Knowledge in authority and authorised history: the imperial intellectual programme of Leo VI and Constantine VII

Abstract

In the middle of his Chronographia, Michael Psellos, writing c.1060, had this to say about Byzantine emperors: Some 130 years later, Niketas Choniates echoed and amplied these comments in his narrative of the period after 1118: Psellos was alluding specically to the emperor Constantine IX Monomachos (1042-1055) and Choniates to Manuel I Komnenos (1143-1180). Yet the fact that both historians generalise on the basis of the specic examples, and that the twelfth-century historian deliberately echoes the generalisation of his eleventhcentury predecessor, shows that they were keen to make a general point. Imperial encomia conrm that emperors did like to be celebrated for their wisdom, as an important part of the cardinal virtue of phronesis that every ruler was supposed to 1 Michael Psellos, Chronographia, VI.74, ed. S. Impellizzeri, Michele Psello, Imperatori di Bisanzio (Milan, 1984), I, 120.