Anna Comnena

Byzantine princess and historian

  • Born: December 1, 1083
  • Birthplace: Constantinople, Byzantine Empire (now Istanbul, Turkey)
  • Died: After 1148
  • Place of death: Constantinople, Byzantine Empire (now in Istanbul, Turkey)

Anna Comnena composed the Alexiad, a history of her father, Byzantine emperor Alexius I Comnenus, and his reign, which became a critical historical source for the early Crusades.

Early Life

Anna Comnena (ah-nah kahm-NEE-nuh) was the first child of Byzantine emperor Alexius I Comnenus and a porphyrogenite, a princess “born in the purple” while her father reigned. Alexius, an energetic young aristocrat and warlord, had seized the throne in 1081 as a kind of usurper-protector after a series of court upheavals. He had won the approval of the powerful Ducas family by marrying one of its members, Irene Ducas (c. 1066-1120), and by guaranteeing the rights of the legitimate dynast, the feeble young Constantine X Ducas (1007?-1067). When Anna was born, Alexius extended that commitment by betrothing her as a baby to Constantine (then only nine years of age). Anna grew up expecting to marry him, and she seems to have been genuinely fond of him.

When, however, Alexius’s first son, the future John II (r. 1118-1143), was born (1088), Alexius could at last dream of consolidating his own hold on the throne and of founding his own dynasty. With his position made more secure by his smashing victory over the menacing Pechenegs in 1091, he began to move in that direction. Constantine was deprived of his rights and pushed into the shadows. Anna’s “usefulness” as a marital pawn was then shifted to securing an alliance with another powerful aristocratic family. Thus, about 1097, at age fourteen, she was married to the noble Nicephorus Bryennius (1062-1137), a soldier and an educated and cultured man. She wrote of this marriage as a happy one, and it produced four children.

Anna came of a society that did not totally deny secular education to women, especially to those who were princesses. Over the centuries, Byzantium produced several imperial women of advanced learning and literary talent, extending beyond the palace as well. Anna understandably was proud of her learning, which she pursued from an early age through her entire life. In her writing, she exhibits a comprehensive and solid command of the ancient Greek traditions of literature, philosophy, science, and medicine. She was also acquainted with the writings of her Byzantine compatriots. As a member of the reigning family, Anna observed through youthful eyes the momentous events of that epoch, including her father’s struggles with a range of menacing enemies (the Normans, Pechenegs, Turks, Latins). Notable among these were the forces of the First Crusade, who passed through Constantinople just at the time of her marriage. Combined with her good memory was access to the important personalities and documents of the day. She would draw on these sources in her great literary work.

Life’s Work

There are no details about much of Anna’s life during her father’s rule, but there seems to have been much ill will between her and her brother John. Ever cautious about his dynastic intentions, Alexius never formally proclaimed his son John as colleague or heir. Indeed, in 1111 Anna’s husband was given the title of caesar, which usually made the bearer heir apparent to the throne. Anna herself seems to have believed very strongly in her rights as firstborn, a belief apparently encouraged by her mother. In Alexius’s last days, intrigue flourished, and Anna and her mother applied intense pressure on the dying emperor. However, he foiled them by discreetly opening his son’s path to succession. Frustrated, Anna attempted to organize a coup against her brother, urging her husband to claim the throne for himself on the basis of her rights. He refused, and Anna was obliged to sit on the sidelines as her hated brother reigned.

Anna was regarded with suspicion thereafter, though her husband was still kept in high office, and the two seemed relatively safe until Bryennius died in 1137. Thereafter, she was effectively confined to the convent of the Kecharitomene, which had been founded by her mother as her own place of retirement. There she was able to pursue her scholarly interests and her cultural patronage, surviving her brother but none too happy with her nephew, the next emperor, Manuel I. Anna did not actually become a nun, however, until just before her death, a date that is not known for certain. She clearly lived past 1148 (when, it is estimated, the {I}Alexiad{/I} may have been finished), but she was apparently dead by 1154.

Anna’s only surviving literary work is one of the crown jewels of Byzantine historical writing, and one of the most significant histories written during the Middle Ages, important both as a historical source and as a work of literature. Her {I}Alexías{/I} (in the original Greek), or {I}Alexiad{/I} (c. 1148; English translation, 1928), is a laudatory history of her father’s life and reign, a prose narrative in Greek. Its title, however, consciously evokes that of the Ilías or Iliad (c. 750 b.c.e.; English translation, 1611), by her favorite poet, Homer, casting her father as a veritably epic character. It is not known when she began to write, but the bulk of the work, and certainly the latter portions, clearly date from the 1140’, some three decades after her father’s death. The work reflects her resentments against her brother, Emperor John II, and the frustrations of her later years. It has been suggested that she also meant to praise her father’s glories as a critique of her nephew (John’s son), Emperor Manuel I (1143-1180). Indeed, as a work it belongs to the literary and cultural context of Manuel’s reign, rather than to that of Manuel’s grandfather, Alexius I.

One stimulus for its creation came from established traditions of Byzantine historical writing; it was conventional for a writer to pick up from the point in time about which a predecessor had stopped writing. Some time after Alexius’s death, Anna’s husband Nicephorus Bryennius had written a memoir of the years 1070 to 1079, describing the struggles among leading aristocratic families for the throne. Anna felt an obligation to pick up the thread of narrative from her husband. However, his possible hints of criticism of the young Alexius may have prompted her to create a glowing and nostalgic picture of her father. Recent scholarly discussion has raised the possibility that the work was essentially written by her husband and merely taken over and finished by Anna, but such an argument seems exaggerated, and her rights of full authorship still stand secure.

