North Aegean Stories

Lesvos In Late Antiquity And The Roman Middle Ages

Dimitris Krallis contributed this article to the Aegean Stories Vault

The walls of the 19 c. Komninakis Krallis mansion in Molyvos, ancient and Byzantine Methymna, feature large format representations of the Ottoman imperial capital Constantinople. Such images, which are also found in another Molyvos mansion, mark the local notables’ – both Muslim and Christian – orientation towards this centre of imperial and spiritual authority and underline a long-standing link between the island of Lesvos and the great city on the Bosphorus. In the Ottoman era such links were underpinned by the tight economic entanglement of the capital city and the island. Lesvos after all provided Constantinople with a large part of its olive oil supply.[1] Such connections, however, were not unique to the Ottoman era. A study of the Roman world in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages reveals the gradual weaving of Constantinople into the lives of Lesvos’ inhabitants, even as older regional and transregional bonds persisted, waxed and waned.

Much as the history of the island has vacillated between periods of tight entanglement within wider Mediterranean networks, on the one hand, and times of more isolated regionalism, on the other, the experience of the islanders in the Middle Ages was similarly varied. They were sometimes exposed to accelerated contact and long-distance links and on other occasions they found themselves isolated behind the watery wall of the Aegean.[2] Because the sources for the study of the history of Lesvos in the Middle Ages are comparatively lacking, the island’s medieval past may be better understood through a focus on the tension between connectivity and isolation, proximity and distance, while also considering the roles of internal/local agents against external forces. This essay therefore differs drastically from its sister piece on the Ottoman and modern eras, in that it ismuch more schematic and conceptual. It seeks to draw an image of the island’s history that relies mostly on relations between places, stories, and scant material evidence and less on records,archives, and extant build environments.

The gaze of the Christian Ottoman elite of Molyvos directs itself to Constantinople

As there is likely a lag between lay perceptions of Byzantium and scholarly contributions to the field of Byzantine Studies, it should be noted that recent work has focused on the Byzantines’ Romanness as a core component of their identity. For the purposes of this essay, the inhabitants of Lesvos in the Middle Ages will therefore be treated as Roman subjects with a meaningful Roman political identity. This Roman identity did not occlude or replace the Greek elements of their cultural makeup, it rather integrated them into a peculiar, eastern Romanness that shaped their experience. Byzantium was thus a Roman polity, not simply by name but also in terms of general political and cultural identity of its members.[3] What is perhaps better known by lay readers, is the fact that the medieval Roman polity was ruled by a bureaucracy, which kept extensive records on all manner of state activity and on its relationship with individual Romans but also with foreigners.[4]

In that, the Byzantine state was unique in the European Middle Ages but also somewhat similar to the Ottoman Empire which subsumed it and absorbed many of its institutions.[5] And yet, despite the reams of parchment and cotton paper produced in order to manage the Romans in the period from the end of antiquity to 1461, little of that bureaucracy’s footprint survives. Despite the Medieval Roman state’s bureaucratic nature, historians of Byzantium cannot rely on rich archival fonds like their Ottomanist colleagues, since much of the work of the Roman mandarins has been lost to us. Intriguingly, while the literature and historical writing of the Byzantines were preserved and survived in quantities substantial enough to allow for the development of a vibrant field of Byzantine Studies, and while archaeology has done much to enrich our understanding of the time, the actual mechanics of governance, as expressed in official records are harder to follow, given that those records are mostly gone; destroyed by raids, invasions, conquest, and time.[6]

Greek Amenities in a Romanized city. The Stadion at Aphrodisias. Photo by Carole Raddato, public domain
The Sebasteion of Aphrodisias (Turkey) expresses provincial loyalty to the reigning dynasty in Rome. Photo, by Carlos Delgado, public domain

If that is true in general terms, in the case of Lesvos things are even more opaque. While certain regions of Greece and even Anatolia may be studied through the archival materials surviving in the libraries of the Athonite monasteries in Chalkidiki, at the very North of the Aegean, and Patmos to the east, the same cannot be said of Lesvos.[7] No Byzantine era pious foundation survives in continued fashion to our times to provide us with an unbroken record of notarial documents attesting land ownership on the island and its peraia on the Asia Minor shores beyond it.[8] Even in the case of the Leimonos monastery’s impressive Byzantine manuscript collection, we cannot with certainty posit the existence of a Lesvos-based manuscript scriptorium dated to the Middle Ages, though this may not yet be ruled out, especially given the references in Leimonos documents to the preservation of manuscripts from defunct pious foundations on the island.[9] What is more, the material record of the period from the 7th to the 14th c. is generally rather lacking.

