(Portrait of the Princess Anna Komnene, unknown artist or date, via
Ancient Origins and Pinterest)
Anna Komnene (1083-1153 CE) was
an extraordinary woman. She was an erudite scholar of multiple intellectual
fields and a cunning political schemer who is believed to have attempted to
climb to ultimate power in the Byzantine Empire. Yet, her greatest claim to
fame resulted from her ambitious history, The
Alexiad, which detailed the military and diplomatic accomplishments of her
father, Emperor Alexios I Komnenos, the emperor of the Byzantine Empire from
1081-1118 CE.
The
Brilliant Princess
(Medieval illustration of Emperor Alexios Komnenos (r. 1081-1118),
[Public Domain] via Creative Commons (Cropped))
Anna Komnene was born to
Emperor Alexios and Empress Eirene in 1083, just two years after Alexios
wrested the imperial throne from his predecessor, Emperor Nikephoros III
Botaneiates, after a typical Roman civil war. As a child, Anna gained a broad,
but thorough, education. She was interested in many topics—literature (plus grammar
and rhetoric), medicine, philosophy, metaphysics and geography. She continued
to be fascinated by intellectual pursuits all her life. She would later gather
salons of great thinkers and give them patronage to encourage them to continue
writing and making new discoveries. She also helped with the construction of
the important Nichomachean Ethics,
which served as a standard for the study of philosophy and the works of
Aristotle in the Western civilizations.
The imperial family was
always on the lookout for political alliances. Unfortunately for Anna, that
meant arranged marriage. While she was still very, very young, Anna Komnene was
betrothed to a man named Constantine Doukas, but the man mysteriously
disappeared and the betrothal was void. In 1097 CE, however, when Anna was only
fourteen years old, she was married to Nikephoros Bryennios, a man who would be
a close friend and advisor to the emperor, especially during the later parts of
Alexios’ reign. Though this match, too, was an arranged marriage, Anna Komnene
grew to love her husband truly and deeply. When she wrote The Alexiad, the then widowed Anna Komnene accompanied every
mention of her husband with passionate exclamations of love, mourning and
longing.
Anna Komnene lived an
exciting life, at least while her father lived. As a princess of the Byzantine
Empire, she had a unique perspective on the events that occurred in her
lifetime and could meet face-to-face with many of the people who would later
feature in her history. Her connection to the imperial family would also become
ceaselessly useful in her search for source material—she learned where
information was archived and how it could be obtained.
(John II Comnenus, Byzantine emperor, and his wife, Irene, with Madonna
and child. Mosaic in Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, ca. 1118, [Public Domain] via
Creative Commons)
After Emperor John II
ascended to the imperial throne, Anna Komnene continued to plot, hoping to
usurp power from her little brother. Nevertheless, John II and his network of
agents discovered the plot, seized Anna’s property and forcibly retired her
into a convent. Anna Komnene likely was the mastermind of the plot, for her
husband, Nikephoros Bryennios, remained in fairly good standing until his death
in 1138 CE. Even though being exiled to a convent clearly annoyed Anna Komnene
to no end, it also gave her decades of downtime to prepare and write her
greatest achievement—The Alexiad.
Scholars surmise that Anna Komnene wrote her history during the last decade of
her life, a timeframe dating from 1143-1153 CE.
The History of Anna Komnene
Most historians recognize Anna Komnene as the
first female historian, or at least The
Alexiad is the first known history to have been written by a woman. As for
her motive, different historians propose different reasons about why Anna wrote
her history. Some claim she used the book to undermine Alexios’ imperial
successors (she has few complimentary words for them) and to reassert her bid
for the throne. Other historians take Anna Komnene at her word when she claimed
her goal was to leave a record, for the sake of posterity, about the eventful life
of her father, Emperor Alexios.
(Painting of Alexios I Komnenos, from a Greek manuscript in the Vatican
library, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons)
Alexios Komnenos was the
emperor of the Byzantine Empire in an unbelievably chaotic time of history, and
his daughter, Anna Komnene, was alive to witness most of the major events that
occurred in his reign. Even though Anna Komnene restricted her history to her
father’s lifetime, there was no shortage of historical happenings for her to
cover.
The Alexiad
consists of a prologue and fifteen books, and extends, at least in English
translations, to nearly five hundred pages. In scope, Anna began her history at
Alexios’ early military career in the army of the Byzantine Empire. The history
follows the life of Alexios, though sometimes selectively and chronologically
incorrect, from war to endless war, until the book ends with the death of the
emperor in 1118 CE. While Anna Komnene collected all of this history into a
concise text, she also imbued the prose with a distinct tone and personality—it
is one of her unique characteristics as a historian. Anna Komnene was never afraid
to give her personal opinion on people or events, and she filled her history
with ample allusions to classical epic poems and mythology. In fact, the title
of The Alexiad was meant to draw a
comparison between the war-torn life of her father and the legendary warriors
of The Iliad.
Even though The Alexiad is a history about the
events in Emperor Alexios’ life, not all events were treated equally. Anna
Komnene focused most of her time on five major instances. The first is the
invasion of the Normans into the Byzantine Empire from 1081-1085, which was led
by Robert Guiscard and his son, Bohemond. Next, Anna shifted her focus to the recurring
invasions of the Pechenegs, which occurred in the 1080s and 1090s. That was a
chaotic time where the Pechenegs posed a major threat, but Alexios also had to
be simultaneously cautious of the Cuman and Turkish forces that were all
operating in his empire. The climax of the history is considered by many to be
Anna Komnene’s book about the First Crusade (1095 (pope’s speech)-1099 (capture
of Jerusalem)). There, she wrote valuable eyewitness descriptions of the
crusade leaders and their dealings with Emperor Alexios. Another important
section of her history deals with Byzantine-Turkish relations, though this
section is where most of Anna Komnene’s errors can be found. Finally, the last
major historical event covered by The
Alexiad consists of Bohemond’s invasion of the empire in 1107. Anna
Komnene’s history covers many more events and people than these five, but the
majority of the book deals with these issues.
There is no known list of
sources recorded by Anna Komnene, but scholars suspect she had an abundance of
records and materials. In The Alexiad,
Anna claimed that she gathered written accounts (and possibly oral interviews)
from veterans of her father’s military to support her history. Along with the
accounts of veterans, she must have had access to a military archive. In
addition, she managed to obtain several documents, letters and treaties,
several of which she wholly quoted in her history. She also admitted that she
relied on her own personal upbringing and experience—she was the daughter of
Emperor Alexios and knew many of his trusted generals. She especially relied on
her own senses for describing the appearances of people. She seemed to enjoy assessing
people by their looks, and compared many a warrior to the legendary heroes of
Homer’s epics.
The result of her work is a
timeless piece of history—it is still read by students, teachers and history
enthusiasts to this day, even after more than eight hundred years.
Written by C. Keith Hansley.
Check out some great quotes from Anna Komnene, HERE.
- The Alexiad by Anna Komnene, translated by E. R. A. Sewter. New Yok: Penguin Books, 2009.
- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Anna-Comnena
- http://dangerouswomenproject.org/2016/04/20/anna-komnene/
- http://www.womeninworldhistory.com/heroine5.html
- http://www.medievalists.net/2016/02/challenge-to-the-throne-the-byzantine-princess-anna-komnene-and-conspiracies-1118-1119/
- http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01531a.htm
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