Anna knew the responsibilities of historical writing, writing to which she pays earnest tribute in the work’s prologue. She casts her work in fifteen books, the first two of which trace her father’s career up to his accession, the remainder covering his reign until his death. Anna’s chronology, however, is frequently less than strict or clear, and she sometimes omits relevant information. At some points her self-pity gets the better of her. Readers should be aware of the idyllic picture she gives of her family life and relationships.

Nevertheless, Anna is remarkably thorough and conscientious. Her account of the First Crusade and its passage through Byzantium, if written at a remove of thirty or forty years (and possibly flavored by her observation of the unfortunate Second Crusade), is one of the most important histories of the Crusades, certainly in giving the Byzantine viewpoint on these encounters between Christian East and West. Consistent with her portrayal of Alexius as a great warrior-hero, she is particularly fascinated by military operations, and she gives some invaluable descriptions of weapons and tactics. This is in marked contrast to her most important predecessor in Byzantine historical writing, the philosopher-politician Michael Psellus (1018-c. 1078), whom she greatly respected but whose overwhelming concentration on court life she avoided emulating in her own work. Nevertheless, like Psellus, she had a strong feeling for personalities, and she draws some remarkably perceptive and subtle portraits of leading characters she encountered. Among these are her formidable grandmother Anna Dalassena (fl. eleventh century), the heterodox Byzantine philosopher John Italus (fl. eleventh century), the Norman leader Robert Guiscard (c. 1015-1085), and his son Bohemond I (c. 1052-1111) for whom she apparently had ambivalent feelings of passionate hatred and reluctant admiration.

Conservative in her viewpoint, Anna displays strong biases. Though her learning tempered her own religious beliefs, she detested heresy and expresses unseemly exultation in the martyrdom of the heresiarch Basil the Great (c. 329-379). Both socially and culturally, she was certainly elitist, though she avoided the narcissistic smugness of Psellus. With characteristically Byzantine ethnic pride, she is contemptuous of all things foreign, especially regarding Western Europeans and the Roman Church. Her accounts of her father’s dealings with Crusade leaders are particularly vivid, as are her horrified reactions to the Latin hordes who descended on her world so unexpectedly. She displays ostentatious disgust at foreign names, and she does her best to retain archaic nomenclature. Beyond that typical trait, her Greek style displays all the foibles of classicizing artificiality favored by Byzantium’s intellectuals which involved using a deliberately archaic written Greek, quite different from the evolving spoken language. Still, her style is by no means as inflated as that of Psellus, nor quite as intricate as that of her greatest successor, Nicetas Choniates (c. 1150-1213), who was later to report on the collapse of the Comnenian Dynasty and on the catastrophe that the Fourth Crusade visited on Byzantium in 1204.

Significance

Anna Comnena’s life and writing have tempted latter-day commentators to evaluate them in terms of modern feminism. Though a strong, educated woman, she must be understood ultimately in terms of her culture and her time. To its legacy, she contributed notably. Though Anna’s history is not without faults and deficiencies, many of them derive from her society and her cultural background. Anna herself stands as a writer and historian of undeniable stature, whose work still has the power to bring alive the personalities and events of a dramatic era.

Bibliography

Angold, Michael J. The Byzantine Empire, 1025-1204: A Political History. 2d ed. New York: Longman, 1997. Outstanding treatment of this transitional segment of Byzantine history that includes chapters on Alexius, John, and Manuel.

Buckler, Georgina. Anna Comnena: A Study. 1929. Reprint. London: Oxford University Press, 1968. Though dated, a thorough analysis of Anna and her work.

Chalandon, Ferdinand. Essai sur le règne d’Alexis 1er Comnène (1081-1118). Vol. 1 in Les Comnène. Paris: Société de l’école de Chartres, 1900. Dated, but a classic and comprehensive study in French on Alexius’s reign.

Dalven, Rae. Anna Comnena. New York: Twayne, 1972. A brief biography and study of Anna’s work. Includes a bibliography.

Diehl, Charles. “Anna Comnena.” In Byzantine Empresses. Translated by Harold Bell and Theresa de Kerpely. New York: Knopf, 1963. Originally published in 1927, a somewhat romanticized but still appealing sketch.

Garland, Lynda. Byzantine Empresses: Women and Power in Byzantium, A.D. 527-1204. New York: Routledge, 1999. Explores the empresses of the Byzantine Empire, from the early reigns of Theodora and Irene to those of Alexius’s time and beyond. Includes a map, bibliography, and index.

Gouma-Peterson, Thalia, ed. Anna Komnene and Her Times. New York: Garland, 2000. Discuss Anna’s scholarship, the Alexiad, the issue of gender and power, women’s literature in Byzantium, and more. Illustrations, bibliography, and index.

Hamilton, Janet, and Bernard Hamilton, trans. Christian Dualist Heresies in the Byzantine World, c. 650-c. 1450: Selected Sources. New York: Manchester University Press, 1998. Provides a chapter on Anna’s account of the trial and martyrdom of Basil the Great. Maps, bibliography, and index.

Mullett, Margaret, and Dion Smythe, eds. Alexios I Komnenos. Belfast: Belfast Byzantine, Queen’s University of Belfast, 1996. Papers from a colloquium held in 1989, offering significant new appraisals of Alexius’s reign and age.

Thiébaux, Marcelle, trans. The Writings of Medieval Women: An Anthology. New York: Garland, 1994. A collection that includes a chapter on Anna’s writings on the First Crusade. Bibliography, index.