Thus, while the Diocletianic inscriptions give us a good sense of land-property regimes on the island on the turn of the 3rdcentury CE, and dedications from early Byzantine church foundations add texture to the island’s social map in Late Antiquity, little survives from the period that follows.[10] In fact, there are scant standing, Middle Byzantine (8th to 12thc.) church buildings on the entire island. What is more, in those buildings (ex. the small church at Hagios Stephanos off Mandamados, dated to the 10th c.) no single mosaic or fresco may be dated to that time.[11] For that matter there is little by way of formal, state architecture that survives, with the exception of fortifications, which themselves have seen so many accretions from later periods, that they may not be studied easily in their Byzantine contexts, as one might for example do in Asia Minor or Greece (the fortress of Mytilene being a notable exception).

Hagios Stephanos (10th c.), Near Mandamados
The fortress of Molyvos is at its core a Roman fortification of the Medieval era

If then our materials are scant and our evidence is weak, how can we think of Lesvos in its Byzantine context? Here imaginative approaches on the texts that we do have, careful reading of our existing sources, however weak those might be, and proper attention to continuities and ruptures, offer opportunities better to understand this time. In what follows I will examine two Hagiographical texts, the Life of Hagia Theoktiste and the Life of Sts. David, Symeon and George of Lesbos, numerous cases of high officials, aristocrats, and even imperial figures, who find themselves exiled in Lesvos, along with sigillographic evidence, all within the broad outlines of Middle Byzantine history, in order to offer an outline of the island’s history at the time.

I open, however, with a note on periodization and some general observations on the history of the Medieval Roman polity from the end of antiquity to the 14th c. when the Genoese Gattilusio family assumed control of the island in the name of the emperor in Constantinople. When thinking of the historical timeline on which to understand the life of the Roman polity that was ruled by Constantinople, we usually tend to divide the millennium-long Byzantine era into three sub-sections. Early Byzantine history takes us from Constantine to the rise of Islam and the loss of the Roman Empire’s Near Eastern and North African possessions.[12] The so-called Middle Byzantine period is one of loss, consolidation and expansion, followed by the Roman state’s entry into the Global Middle Ages of the Crusader era. Finally, Late Byzantium is marked by 1204, the Crusader sack of Constantinople and the gradual shrinking of Roman political authority on the way to 1453, when the curtain falls on the Byzantine experience.

Within the context of this periodization, one might describe the transition of the Roman polity from Antiquity to the Middle Ages (Early to Middle Byzantine eras) as a dual process that saw the dramatic shrinking of Roman horizons and the transformation of Roman life. On the one hand, the world that Justinian bequeathed to his successors crumbled. A Roman polity that extended from the Danube to the deserts of Egypt, from the Alps to Algeria, and from the Euphrates to Southern Spain, shrunk in a period of seventy years after this ambitious emperor’s death. North Africa was entirely lost by the end of the 7th c., Syria and Palestine became core territories of the vibrant and expanding Islamic Caliphate, and the Balkans were settled by Slavic populations. These newcomers in the Balkans soon came to constitute rival polities, uncomfortably close to Constantinople and Thessalonike, the Romans’ two largest urban centres in the Middle Ages. On the other hand, while facing a severe challenge to its existence, this shrunken Roman polity was now rather more culturally homogenous. In these new conditions, Constantinople asserted even tighter control over the territories that it ruled. We have here a paradox. What might be termed decline came with the emergence of more effective and assertive instruments of governance. This emerging, powerful, and intrusive Constantinopolitan administration ensured that the smaller Roman polity of the Middle Ages survived external threats and eventually reemerged as a major player in Mediterranean politics by the tenth and early eleventh centuries.

