus. This is summarised as follows by Grumel in Les Regestes des actes du Patriarcat de Constantinople, vol. 3 (1932), p.347, entry 842:
Warning to the metropolitans (among others Demetrius of Cyzicus, Antony of Nicomedia, and the two brother metropolitans, one of Side and the other of Ancyra), who claimed that his elevation was anticanonical and wanted to depose him in order to replace him with John, the brother of the emperor Michael IV. — He will resign on condition that all the metropolitans whom he has ordained during the eleven and a half years that he has been patriarch be deposed, and that an anathema be pronounced against the three emperors whom he has crowned.
Nothing can save a state whose leading men behave in such a way.
In school we learned that Romanos III Argyros brought down the Byzantine Empire by abolishing the αλληλεγγυον tax. Under that law of Basil the Great if the poor could not afford to pay their tax. The idea was to protect them from the sort of predatory behavior by the strong who would force them to sell to them their farmland when the taxes were unbearable. Since we learned that on 5th and 8th grade, I have learned of several other factors than the simple explanation is school. You do mention the issue with the Armenians, which was manifestly stupid when you consider that about 25% of the Byzantine army of the time was ethnic Armenians. Also while in the 10th century we have the empire ruled by members of the military aristocracy, such as Nicephorus Phocas and Ioannis Tzimiskes, in the 11th we get emperors that were members of the urban aristocracy that took measures to curtail the military aristocracy’s power by weakening the army. Professor Kaldellis gives emphasis to the triple military threat that the empire starts facing after 20 years of peace: the Normans in Italy, Pechenegs in the Balkans and Turks in the East.
That’s really interesting – thank you!
I realized after posting the second sentence is partial: If the poor could not afford to pay their tax in their tax jurisdiction, the wealthy of the same jurisdiction were responsible for paying it. That was the αλληλεγγυον. Sorry!
Thank you!