Empires of Learning: Comparative Approaches to Byzantium and Song China in the Long Eleventh Century
In the year 1085/6, we can observe two tutors addressing their imperial pupils: in Constantinople, Theophylaktos Hephaïstos (c.1050–post 1126), the later archbishop of Ohrid, delivered an exhortative encomium before young co-emperor Konstantinos Doukas and his mother, ex-empress Maria of Alania; in far-away Kaifeng, the newly appointed Classics Mat lecturer, Cheng Yi 程頤 (1033–1107), submitted several memoranda to young emperor Zhezong 哲宗 and his grandmother, the empress dowager and regent Gao 高. Starting from the shared concerns of these two tutors, this year’s Anna Christidou Memorial Lecture explores what benefits might derive from a comparative approach to classicising learning in two agrarian, tax-based empires at the far ends of medieval Eurasia: the empire of the Romans and the great state of Song. In its second part, the lecture explores the underlying factors that make comparative approaches to Byzantium and Song a promising endeavour and suggests a dynamic definition of classicising learning. It defines the latter as the common denominator of three interdependent, ever-evolving key elements – canon, literati and imperial system – and identifies a ‘cycle of learning’ from c.960 to 1127/1204. This ‘long eleventh century’ coincides with a period of imperial expansion and consolidation followed by crisis and catastrophe in both polities, with the Crusader conquest of Constantinople mirroring Song’s Jingkang crisis (the Jürchen Jin conquest of Kaifeng); embedded in this frame the cycle evolves through the same three (four) phases in both Byzantium and Song and thus allows for a meaningful comparison of these phases and their manifold repercussions. The third and final parts suggests some specific insights and ideas arising from this comparison, of both a more technical and more imaginative nature. This year’s ACML takes us away from the Palaiologan period Anna so loved but, on a journey, I hope, that she would have enjoyed.
You can join the lecture on zoom as well.
Zoom link:
https://ceu-edu.zoom.us/j/98642968962?pwd=WFErZU5xNFNBUUJQemwvdkNNTW1CZ…
Meeting ID: 986 4296 8962
Passcode: 015880