Gregory then set sail from the city of Constantinople,
and he reached the city of Rome on the twenty first day of the month of June,
and there he worshipped the tombs of the holy and most praiseworthy Apostles,
and visited every holy place in the city.… They [Gregory, his father, and
ecclesiastical leaders] went on to a ship and left Rome of the sixteenth of the
month of August, and reached Sicily on the tenth of September, landing in the
city of Palermo. And the bishop of the city of Palermo welcomed them with great
honour, surrounded by his clergy and all the citizens and all the monks and
nuns.
Leontios, Vita S. Gregorii Agrigentini
Pilgrims, messengers, administrators, warriors, saints, and
immigrants: Sicily’s shores welcomed a wide variety of travelers during the
period of Greek dominion. Between Emperor Justinian’s reconquest of the island
from the “barbarian” Ostrogoths in 535 CE and the Muslim invasion beginning in
827 CE, the imperial capital at Constantinople was the primary location that
sent official travelers—governors, military forces, and envoys bearing news—to
the island and received them in reply. It was also the destination of many
traveling Sicilian saints and scholars, since the Greek city was the cultural
as well as political capital of the Byzantine Empire. But Constantinople was by
no means the only location that was closely linked with Sicily through patterns
of travel and communication: many individuals, groups, and the goods and
institutions they brought with them also arrived in Sicily from other locations
of religious, cultural, and political significance throughout the Mediterranean
(especially Rome and Jerusalem), thus tying Sicily into larger networks of
culture, power, and communication in the early medieval Mediterranean region.
The ports of Byzantine Sicily, indeed, bustled with ships
sailing to and from Constantinople, Rome, Egypt, and North Africa. Muslims,
Jews, Latins, and Greeks arrived on the island, at some times for peaceful
purposes and at other times for war. The patterns of this travel demonstrate
two of the fundamental aspects of the position and role of Sicily within the
early medieval Mediterranean: Byzantine Sicily was both a center of political
and cultural activity within the region and a shifting, unstable frontier
between the three major civilizations of the Mediterranean basin. In these
ways, the communication networks in which Greek Sicily was involved reflected
many of the larger changes taking place within the early medieval
Mediterranean. These were centuries in which Muslims, Latin Christians, Greek
Christians, and, to an extent that is hard to quantify in this period, Jews
interacted, fought, and shared common cultures, even as political and cultural
boundaries in the region were beginning to harden.
Indeed, Sicily’s geopolitical significance took on new
meaning during the later centuries of the Byzantine period, as Muslim naval
activity in the area intensified and Byzantium struggled to maintain its
borders. Sicily under Byzantine rule operated both as the far western frontier
of the empire (especially after the loss of Greek territory in mainland Italy
to the Lombards, emphasized by the 751 fall of the Exarchate of Ravenna) and as
a center of official communication between Constantinople and the western
Mediterranean—particularly, Latin Rome and the emergent powers of Muslim North
Africa and Frankish Europe. As the western bulwark of Byzantine power, Sicily
was often the focus of intense military and political activity during these
centuries. Constantinople was determined to maintain its hold over the island
despite the difficulty of such a project when so many forces, both in the
western Mediterranean and at home in Asia Minor, worked contrary to this
agenda. Diplomatically, too, the Greeks often used the island as a site of
political discussions, a source of envoys, or a resting place for messengers
traveling from Constantinople to the European mainland. At the same time,
Byzantine-controlled Sicily never fully pulled away from the orbit of Rome—the
island featured both papal estates and numerous Latin Christian churches—and
thus could act as a sort of meeting ground between the two Christian
civilizations, which were growing increasingly apart in both administrative and
cultural senses, especially after the mid-eighth century. After the loss of
North Africa to the Muslims in the seventh and eighth centuries, Sicily’s
importance to Constantinople was further magnified, even as the imperial
government struggled to maintain its hold over this distant island in the face
of growing Muslim military and naval dominance in the region. Thus, across the
centuries from 535 to 827, the island operated both as a type of physical
boundary—although an unstable and incomplete one—dividing the three civilizations
of the early medieval Mediterranean and as a locus of cross-cultural
communication between them. With ships, goods, information, and people moving
between the Greek, Latin, and Muslim worlds via Sicily, the island was the site
of overlap and conversation among the three civilizations, just as much as—or
even more than—it marked a line of separation between them.
