CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2019
| Author | Chen, Amanda Coco |
|---|---|
| Title | Crafting the ideal Christian general in Leo VI the Wise's Taktika |
| Summary | Early Byzantine military manuals have been drawing more attention in the last decade with the steady publication of critical editions and translations. One of the manuals currently experiencing renewed interest is the Taktika of Emperor Leo VI the Wise, a late ninth-/early tenth-century military handbook that has had a significant impact on the genre of Byzantine military literature. Recent treatments of the text-particularly John Haldon's 2014 commentary and Meredith Riedel's 2018 book on the religious aspects of the military in the Taktika-find instead that the Taktika reflects Leo's wide-ranging articulations on the religious convictions of the Byzantine oikoumene. Despite the increasing attention on the underlying message and place of the Taktika in Leo's ideology for the Byzantine empire, however, so far little work has been done on deconstructing the narrative layers of the text. The manual's professed aim is to educate generals, and its contents describe the ideal conduct and characteristics of the model general. If the general is the proxy by which Leo articulates a deeper theological argument about the identity of the Christian empire, as Riedel argues, or reacts to his sociopolitical anxieties, such as that of the balance of power between the emperor and élites in the Byzantine administration, then a close examination of the elements which constitute the Taktika's model general is a necessary first step to understand the didactic filter lying between the historian and any "deeper" readings of the manual. In light of this, I offer in this paper an analysis of Leo's ideal general in the Taktika. I argue for a didactic dimension of the Taktika and contextualize the development of the archetype of the virtuous and pious general as it eventually appears in the Taktika in relation to the manual's literary tradition in order to demonstrate what Leo means to communicate to readers approaching the text as a handbook. By doing so, I demonstrate both the foundations and innovations of the ideal general of the Taktika. Following a historical review of Leo's reign and literary production, in Chapter 1 I focus on literary influences and the lineage of the ideal general, with discussion on the genre of military writing in Antiquity and Byzantium and the particular tradition in which the Taktika is situated. In Chapter 2, I examine the text of the Taktika itself in order to demonstrate how Leo crafts the image of the ideal general in the handbook, as well as how he aims to craft ideal generals out of his audience. I examine particularly details about the structure of the manual, Leo's selective reception of older sources, and the coherence of didactic and political themes in the manual as a whole. |
| Supervisor | Klaniczay, Gábor; Kaldellis, Anthony |
| Department | Medieval Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2019/chen_andy.pdf |
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