Византия, Венеция и средновековните адриатически сфери на морска мощ и влияние, C. 700 - 1453 / Byzantium, Venice And The Medieval Adriatic Spheres Of Maritime Power And Influence, C. 700 - 1453

 Никола Бенин

Преди няколко години, когато директорите на Британските училища в Атина и Рим, д-р Кати Морган и д-р Кристофър Смит, обмисляха начини за укрепване на връзките между техните две институции, те решиха да започнат съвместно начинание. Целта беше да се съберат учени, работещи в съответните им области на интерес, за да се стимулират нови изследвания в региони, споделени както от Гърция, така и от Италия, независимо дали през далечните епохи пр.н.е. или през по-нови исторически периоди.

Предложението ми за тема, фокусирана върху Адриатика, изглежда генерира значителен потенциал както като праг за тези, които пътуват до Византия на Изток, така и като точка за влизане в Северна Италия и трансалпийска Европа за тези, които идват на Запад. За мен е голямо удоволствие да приветствам книгата, която е резултат от това разследване. Приличайки на огромен вътрешен фиорд, Адриатика се състои от три басейна, северен, централен и южен в протока Отранто, който води в Йонийско море и към Средиземно море.

В най-тесните си места, както на север, така и на юг, може да се плава удобно през лятото с попътен вятър в дълъг ден, между единадесет и дванадесет часа. Като пътна артерия, повечето маршрути север-юг прегръщат адриатическите брегове, които представляват големи разлики. От италианска страна, западният край има дълги пясъчни плажове, които традиционно не осигуряват много безопасно акостиране, а малките му естествени пристанища не са подходящи за по-големи флоти. Изграждането от Юлий Цезар на много по-голямо пристанище в Класе на изток, съчетано с друго в Мизенум на запад, осигурява военноморски бази за двете римски флоти, прикрепени към източния и западния басейн на Средиземно море.

От Класе установените морски пътища свързват Равена и долината на река По с Аквилея на север, с Пула (Пола) в Истрия точно отсреща и по-на юг със Сплит (Салона). Тъй като Бари и Отранто станаха по-активни пристанища в Южна Италия, те осигуриха сравними връзки с Дуръс (Dyrrachion) и Задар (Zara) и с големите острови Корфу (Kerkyra) и Кефаления и Закинтос в Йонийско море. През късната античност западното крайбрежие е принадлежало на римския свят и е било тясно свързано с хинтерланда чрез римската пътна система.

За разлика от това, източната част на Адриатика е дълбоко разчленена и разпокъсана от многобройни острови, разпръснати по крайбрежието на Истрия, Хърватия и Далмация, с много пристанища, скрити пиратски бази и малки независими общности. Доминиращата линия на Динарските Алпи, която се спуска към морето в карстови скали по протежение на няколко залива, също изолира крайбрежните региони от вътрешността им. С много по-малко стабилни сухопътни връзки с континенталните сили на вътрешността, жителите на източните брегове естествено гледаха към морето за своите контакти, а моряците и морските търговци практикуваха каботаж или превозване на търговия с платна между центровете, вместо да използват сухопътен транспорт.

И все пак тази географска обстановка може да бъде трансформирана, както когато Нарсес, византийският военен командир, през 551 г. наема местни хора да построят понтонни мостове през многото речни вдлъбнатини около северния край на Адриатика, които обикновено правят невъзможно армията да марширува по този маршрут . В резултат на това той изненада готите, когато силите му се появиха на крайбрежния път от Аквилея.

Докато северната и южната част на Адриатическо море представляват еднакво поразителни различия, усещането за единството на морския коридор при свързването на провинциите Венеция и Хистрия с Епирос и Сицилия беше много ясно за онези, които направиха древни карти като Tabula Peutigeriana, както и първите портулански карти векове по-късно. Това предложи допълнителни причини за изследване на ролята на Адриатика и дейността в нея от решаващия преходен период от шести до осми век и през Средновековието до петнадесети век. През този дълъг хронологичен период документите, събрани в този том, демонстрират как Адриатика е служила като толкова важна връзка между Запада и Изтока.

Собственият ми интерес към Адриатика произтича от изследването на ролята на Равена за свързването на Константинопол със Запада, както се случи между 540 и 751 г., когато беше управляван от „Кралицата Град“, столица на източната половина на Римската империя. В допълнение, от 402 г. Равена е служила като sedes regiae, управляващият град на западния римски свят и е развила сериозен административен капацитет, съсредоточен върху императорския двор, който на свой ред се превръща в двор на готските крале и след това на византийските екзархи назначени за управители от Константинопол. С всички атрибути на правителствен център, градът беше привлякъл много амбициозни млади мъже и жени да намерят работа и да направят кариера, изгоден брак и богатство. По този начин Равена беше ясно различна от древен Рим, който се превърна в град, почти изцяло доминиран от своите епископи, които наблюдаваха неговата християнска роля.

