Professor Charanis has also recalled the prominent role played by the Armenians in the intellectual life of Byzantium during the ninth century, when Caesar Bardas reorganized the University of Constantinople at the palace of the Magnaura and placed at its head his compatriot, Leo the Philosopher, while two of the most famous teachers in it, Photius and John the Grammarian, were partly or wholly of Armenian descent. It is quite probable that Armenians came there as students, just as at a much earlier period, during the fourth century, they had gone to Athens to study under the Armenian rhetor, Prohaeresius, whom Sozomenos calls [ii] the most celebrated sophist of his age, and to whom, according to his pupil and biographer Eunapius, the Romans had erected a statue with the inscription "Rome, the queen of cities, to the king of eloquence."
Some of the leading figures whose origins have been carefully traced by Professor Charanis were recent arrivals from Armenia, others had lived for a long time within the Byzantine realm and were thoroughly hellenized. But the persistence with which, generation after generation, the latter retained their Armenian names clearly indicates that they did not forget their origins, nor perhaps wanted the Byzantines to forget that they descended from ancient and noble families. In fact, it is primarily by means of these names that, in many instances, modern scholars have been able to ascertain a nationality which the Byzantine historians and chroniclers have not always been careful to specify.
The degree of hellenization naturally varied in each case and we have positive evidence that some at least of the men who held high offices continued to use their mother tongue; one of these was the protospatharios John who commissioned an Armenian Gospel. The sponsor, about whom we have no other information, calls himself the proximos of the dux Theodorakanos, who must be the general of Basil II, governor of Philippopolis, known through Byzantine sources. The manuscript, now in the Mekhitharist Library in Venice (no. 887), was written and illustrated in 1007 at Adrianople; this shows not only that the protospatharios himself knew Armenian, but that there was in this city a competent Armenian scribe who could carry out the wish of his sponsor.
In speaking of the hellenization of the Armenians who held high offices, Professor Charanis adds: "Yet it may be asked whether their hellenization was not unaffected by their original background, whether in being absorbed they did not modify the culture which absorbed them." A similar question can be raised in connection with certain aspects of [iii] artistic development. Is it mere coincidence that in the decorative arts of Byzantium the oriental elements are predominant during the ninth and tenth centuries, that is, in that very period when men of Armenian descent were in virtual control of the Empire, and when there was, at the same time, a territorial expansion towards the east and a fresh influx of Armenians? There were no doubt artists and craftsmen among these new arrivals, and they continued to practise their native crafts; thus Armenian carpets are mentioned in the list of spoils carried away by the Bulgarian tsar Krum when the Byzantine armies were defeated and the emperor Nicephorus himself was slain.
In this careful and impartial appraisal of the role of the Armenians in the Byzantine empire, Professor Charanis has laid the foundation for further investigations, and has given us the most important of his many valuable contributions to our knowledge of the Byzantine ethnography.
May, 1963
Sirarpie Der Nersessian