Anna Komnene
Part of a Series on the Philosophy of History
Today is the 940th anniversary of the birthday of Anna Komnene (in Greek: Ἄννα Κομνηνή, Romanized as Ánna Komnēnḗ; 01 December 1083–1153), who was born a true princess of the blood in the Porphyry chamber of the Great Palace of Constantinople on this date in 1083 AD.
As part of the royal family, Anna Komnene was uniquely well positioned to write the history of her times, as observed in Structure and Features of Anna Komnene’s Alexiad: Emergence of a Personal History by Larisa Orlov Vilimonović:
“The fundamental basis of Anna’s political argument is her testimony to being imperial daughter, ‘born and bred in the purple’ — θυγάτηρ μὲν τῶν βασιλέων Ἀλεξιου καὶ Εἰρήνης, πορφύρας τιθήνημα τε καὶ γέννημα. Anna emphasized her imperial origin as a pivotal motive of her personal narrative, which supplied her with the recognisance of indisputable legitimacy. The first important ideological premise of her imperial legitimacy was primogeniture. The second premise, and more significant than the first one in the time when the Alexiad was written, was porphyrogennesis. Being born in the purple in the time of the Komnenian dynasty was the hallmark of imperial legitimacy. Actually, the time of the Komnenian dynasty changed the ideological conception of porphyrogennesis, when a distinctive Komnenian porphyrogennesis emerged, in which porphyrogennetos was the one who was born into the Komnenian family and not in the purple chamber, Porphyra.”
Komnene also used her social position to become one of the most learned individuals of her time, as related by Georgina Buckler in her Anna Comnena: A Study:
“…in herself and her times and her writings Anna Comnena is surely one of the most interesting figures known to us. If Sappho excites our admiration as the first woman poet, Anna is the first woman historian. If the First Crusade has a perennial charm for our minds, in her Alexias we can compare the only contemporary Greek account of it with those of the Latin Chroniclers. If we once realize that the remarkable dynasty of the Comneni kept the Eastern Empire from dissolution during over 100 years, where else can we get such a detailed picture of its foundation? As Diehl has truly said, in his Figures Byzantines, ‘Pour la psychologie du personnage l’Alexiade demeure un document de premiére importance, et d’une facgon plus générale c’est un livre absolument remarquable’. Remarkable indeed, when we think of Anna’s contemporaries. The ‘leaders of the pilgrims’, as she calls the Crusading Counts, could only make their mark on the treaty between Alexius and Bohemund, while their names had to be ‘written in by the hand of the Bishop of Amalfi dear to God’. Yet at the same period Anna Comnena could quote Homer and the Bible copiously and appositely, draw telling analogies from Greek history true or mythical, and handle terms of theological philosophy with at least perfect assurance. She herself in her Preface makes this claim: ‘I desire to expound in this my writing the deeds of my father . . . being not unversed in letters, not unpractised in rhetoric, . . . having well mastered the rules of Aristotle and the dialogues of Plato, and having furnished my mind with the quadrivium of sciences’ (i.e. Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy, Music). Her military descriptions may show inadequate technical knowledge; possibly, as is suggested by the late Miss A. Gardner in an unpublished paper on ‘Anna Comnena and her Surroundings’, they may be coloured by Homeric recollections of the Trojan War. Yet Oman, in his Art of War, states that she ‘has, for a lady, a very fair grasp of things military’, and to the ordinary reader her battles are usually vivid and always intelligible; while her explanations as to liquid fire and the crossbow are among the loci classici for the two subjects. Her chronology is not impeccable, but it compares favourably with that of much later writers, even Froissart. We may dismiss many of her statements in religious matters as prejudiced or superstitious, but it demands some effort even now to wrestle as she does with Hypostasis and Henosis, or with the false doctrines of Monophysites and Bogomiles.”
There are many testimonies to Komnene’s educational attainment. Here is Leonora Neville in her Anna Komnene: The Life and Work of a Medieval Historian:
“Anna also explicitly testifies to her extreme education. The description of her study of Greek language, rhetoric, philosophy, and mathematics lays claim to a highly elite and unusual educational background. As described, Anna’s education goes far beyond the normal study of classical rhetoric. Anna was educated not only in classical Greek language and rhetoric that would allow her to understand classical texts, but in the philosophical discourses that use that language for substantive discussions of significant moral import. Classical philosophy appears to have been somewhat more widely studied in the twelfth century than it had been in the eleventh, when Michael Psellos claimed to have single-handedly revived its study. Yet it had not become a normal part of the Byzantine educational curriculum. Even basic literacy was uncommon among Byzantine women. George Tornikes’s funeral oration for Anna presents her desire for education as highly unusual for an elite woman. He describes Anna as acting secretly, against the wishes of her parents, in her efforts to study. Given the low levels of education among other aristocratic women, Anna’s statement that she had studied not only classical Greek, but also Aristotle, Plato, and Pythagorean mathematics was a stunningly strong claim. Anna does not merely say she is educated, but that she was among the best-educated people of her era.”
Komnene is primarily known for The Alexiad, which is an account of the reign of her father, Alexios I Komnenos. Here is the poetic opening paragraph:
“Time, which flies irresistibly and perpetually, sweeps up and carries away with it everything that has seen the light of day and plunges it into utter darkness, whether deeds of no significance or those that are mighty and worthy of commemoration; as the playwright says, it brings to light that which had been obscure and shrouds from us what had been visible. Nevertheless, the science of History is a great bulwark against this stream of Time; in a way it checks this irresistible flood, it holds in a tight grasp whatever it can seize floating on the surface and will not allow it to slip away into the depths of oblivion.”
Near the end of the book, Komnene pauses in her narrative of events to reflect on why she was writing history and on her personal connection to the events she related:
“But why am I writing of these things? I perceive that I am digressing from the main theme, because the subject of my history imposes on me a double theme: to relate and to describe the tragedy of the emperor’s life; that is to say, I have to give an account of his struggles and at the same time to do justice to all that has caused me heartfelt sorrow. Among the latter would count his death and the loss of all that I found worthwhile on earth. Yet I remember certain remarks made by my father which discouraged me from writing history, inviting me rather to compose elegies and dirges. For I often heard him speak thus; I even heard him once reprove the empress when she was ordering scholars to write a history of his labours, his many trials and tribulations, so that the record of them might be handed down to future generations; it would be better, he said, to grieve for him and deplore his misfortunes.”
This is a telling insight into a pre-modern conception of a life of great achievement. We are familiar with triumphal narratives of royal achievements, especially when they are written by those personally close to a monarch, but here we find an intrinsically pessimistic conception of life, in which even an emperor considered himself unfortunate.
Further Resources
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https://bibliotekanauki.pl/articles/633608.pdf