Several categories of travel and communication help to
illuminate the system that developed in the central Mediterranean during these
centuries. The first, and most prevalent, type of travel to and from Sicily
during the Byzantine period was that conducted for political, military, or
diplomatic reasons. The abundance of governmental travel in the extant sources
is partly a result of the preservation of certain types of texts relating to
the Byzantine centuries and partly due to the interests of those sources. Latin
papal letters and Latin and Greek chronicles reveal diplomatic and military
travelers tasked with maintaining or restoring order in the empire’s
territories in Italy, negotiating with the popes in Rome, or, settling peace
treaties with Muslim North Africa.
A second kind of traveler in the Byzantine Mediterranean
world was those people who took to sea in the course of their religious
careers, spiritual pilgrimages, and intellectual pursuits. A number of such
travelers went to or through Sicily on their journeys to Rome, Jerusalem, or
Constantinople, while others were born and raised on the island and traveled
toward the intellectual and religious capital at Constantinople in order to
advance their careers. Greek hagiographies from Sicily and southern Italy record
the lives and deeds of Greek saints from the region, as well as their travels
throughout the Mediterranean world. These hagiographical sources are
particularly numerous for the ninth and tenth centuries, and they therefore
provide instructive anecdotes about individual interactions between Greek monks
and Muslim invaders to Sicily, such as monks who sailed on Muslim ships as
captives or those who defended their lands against the Muslim raiders by
miraculous means. Early medieval Latin pilgrimage accounts, papal letters, and
papal biographies also inform us about travelers to Sicily from Europe.
A third type of travel was that which connected Sicily to
broader economic networks within the Mediterranean system. Virtually none of
the extant sources from this period directly pertain to commerce or the
shipments of the grain annona. Because this type of activity is so rarely
represented in the surviving source material from the Byzantine era, definitive
conclusions are impossible to establish. Interest in Sicily’s contribution to
the early medieval Mediterranean economy is persistent, however, particularly
because of its historical status as a major source of grain for the Roman
Empire. Nonetheless, it is possible to assume that shipments of merchandise
hovered just below the surface of the travel for which we do have records: that
is, for every sea voyage of a saint, official, or pilgrim, we might presume
that an entire shipload of unrecorded mercantile products made the voyage as
well. The bulk of the travel that we can trace may not have been explicitly
economic, but it may imply economic exchange that would have taken place along
similar routes and on the very same ships. Still, Sicily’s economy in the
Byzantine period is impossible to fully understand, and we are left with more
questions than answers.
After Sicily was politically united to Constantinople in the
sixth century—as part of Justinian’s efforts to regain the lost glory of Rome
by means of conquest in the western Mediterranean—it initially held the status
of a provincia and was governed by a praetor, a civil provincial official in
charge of local security, finances, and judicial affairs. However, in the late
seventh century, the island was designated a theme—a major military and
territorial unit of the empire—after which time it was ruled by a stratēgos, a
military general also responsible for financial and judicial administration.
Status as a theme raised the importance of Sicily within the empire, and
particularly within its western regions. At some point in the eighth century,
Constantinople also took direct control of the ecclesiastical administration of
Sicily, transferring it from the jurisdiction of Rome to that of the patriarch
of Constantinople. Sicily’s status as both a military and an ecclesiastical
province necessitated a high level of communication between the island and the
empire’s distant capital. Given that most of the imperial holdings in the West
would fall away over the course of the seventh and eighth centuries,
maintaining control of Sicily was of high importance to Constantinople, even
when that proved to be difficult, and therefore the patterns of communication
between the two locations emphasize the island’s significance in the empire.
Constantinople was an imperial capital that lay at a
considerable distance from Sicily—roughly 1,300 nautical miles, depending upon
the route taken—meaning that communication between the two places was a serious
undertaking that necessitated a long and potentially dangerous journey by sea.
Nonetheless, the emperors at Constantinople regularly dispatched administrative
officials and military forces to the island—even, sometimes, when the capital
was under siege. This type of political communication between Sicily, as the
province, and Constantinople, as its imperial capital, took place for a wide
variety of reasons—from military actions and the suppression of rebellions to
administrative updates, the transmission of important news, and personnel
replacements. Armies, naval fleets, governors, and administrators arrived on
the island at various times to enforce the political order, restore central
rule, or attempt to conquer or recover the island. Sometimes, directed by
leaders from the capital, Sicilian governors or military troops were enlisted
in movements against other regions—for example, Rome or Byzantine territories
in Italy. At other times, Sicily itself was the target of military attacks or
forceful attempts at restoring order after attempted rebellions. Through all of
these acts of travel and communication, it is evident that Sicily played a key
role in the western agenda of the Byzantine Empire. Without the ability to
quantify the communications that linked the province and the capital, it is
nonetheless possible to clearly see the vital role that Sicily played in the
Byzantine conception of its empire and its role in the Mediterranean world
system.
