| dc.description.abstract | The present Ph.D. dissertation entitled ‘Illness and Statesmanship. Health of Byzantine
rulers from the Palaiologan dynasty in the first half of the XVth Century’ focuses on Manuel II Palaiologos and his sons, their state of health and their rule. The two main theses put forward in the present dissertation are as follows. Firstly, that health and the well-being of the
emperors was one of the most important concepts in the Byzantine imperial ideology and had
special significance in the times when the Byzantine empire was endangered and the emperors
had to face strenuous times and decisions. With their withering health their endurance
and abilities to make quick and precise judgements could have been impeded. The second
thesis is that the ailments of all of the analysed emperors were prone to did not influence and
did not play a role in the deteriorating political position of Byzantium; nor did they negatively
influence its diplomacy or made the penetration of its lands easier for the Turks.
The dissertation is composed of three chapters. The first one explores the idea
of a healthy Byzantine emperor and in general every other Byzantine ruler belonging to the
dynasty of Palaiologoi in the first half of the XVth century from a point of view of the
Byzantine concept of power. To a lesser extent it deals also with the meaning of health
in official ceremonies. Besides the official accounts of ceremonies (in which the emperor took
part) prescribed for a specific occasion, and which were left by the emperor Constantine VII
Porphyrogennetos (Xth Century) and by the author known as Pseudo-Kodinos, who lived
under the rulership of Palaiologoi (XIVth Century), we used for our investigation the works
written by the emperor Manuel II. Although this chosen collection of Manuel’s II Palaiologos
works is not homogenous, they all reflect a notion of a healthy ruler derived from
the Byzantine concept of power. The works analysed for the purposes of the present
dissertation are as follows: ‘Praecepta educationis regiae’ and ‘Orathiones VII ethicopoliticae’
both treatises dedicated to the elder son and successor to the Byzantine throne John
VIII; a transcription of a conversation held between Manuel II and his mother Helena
Kantakouzene; Manuel’s II letters to various recipients and an eulogy composed by him over
his late brother, despot of the Morea, Theodore I.
In the second chapter the focus is shifted onto the medical issues and ailments from
which three Palaiologoi, namely Andronic, the despot of Thessalonica and two emperors
Manuel II and John VIII, suffered. The first one struggled with leprosy, the second suffered
a stroke, and the third had gout. Gout’s treatment based on a highly toxic colchicine extracted
from a herb called ‘Colchicum autumnale’ and prescribed to John VIII by Demetrios
Pepagomenos, a specialist in gout, closely connected with the imperial family, caused him to be temporarily infertile. Having analyzed these medical conditions we move to chapter
three which aims at showing how the health of these rulers influenced the decisions they
made. A separate part of chapter three concerns the problem of a lack or a relatively small
number of offsprings among the other sons of Manuel’s II (Constantine XI, Theodore II
and Demetrios) and its impact on their statesmanship.
The conducted research led to the following conclusions. Based on the selected pieces
from Manuel’s II works we could determine that the idea of a healthy emperor constituted one
of the most important elements of the Byzantine political ideology. Manuel II referred to the
long standing tradition of political writings that underlined the necessity for
a Byzantine ruler, and especially an emperor, to be in perfect physical and mental shape. It
was to be achieved through an appropriate education in which members of a ruling dynasty
were to be involved from their early years. Manuel II as an emperor himself understood
clearly the rationale that stood behind the idea of a healthy ruler, in particular in the violent
times of the first half of the XVth century. The diseases that frequently appeared among
Manuel II and his sons were of significance on the more local scale (Thessalonica, Morea)
influencing decisions and political alliances, but they did not have any impact on the
Byzantine foreign policy and they did not deteriorate Constantinople’s calculations for the
survival of Byzantium. | pl_PL |