Seals of Medieval Roman officials, both ecclesiastical and governmental from the Dumbarton Oaks Seals Catalogue, an essential tool for the study of Byzantine Sigillography
The Mediterranean during the reign of Justinian, near the end of Antiquity
The Mediterranean in the Middle of the eighth century, during iconoclasm

In that context, Lesvos’ place in the world also changed. In the period up to the early seventh century, Lesvos had been part of a world, which though transformed with Christianization on the one hand and the legal and administrative reforms of emperors, both pagan and Christian from Diocletian on, on the other, nevertheless bore the stamp of cities and urban culture.[13] In the reign of Justinian, it was still entirely possible that a family of means might train its sons to the highest standards of juristic, medical, and architectural expertise all without engaging with the imperial capital of Constantinople. Anthemios of Tralles, the builder of Hagia Sophia issued from one such provincial family in Western Asia Minor. His siblings were doctors, grammarians, and jurists, all the products of a still vibrant and dynamic provincial society.[14] In the words of A. H. M. Jones:

In the reign of Justinian the cities were still, despite their extreme decrepitude, vital cogs in the administrative machine of the Roman empire. The city councils still, through the magistrates which they elected, carried on the local government, organizing the food-supply of the towns, celebrating games and festivals, and administering petty justice. They still also played an important part in the conduct of the imperial administration, collecting the taxes, levying recruits, building roads and bridges, and performing countless other corvées imposed by the central government.[15]

When we think of Lesvos’ cities, Mytilene, Methymna, Antissa, Eresos and others, as those would have existed in the 6thc. we must imagine them through Jones’ lens. They were changing of course, new figures such as bishops, clerics, and priests changed their social geography, while buildings such as churches, monasteries, and poorhouses altered their urban fabric, but they were still recognizable as Mediterranean cities. The patterns of consumption evident in the sumptuous Kratigos treasure from south of Mytilene, now on display in Athens at the Byzantine and Christian Museum, confirm the participation of Lesvos’ elites in a common Roman material culture of Late Antiquity.[16] This, however, was to change. In the years after the great wars between New Rome and Persia in the late 6th and early 7th c., and after the rise of Islam, the world of cities, which had produced people like Anthemios and his accomplished siblings, was no longer there. With it, a city-centred way of life also to a degree passed, though it by no means completely disappeared. In this new context, it was Constantinople that rose as the one dominant city, towards which provincial Romans would eventually gravitate.[17]

The Gymnasion of Tralleis in Western Asia Minor. A form of public urban infrastructure coming to an end with the end of Antiquity. Photo by Ahmet Kaynarpunar on the public domain

For Lesvos, this change was to have profound effects. The islanders could no longer imagine themselves as participants in a commonwealth of cities, distantly governed from Rome or New Rome, left in effect more or less to their own devices by a distant government, which simply collected taxes and political allegiance. In new conditions of continuous warfare against a dynamic and encroaching enemy, Constantinople tightened its grip. Even as local elites declined, their civic theatres crumbled, and the opportunities for the expression of upper class euergetism collapsed, Constantinopolitan administrators appeared, who were keen to assess, order, and tax the emperor’s subjects, both rich and poor.[18] As the wide horizons of the Mediterranean narrowed, the Aegean became Lesvos’ context, where in the past its people could think of themselves as parts of a much wider universe. Crete, perhaps Sicily and Southern Italy were now the furthest Roman authority would extend to, while even the Aegean itself was no longer safe, enemy fleets disrupting the commercial networks that glued the Roman world together.[19] What is more, in the 8th c. Sicily and Crete fall in Muslim hands and the waters of the Aegean become all the more fraught with danger.

Safer navigation and effective, undisturbed imperial authority over the Aegean was reestablished in the tenth century, when Nikephoros Phokas recaptured Crete, and yet, the memory of an age of uncertainty, when sailing these waters was replete with danger remains. In the eleventh century, at a time when for all the empire’s other troubles the Aegean was a sea of calm, Michael Attaleiates still relates to his readers a sense of adventure and mystery, when writing about Nikephoros Phokas’ campaign:

Later he was delayed with the entire fleet on the island of Neos because he lacked a pilot to guide him to the island of Crete, given that no one knew that sea lane as for many years no Roman ship had sailed in that direction. Just then, out of nowhere, two Karpathian vessels approached him with information about the route and led him toward Crete, although it was God who was really guiding him, pleased with the reverence of his faith.[20]

Here a well provisioned and formidable armada sails from Western Asia Minor towards Crete without a clear sense of where they are going. Attaleiates, likely relying on other sources for his account of the events,[21] conjures an air of mystery and dread as the fleet seems to be sailing into the unknown, delayed by the lack of a competent pilot and relying on local Cycladic assistance for the journey. The story is certainly entirely made up. Sailors had been sailing to Crete since Minoan times, if not even earlier, and there was little mysterious about navigation in the Aegean, especially for the mariners of the imperial fleet who regularly operated in these waters. And yet, Attaleiates wants to evoke this earlier time when things were more uncertain and so conjures up this quasi-Odyssean image of the wandering sea-warriors.