Several years ago, when the Directors of the British Schools at Athens and Rome, Dr Cathy Morgan and Dr Christopher Smith, considered ways of strengthening the links between their two institutions, they decided to inaugurate a collaborative venture. The aim was to bring together scholars working in their respective areas of interest to stimulate new research in regions shared by both Greece and Italy, whether in the distant eras BCE or during more recent historical periods.

My proposal of a topic focused on the Adriatic seemed to generate considerable potential, both as a threshold for those travelling to Byzantium in the East and as a point of entry to northern Italy and transalpine Europe for those coming to the West. It is a great pleasure to welcome the book that results from this investigation. Resembling a vast inland fjord, the Adriatic consists of three basins, the northern, central and southern one at the Straits of Otranto that leads into the Ionian Sea and on to the Mediterranean.

At its narrowest points, both north and south, it can be comfortably sailed in the summer with a fair wind on a long day, between eleven and twelve hours. As a thoroughfare, most north-south routes hug the Adriatic shores, which present major differences. On the Italian side, the western edge has long sandy beaches that traditionally did not provide much safe mooring, and its small natural harbours were inadequate for larger fleets. Julius Caesar’s construction of a much larger port at Classe on the east, matched by another at Misenum on the west, provided naval bases for the two Roman fleets attached to the eastern and western basins of the Mediterranean.

From Classe, established sea routes linked Ravenna and the Po Valley to Aquileia in the north, to Pula (Pola) in Istria directly opposite and further south to Split (Salona). As Bari and Otranto became more active ports in southern Italy they provided comparable links to Durrés (Dyrrachion) and Zadar (Zara) and to the major islands of Corfu (Kerkyra) and Kephalenia and Zakynthos in the Ionian Sea. In Late Antiquity the western coast belonged to the Roman world and was closely related to its hinterland by the Roman road system.

In contrast, the eastern Adriatic is deeply indented and fragmented by numerous islands scattered along its Istrian, Croatian and Dalmatian coastline, with many harbours, hidden pirate bases and small independent communities. The dominant line of the Dinaric Alps that descend to the sea in karst cliffs along several inlets also isolated coastal regions from their hinterland. With much less stable land links to the mainland powers of the interior, inhabitants of the eastern coasts naturally looked seaward for their contacts and mariners and seafaring merchants practised a cabotage or carrying trade under sail between centres rather than using land transport.

Yet this geographical setting could be transformed, as when Narses, the Byzantine military commander, in 551 employed local people to build pontoon bridges across the many river indents around the northern head of the Adriatic that normally made it impossible to march an army along this route. As a result, he surprised the Goths when his forces appeared on the coastal road from Aquileia.

While the northern and southern parts of the Adriatic present equally striking differences, a sense of the maritime corridor’s unity in linking the provinces of Venetia and Histria with Epiros and Sicily was very clear to those who made ancient maps such as the Tabula Peutigeriana as well as the first portulan maps centuries later. This suggested additional reasons for examining the role of the Adriatic and activity within it from the crucial transitional period of the sixth to eighth centuries and on through the Middle Ages into the fifteenth century. Across this long chronological span, the papers collected in this volume demonstrate how the Adriatic served as such a significant link between West and East.

My own interest in the Adriatic stemmed from an exploration of the role of Ravenna in linking Constantinople to the West, as it did between 540 and 751 when it was ruled by the ‘Queen City’, capital of the eastern half of the Roman empire. In addition, from 402 Ravenna had served as the sedes regiae, the ruling city of the western Roman world and had developed a serious administrative capacity centred on the imperial court, which became in turn the court of the Gothic kings and then of the Byzantine exarchs appointed as governors by Constantinople. With all the trappings of a governmental hub, the city had attracted many ambitious young men and women to find employment and make a career, an advantageous marriage and a fortune. Ravenna was thus distinctly different from ancient Rome, which became a city almost entirely dominated by its bishops, who oversaw its Christian role.

In addition, through its port at Classe, Ravenna was intimately connected with the east Mediterranean. From Constantinople it received asteady stream of career diplomats and military commanders, who also brought news of new artistic fashions, architectural schemes, theological debates and scientific and philosophical developments.

From Cyprus it imported portable ovens (clibani); from the east Mediterranean amphorae used as acoustic measures in church domes; from Gaza and the Aegean sweet wines - also carried in amphorae - and from Alexandria, its writing material, papyrus, wheat and dates probably stored in baskets of woven palm fronds, as well as Eastern spices, glass, china and silks that entered the Mediterranean world via Egypt.

Ravenna was also well connected with the West, importing all manner of ceramic vessels with distinct functions from Carthage, the centre of African Red Slip ware, as well as grain and the famous fish paste, garum, which flavoured so many Late Antique dishes from places in the western Mediterranean like Carthagena. The church of Ravenna had profitable estates in Sicily, which provided grain, olive oil and wine and much of this imported grain appears to have been sold on to other distributors in northern Italy.

