Chronographia

Summary

The Chronographia of Michael Psellos is a history of the Byzantine court across roughly a century, from the accession of Basil II in 976 to the reign of Michael VII Doukas in the 1070s. It is arranged by reign rather than by year and covers fourteen emperors and empresses. Psellos knew most of its later rulers personally, served several of them as secretary, adviser or tutor, and writes as an eyewitness of palace life. The library holds no text of the work: the only complete English translation, by E. R. A. Sewter (London, 1953; later reissued as Fourteen Byzantine Rulers), is still in copyright, so this entry offers a description and a study guide but no quotations. The early reigns rest on older informants. Basil II emerges as a severe, unmarried, tireless soldier who doubled the empire's power and filled its treasury, and his brother Constantine VIII as an easygoing pleasure-lover. Romanos III Argyros, married to Constantine's daughter Zoe, wastes his energy on building and dies in his bath. Michael IV the Paphlagonian, Zoe's young second husband, is a capable ruler afflicted by seizures and dropsy, guided by his brother John the Orphanotrophos; he dies a monk. His nephew Michael V exiles Zoe, the city rises in her defense, and Psellos, present as a young official, describes the crowds, the flight of Michael V to the Stoudios monastery and his blinding. The longest section treats Constantine IX Monomachos, Zoe's third husband, a cheerful and generous ruler who installs his mistress Skleraina at court beside the aged empress, suffers crippling gout, and spends freely; Psellos, now prominent, describes his own rise and his studies. After Constantine come the sole rule of Theodora, the last of the Macedonian dynasty, and the brief reign of Michael VI, overthrown by the generals' revolt that brings Isaac I Komnenos to the throne in 1057. Psellos takes part in the embassy to Isaac and describes the negotiations in detail. Isaac's reforms and his illness and abdication in 1059 close the first part of the work. The second part, written later under the Doukas emperors, is more favorable to its patrons. It covers Constantine X Doukas, the regency of his widow Eudokia, her marriage to the general Romanos IV Diogenes, his defeat and capture by the Seljuks at Manzikert in 1071, and the accession of Psellos's pupil Michael VII, whom he praises warmly. Throughout, Psellos sketches character with unusual vividness, attends to faces, voices and bodily ailments, and places himself near the center of events. The work survives in a single medieval manuscript in Paris.

Top Lessons

• Character shapes the fortunes of a state

  Psellos explains events chiefly through the personalities of rulers: Basil's discipline, Constantine VIII's indulgence, Monomachos's generosity, Isaac's severity. His portraits invite students to ask how far a single person's virtues and faults decide a nation's course.

• The witness who is also a player

  Psellos was present at many of the events he records and often describes his own advice and influence. This makes his account vivid and also asks readers to weigh how a participant's loyalties and memory shape his story, especially in the later part written under his patrons.

• The people and the purple

  The rising of 1042 shows the people of Constantinople defending the legitimate heirs of the Macedonian dynasty against an emperor who had exiled them. Psellos shows that even an autocrat depended on the loyalty of the city.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

Psellos was learned in medicine as in the other sciences and observed the bodies of rulers closely. His account of Michael IV's seizures, which the emperor tried to hide behind curtains and attendants, and of his later swelling with dropsy, is among the fullest descriptions of an epileptic ruler from the Middle Ages; the identification of the condition follows Psellos's own description and is a reading, not a modern diagnosis. He describes the severe gout and joint pain that crippled Constantine IX, the death of Romanos III in his bath, and the blinding of Michael V after the rising of 1042, a common Byzantine way of disqualifying a ruler. In Isaac I's final illness Psellos says he examined the emperor and judged his condition from the pulse, an instance of a scholar-courtier practicing the Galenic medicine he had studied. These passages make the work a useful source for medicine at the Byzantine court.

• Reign of Michael IV

  The emperor's seizures, the efforts to conceal them, and his final illness with dropsy.

• Reign of Michael V

  The blinding of the deposed emperor and his uncle after the rising of 1042.

• Reign of Constantine IX Monomachos

  The emperor's gout and the pain that crippled his hands and feet.

• Reign of Isaac I Komnenos

  Psellos at the bedside of the ailing emperor, judging his condition by the pulse before his abdication.