The fleet of Nikephoros Phokas lands at Crete to besiege Chandakas. Image in the public domain

Attaleiates was not alone is choosing this narrative technique. Theodosios the Deacon had built his account of the reconquest of Crete as a grandiose enterprise, modeling it on Justinian’s late antique reconquest of North Africa by Belisarios and, in effect, exoticizing this Aegean affair by casting it as an edge of the world event.[22] Moreover, already from the 8th and 9th centuries the notion that maintaining imperial rule across the sea was time consuming work, managed from the imperial centre in Constantinople, had made it into saints’ lives. Such was the case with the Life of St. Leon Bishop of Catania, where we find the imperial agent Herakleides traveling back and forth between Constantinople and Sicily to protect Catania from the magician Heliodoros and imprint the emperor’s will on the edges of the polity.[23]

Imperial agents did not, however, simply ferry themselves around the Roman polity to resolve local internal crises. A robust and properly maintained naval force patrolled the seas to challenge efforts by New Rome’s enemies to disrupt life in the Aegean. Investments in coastal defense networks and forts were made by Constantinople throughout the very same waters.[24] What is more, an imperial procurement system, assessed the ability of the provinces to contribute to the common cause of defense and drew resources necessary for the provisioning of the armed forces with weapons and victuals. This process is well captured in the following passage by the Book of Ceremonies, produced in 10th c. Constantinople at the court of Konstantinos VII:

Note that the strategos of Thessalonike undertook to make 200,000 arrows and 3,000 heavy spears and as many shields as he could.

Note that the judge of Hellas undertook to make 1,000 heavy spears, which in fact he did. He undertook to make other items, too, and to bring them to wherever he had undertaken to bring them.

Note that the archon of Chrepos (Euboia) in the theme of Hellas undertook to make

200,000 arrows and 3,000 heavy spears. Likewise also the strategos of Nikopolis and that of Peloponnesos.[25]

Each of the entries in the passage above represents a direct intervention in the landscape and labour practices of the areas targeted for procurement. In this case we are dealing with the harvesting of lumber for the production of spears.[26] While Lesvos is not mentioned here, one has to wonder what the impact of state procurement would have been on it. It is easy to look at this passage and conclude that Constantinople was an irresistible outside force that imposed its will on the provinces. It is, however, important to note that numerous Constantinopolitans were in fact provincials who ended up in the capital seeking an education. The example of Gregory of Assos discussed below makes this absolutely clear, as do toponymic surnames such as Mytilinaios, borne by members of the Constantinopolitan officiate.[27] Moreover, imperial procurement aside, Constantinopolitan tastes also drew Lesvos in the orbit of the capital. In the 12thc. Theodoros Prodromos mentions wine in his poems, listing a series of locations whose vineyards satisfied the capital’s palates. Here then we find krasin mytilenaion next to that from Varna, Ganos, Chios, Samos, Crete and a few other locations.[28]

Amphorae as arranged in medieval galley for sea transport. Exhibit at Bodrum Museum, photo by Ad Maskens with creative commons licence CC BY-SA 3.0

In any case, while we do not possess information that would allow us to place Lesvos on the map of imperial procurement, the island’s significance as a resource-rich muster station for naval forces, is reflected in the gathering on it of the fleet mustered by the rebel Thomas the so-called Slav, on his way to the imperial capital in the first third of the 9thc.[29] A few decades later, another imperial agent, the admiral Himerios, a naval celebrity, well known to us from both historical texts and from the correspondence of the Patriarch of Constantinople Nicholas Mystikos (901-907 and 912-925 CE) with Muslim potentates, gets to be associated with Lesvos, as it is there that he lands after the defeat of his fleet by a Muslim flotilla close to Chios.[30] Himerios, however, is also somewhat more indirectly associated with Lesvos, through his presence in the Life of Hagia Theoktiste of Lesvos.[31] Niketas finds himself on the Island of Paros, while on his way back from a diplomatic mission to the Arab rulers of Crete. The historical context in which his story unfolds very much relates to the challenges the Roman polity faced as a result of the Muslim presence on this large island. Himerios’ journey and Niketas’ mission were set in motion by the imperial centre, whose ability to muster resources and command loyalties kept the Aegean, but also the rest of the Roman world, stitched together, despite challenges such as those posed by the corsairs of the emirate of Crete.