I was also intrigued by the description of the Adriatic provided by an anonymous cosmographer based in Ravenna around the year 700. Unlike other ancient geographers who wrote a Mediterranean periplous (a journey around the entire “Roman pond’) that started at the Pillars of Hercules and worked clockwise around the sea, the anonymous cosmographer began in the city of his birth, nobelissima Ravenna, moving down the western coast of the Adriatic, naming all the ports and cities familiar to the Roman world.

He proceeded through the Strait of Messina and followed the west coast of Italy around to Gaul and Spain, across to Africa, east to Alexandria and thence to Constantinople, moving anticlockwise. After a complete tour of the Black Sea, his route returned to the Mediterranean to hug the coasts of Greece and finally to enter the Adriatic from the south. In his report on the eastern coast from Durrés (Dyrrachion) to Ravenna, a distance of 16,000 miles, he stated that there were seventy-two cities and listed sixty-nine, many of them well known. He included some inland centres as well as a large number of islands, many with unfamiliar names such as Nisiris, Sarona and Malata, not recorded on ancient maps, others whose names, he said, were not known.

In adding to the lists of ports and centres familiar to Late Antique geographers, the anonymous cosmographer provided a base for comparison with later periods when different points became significant and new centres replaced older ones. It is, nonetheless, striking that when Venice gained dominance over the Adriatic, it was precisely along the eastern coastline that it sought to impose its rule, often in the same key places that had been noted by the Ravenna scholar.

The cosmographer’s considerable interest in the seventh- and eighthcentury Adriatic suggested that a much broader exploration of the sea as a vital link between Istria, Dalmatia, north-eastern Italy and the wider Mediterranean to the south might be a useful collaborative project. My hope that it might lead to new ways of investigating the unity or break-up of the Mediterranean world, theories that had long dominated historical analysis, as well as the much revised Pirenne thesis on the impact of Arab expansion in its trading patterns, is brilliantly summarised in the opening chapter by Richard Hodges.

The project also offered an opportunity to involve archaeologists who had been working in Albania, Dalmatia and Croatia together with those from much better-known sites in Italy and the east Mediterranean. This is demonstrated by the work of Richard Hodges and Joanita Vroom from Butrint and case studies by Sauro Gelichi on new settlements in the northern Adriatic, by Trpimir Vedri3 on Dalmatia and by Jean-Marie Martin on Apulia. It promised a confrontation of older and more recently elaborated theories of the rise of Venice and its role in the Adriatic, addressed by Stefano Gasparri, Sauro Gelichi, Peter Frankopan and Michael Angold.

It also raised the issue of the Byzantine failure to defend Ravenna, which fell decisively under Lombard control in 751 only to be conquered by the Franks, summoned by Pope Stephen II, developments that profoundly altered the formation of western Europe, as well as Constantinople’s determination to consolidate imperial loyalty among the inhabitants of the eastern shores of the Adriatic and its success in preserving influence in Apulia.

These aspects are addressed by Francesco Borri in his study of the eclipse of Byzantium’s imperial presence in the Adriatic, by Tom Brown in the development of Ravenna and other cities post-751 and by Jean-Marie Martin for the development of southern Italy. Here the use of seals, icons and coins by Pagona Papadopoulou, Magdalena Skoblar and Trpimir Vedris add considerably to our grasp of the material culture of the Adriatic.

Finally, towards the end of the period under consideration, this project addressed aspects of Venetian control over the Adriatic that demonstrated how Venice gradually broke free from its loyalty to Constantinople and the ideal of Christian unity was destroyed by the crusades, a process illuminated by Michael Angold and Peter Frankopan. Given the replacement of the Byzantine imperial capital by the Latin empire established after the Fourth Crusade, this development had to be examined from several different angles.

Analysing the evidence for Venetian activity in the eastern Adriatic, Oliver Jens Schmitt corrects the national perspectives that dominated previous research, employing the archive of Kortula, while Guillaume Saint-Guillain shows how the Venetians recorded their own conquests, though the surviving documents are copies and epitomes of original treaties. Christopher Wright looks at the changes in Venetian participation in the crusading venture and Elisabeth Crouzet-Pavan draws attention to some of the consequences of Venice’s ambitions in the migration of Albanians and Dalmatians to the city.

The idea of a conference that would unite the interests of both British Schools of  Archaeology has now been realised in the extremely interesting contributions to this volume. I would like to record my special thanks to the Directors of the British Schools of Athens and Rome at the time, to the British Academy for funding the project and to Kirsty Stewart, who took on the major editorial role to bring the project into final form. Above all, I salute Magdalena Skoblar, who developed it into a practical realisation as the conference that took place in Rome in January 2015 and then persuaded the contributors to deliver their work. Without her insistence and dedication, the volume would never have found its printed form in such a fascinating collection of papers.