Between the sixth and ninth centuries CE, Sicily remained
dependent on its political capital for governors, military leaders, and
administrators, despite several attempts at revolt against Constantinopolitan
authority. Local officials were appointed from Constantinople and often
returned there when their service ended. Moreover, whenever a Byzantine Sicilian
governor attempted to gain political independence, Constantinople was quick to
quash the rebellion. At the same time, Constantinople depended on Sicily and
its governors both to maintain the conceptual boundaries between Byzantine and
non-Byzantine territories and to push against those supposed borders, as well
as to enforce Constantinople’s will in the western Mediterranean. The balance
of power between Greek Christian, Latin Christian, and North African Muslim
polities in the central Mediterranean was maintained or upset, in large part,
by means of communications in and through Sicily.
The very fact that Constantinople appointed, monitored, and
replaced Sicily’s governors necessitated the establishment of a fluid
communications system between Constantinople and Syracuse. Administrative
travel and the movements of Greek officials to the island and back created the
sea route between Sicily and the eastern Mediterranean, a route which was then
utilized for broader communications between province and capital. That
Constantinople closely watched over the island’s affairs is quite clear. For
example, the letters of Gregory the Great (ca. 540–604, pope from 590), many of
which refer to the administration, agriculture, and churches of Sicily, mention
several times that a praetor had been replaced by Constantinople for his poor
performance or misdeeds. During Gregory’s pontificate, in fact, Sicily was
ruled by four different praetors: Justin (590–592), who was replaced by
Libertinus (593–598), then Leontius (598–600), and Alexander (600–?). In order
for Constantinople to know about poor leadership in Sicily, there had to have
been relatively regular communication between the two locales providing regular
updates on provincial administration. Ships, messengers, overseers, and
replacement officials—both seen in the sources and surmised from other
evidence—must have arrived regularly at Sicily’s ports and been dispatched from
there on the voyage to Constantinople; this traffic was likely even more
regular than our sources can reveal. Regular but unremarkable communications
between province and center—tax collection, appointment of lower-ranking
officials, and the sending of regular administrative news—necessitated frequent
travel to and from Sicily’s ports, but those acts might not have been deemed
worthy of inclusion in the written records that survive. And yet, the arrival
and dispatch of news about the events in Sicily or Constantinople demonstrate
that a significant pattern of communication existed between the two places.
Once established, these lines of regular ship traffic and communication could
then be used for other purposes, such as mercantile, spiritual, and other types
of journeys.
One of the most politically significant acts of travel
between Constantinople and Sicily was the transfer of the imperial capital from
Constantinople to Syracuse in 663 by Emperor Constans II (630–668, emperor from
641). His journey from Constantinople to the island was not taken via the
direct sea route but was mediated through both Byzantine and Latin territories
in mainland Italy, in reverse of many important diplomatic or military journeys
between East and West that included a stop in Sicily: most often, we see
political travelers from Constantinople stopping in Sicily before then
traveling north into Italy. This move of the imperial administration to Sicily
took place after Constans unsuccessfully attempted to defend Byzantine Italy
from the Lombard invaders and then visited Rome. He abandoned the military
endeavor in Italy, retreated to Sicily, and set up his imperial residence in
the provincial capital of Syracuse. During his time in Sicily, Constans
fortified the island’s navy and defensive structure and reformed the imperial
mint at Syracuse. His administrative and military concerns were thus clearly
focused on Sicily itself, both as an important province within the empire and
as an outpost of Byzantine power in the Mediterranean.
While the island served as the seat of the entire imperial
government, Sicily’s importance within the Byzantine Empire reached a high
point, but this was an isolated episode of such imperial attention. Constans’s
imperial rule from Syracuse was cut short by his assassination in 668 CE and a
subsequent attempted rebellion. The emperor was murdered in the baths of Daphne
in Syracuse by one of his servants, named Andrew son of Troilos, after which an
Armenian named Mizizos was proclaimed emperor in Syracuse. Imperial agents
quickly arrived from Constantinople, executed the rebel, and restored order to
the island. The chronicler Theophanes attributed Constans’s murder to his
unpopularity in Constantinople due to his rough handling of his opponents in
the theological debate over the nature of Christ; he had several adversaries,
including his brother Theodore, the Roman pontiff Martin (whom he had exiled),
and the prominent spiritual leader Maximus the Confessor, but it is not clear
who exactly was behind the emperor’s death. On the other hand, the Latin life
of Pope Vitalian in the Liber Pontificalis claims that Constans’s death
resulted from his tyrannical rule over the Sicilian population, suggesting that
local governance rather than imperial politics was to blame for the failure of
this experiment in having a western capital for the empire.