View of Paros from Naxos in painting by Niels Skovgaard (1858–1938). The landscape gives a sense of the connectedness of this insular landscape. It is in this context that the hunter from Euboea finds himself on Paros and has his encounter with Hagia Theoktiste. This image is shared under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

While in Paros, Niketas and his entourage of Constantinopolitan officials took advantage of the deviation to assess the status of the island and visit the late antique local shrine of the virgin Mary. Marvelling at its marble revetments and masonry and bewailing the destruction of its ciborium, they came upon a hermit named Symeon. Taking them out of the Church Symeon “asked me to sit down. There were some fallen blocks and columns as well as thick green grass and a spring gushing out fresh water and the whole place was filled with quiet and was suitable for godly tales.”[32] Here in a setting that blended antique ruins with lush nature in the manner of Daphnis and Chloe, Symeon related the story of Theoktiste for Niketas, as he himself remembered having heard it a few years earlier from the lips of a Euboean hunter.[33] Niketas explains that Symeon urged him to take notes on the story to save it from oblivion.[34]

In what is a Russian doll of a story, Theoktiste appears as a narrator, within another narrator’s story and she tells us:

My homeland is Lesbos, the city of Methymna. My name is Theoktiste and I am a nun by profession. Having been orphaned while still a very young child, I was entrusted to a nunnery by my relatives and assumed the monastic habit. When I was nearly eighteen years of age, I went to a village near the city of Methymna to visit my sister during the Easter season, for she lived near that village with her husband. But one night, Arabs from Crete under their leader, the notorious Nisiris, raided the village and took everyone prisoner.[35]

There are a few details of interest to us here. Methymna registers as a city, maintaining its municipal status in Niketas’ medieval imaginary. The debate on civic status in the Middle Ages is ongoing, yet it is interesting to note that Theoktiste becomes the victim of an Arab raid once she travels away from the presumably fortified and better guarded Methymna, to visit her sister at a neighboring village.[36]

Could it be that Nisiri's' fleet landed here, on the bay of Petra, a few kilometers from the fortified and better protected Methymna settlement?

We might wonder which village that might be and ask what the extent of Methymna’s hinterland really was in the Middle Ages. It was a bishopric, the second one on the island after Mytilene, yet it is unclear what the town’s territorium was in the 9th c. Could it be that the neighboring village that was so exposed to corsairs was Petra with its sandy beach, where any war galley would find easy rest? Did Theoktiste instead walk towards Eftalou, where one could also likely draw a pirate galley to shore at a distance from the kastro of Methymna? Either way, certain realities of life in the Middle Ages emerge from Niketas’ sparse account. Orphaned daughters get committed to nunneries or alternatively married off, in the case of Theoktiste’s sister, to someone outside Methymna. As evidenced in other saints’ lives, villages were not closed social worlds.[37] Their inhabitants communicated with neighboring village communities and family networks extended across villages, pretty much as is still the case to this day.

After she was captured, Theoktiste was carried off the island and found herself in a different part of the Aegean. Nisiris, the corsair from Crete, led his fleet to the harbour of Paros, looking to sell his captives at the local slave market. It might appear odd that a Muslim corsair lands on a Roman island to sell Roman captives as slaves, yet this might also give us a hint as to the permeability of lines of authority on a contested Aegean space.[38] Here, Theoktiste manages to wander away from the throng of captives and make a run for the forest in the interior of the island. In Paros’ wilderness, she lived in the wild, in a true “desert” in a manner of speaking. As for Paros itself, it appears empty. The island may have a harbour town of some safety and size to accommodate an imperial and corsair fleet, as well as a market to sell slaves at, yet it is otherwise a wilderness where goats grow to nearly unnatural size and hunters gather from far afield, hopping over a chain of islands to hunt down its prized fauna.

The Byzantine road on Paros. Theoktiste may have found isolation on the island, but Paros, like much of the Aegean was not abandoned in the Middle Ages. Moreover, the "desert" sought by ascetics was frequently rather closer to civilization that hagiographic images of departure from society might suggest. Photo by Redonnets in the public domain.

