Переводчик Гладкова Анна Геннадьевна

The political ideas of the Byzantines have only recently become the subject of more detailed study and of a deeper contemplation among historians. The research work done in this field in the course of the last few decades has for the first time revealed the substance and peculiarities of the Byzantine theory of imperial authority and established it as the mainspring of the Byzantine political ideology. Among the most outstanding studies the following may be mentioned: the penetrating researches of A. Alfoldi on the formation of Roman court ceremonial and on the insignia and robes of the Roman emperor; the very vivid and interesting work by A. Grabar on the emperor in Byzantine art; the fundamentally important work by O. Treitinger on imperial court ceremonial as an expression of the Byzantine idea of emperorship and empire; numerous very instructive papers by F. Dolget on the relations between the Byzantine empire and contemporary foreign powers in the light of the Byzantine theory of imperial authority. And already since 1936 I myself have been attempting to outline the Byzantine interpretation of the idea of empire and the Byzantine conception of the world order, to which I gave the name of the Byzantine hierarchy of states. I should like to follow up these trends of thought today and to summarize them in a more coherent manner.

Although the destinies of the Byzantine empire varied a great deal and the character of its state policies was apparently heterogeneous, the basic idea underlying these policies, the idea of emperorship, was firmly upheld through the ages, in spite of all divergencies. Like all other elements of fundamental significance for the development of the Byzantine state, this idea is traceable to Roman and Hellenistic sources. And, like everything else in Byzantium, it emerges here in a christianised version, in which the original pagan concept has been little by little overshadowed by the power of Christian ideas.