Also unclear is Constans’s motivation for abandoning the
historical capital of Constantinople in favor of a distant island in the West.
A complex combination of political and military needs may have prompted
Constans’s temporary westward move of the imperial court: that is, this may
have been an attempt to reconfigure the empire with its capital closer to the
“heart” of the Mediterranean (and closer to Rome) in response to contemporary
events. The mid-seventh century saw the beginning of large-scale Muslim invasions
of Byzantine territory, and Constans’s activities in Sicily had the (temporary)
effect of strengthening the island’s resistance to the Muslim onslaught. Very
early in his reign—prior to the relocation to Syracuse—Constans had had to
contend with the loss of Alexandria (abandoned by the Byzantine garrison in
642) and Arab movement west into Byzantine North Africa. Constans’s empire also
faced Muslim assaults in Anatolia and Armenia and the first Muslim naval
strikes into the Mediterranean. He responded to the attacks of Arab ships on
eastern Mediterranean islands by initiating diplomatic contact with Muʿāwiya
ibn Abī Sufyān (governor of Syria from 640, caliph, 660/661–680), but warfare
within the Mediterranean continued.
Constans’s transfer to the western capital, therefore, may
have been part of an effort to fortify the position of Sicily in the
Mediterranean against the Muslim naval threat, shoring up Constantinople’s
western provincial outpost and thus, by extension, protecting Constantinople
itself. It is also possible that the move may have been intended to shift the
center of the empire westward, away from the increasingly aggressive Muslim
state, based in nearby Damascus. However, Constans’s son, Constantine IV,
continued to fulfill some functions of the imperial government from
Constantinople while his father was in Syracuse; Constantinople was not
completely abandoned, and indeed the imperial administration returned there
after Constans’s murder. Whatever the specific motivation—whether for defense
or for offense—it is clear that seventh-century Sicily was considered vital to
the safety of the Byzantine government and useful as a possible bulwark against
Muslim advances. Nonetheless, Sicily during this period began to experience the
first of a century-long series of semiregular raids on its southern shores by
Muslim forces from North Africa, bringing the island slowly into the orbit of
the dār al-Islām even as Greek emperors struggled to maintain the island’s
position within the Byzantine Empire.
Constans’s move may also have been a political decision to
protect himself from enemies in Constantinople. Sicily was often utilized as a
site of exile for political enemies of the imperial family, and a type of
self-exile may have been one of the motives for the transfer by the emperor,
who had made plenty of enemies with his policies on matters of theological
doctrine. Sicily’s status as a theme provided Constans with a location that was
at once far from the center of action in Constantinople and administratively important
enough to serve as the capital of the empire. Moreover, Syracuse and
Constantinople needed to have already had a regular and dependable flow of
communications between them in order for the Sicilian capital to have served,
even briefly, as a viable seat of rule for the empire as a whole. The
preexistence of this communications system shows that the Byzantines had been
sending governors and officials and messengers to the island regularly—in fact,
much more regularly than the extant sources demonstrate—and that Constans knew
he could rule adequately from there. This already-established route of
communications facilitated the transfer of the central government to such a
(relatively) remote edge of the empire and allowed for the flow of information
from the periphery necessary for governance of the center. At the same time,
the location of the imperial government in Sicily would not and could not have
taken place if the island had not been considered an integral part of the
imperial agenda in relation to the western Mediterranean powers.
The choice of a borderland region as a temporary imperial
capital also speaks to the importance of the western frontier zone in
seventh-century Byzantium. While much of the historical scholarship has focused
on the Syrian frontier with Islam and the Balkan frontier with the Slavs, the
western frontier with Islam was also clearly considered vital for protecting
Byzantine interests. This was an empire focused on its limes—its boundaries
with the Latin world, the Greek territories in southern Italy that were
breaking away, the Bulgars and other groups on the Balkan frontier, and the
Muslim world on the Syrian frontier and, indeed, in the central Mediterranean
region. Constans’s decision may have been one intended to shore up the frontier
in one region, by means of his imperial presence; if so, his choice to
strengthen an island in the Mediterranean, rather than the Syrian or Balkan
frontier, may reflect his perspective on the importance of this particular
border zone within the empire as a whole.