The story of Theoktiste is rather sparse. The narrator within the narration, Symeon the hermit, apologizes for the lack of genealogical and other information on saintly feats associated with Theoktiste, attributing the conciseness of the story to the boorishness of the hunter (who related the story to him), who could not be expected to know what was important.[39] Nevertheless, island life, as it emerges from this text, is an interesting amalgam of connectedness and isolation. Like Lesvos, with its strong ties to the Asian peraia beyond its shores, Paros seems linked to multiple regions all at one. It is the endpoint of a corsair’s slave-peddling journey, linked in ties of bondage to the North Aegean, Nisiris’ hunting grounds. It is also on the sea-route to Crete, Nisiris’ endpoint but also the destination of Himerios and Nikephoros. What is more, it retains links to the Greek mainland. Hunters travel towards it on the island chain linking the tip of Euboea to Paros by way of Andros, Tinos, Delos. Alternatively, the western route by way of the shores of Attica, Kea, Kithnos, Serifos, Sifnos, and Antiparos, also led to Paros. Either way, there is no way we may imagine Paros as isolated.

So far, we have not truly delved in Lesvos’ realities and yet, Paros’ position helps us pick up themes that apply across the Aegean.[40] If Paros was at the end of a series of insular stepping stones south and east of Euboea, Lesvos, according to Stabo – whose work was extensively copied in the Byzantine era – was thought to have broken off from Mt Ida in the Troad.[41] Moreover, its proximity to Asia Minor did not just tie its fate to that landmass but also gave it a decisive strategic advantage as controller of the Gulf of Adramyttion but also of all movement from Africa to Cyprus and the Southern Aegean to the Hellespont and Thrace. In the time of Theoktiste, geography dictated that Lesvos be in the firm grasp of central authorities interested in the safety of Constantinople. Nisiris’ raid could never be allowed to lead to the cession of the island to a foreign force. This geographical fate was expressed in the Late Antique administrative organization initiated by Diocletian, according to which the island was placed within the Prefecture of the East. According to Zosimos that prefecture encompassed Egypt, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, Thrace, alongside the islands of Cyprus and the Cyclades. Zosimos explicitly notes that Lemnos, Imvros and Samopthrake are excluded from this prefecture, likely signaling the inclusion of Lesvos into his definition of the Cyclades.[42] According to the Notitia Dignitatum, a document reflecting late 4th and early 5th c. Roman administrative realities, the provincia insularum was part of the Prefecture of the East and included Lesvos.[43] Notably the seat of the provincial governor was Rhodos, though the governor did winter in alternating fashion between the five larger towns of the province, Rhodos, Mytilene, Chios, Samos, and Kos. Coincidentally, Rhodos remained the seat of the Vilayet of the Archipelago under Ottoman rule all the way to the 19th c., the very same islands constituting this latter administrative district.

Seal of George apo hypaton and general kommerkiarios of the apotheke of Karia and Lykia (an unspecified year between 691/92 and 695/96). Permission by Harvard Museums https://harvardartmuseums.org/collections/object/72551

In Justinian’s reign, the provincia insularum was detached from the dioikesis of the East and placed under the quaestura of Scythia, so we’re told by Ioannis Lydos. Here we see a reconceptualization of geography, which bagged together lower Scythia and Mysia, Caria, the Cyclades, and Cyprus.[44] By the late 6th c. the quaestor sacri palatii in Constantinople was assigned juridical oversight over the affairs of the islands. It seems that authorities in Constantinople were consolidating into one province territories along the essential sea routes from Egypt and its grain supplies to the hungry mouths of Constantinople’s people. At the same time, it appears as if the denuding of the Balkan provinces from population and resources for the maintenance of the armies on the Danube led to the tying of the Aegean to the Danubian economy, as attested by the strong evidence of Aegean ceramic goods in the region. In this dual process, Lesvos became an important link on a critical supply and communication chain. It was linked directly to core figures in the imperial administration at Constantinople, while becoming part of wider Roman endeavours to effectively connect and make interdependent diverse regions of the empire.

These changes were accelerated with the rise of Islam and the emergence of credible threats from the naval forces of the Caliphate. It is in this context that the Strategos of the Karavisianoi emerges, as a naval leader tasked with defending the Aegean.[45] While a commander responsible for the pelagic space between Greece and Asia Minor is now in place, there is still no clearly defined geographical area tied to this command. The Strategos was responsible for the Aegean broadly defined. It took more than a century and two sieges of the imperial capital that involved a credible Islamic naval threat for the emergence of the Theme of the Kibyrrhaiotes, a formally defined geographical and administrative unit dedicated to the defense of this pelagic world. With the droungoi (flotillas) of the Gulf (of Attaleia) and the Aegean, the naval units of the Theme of the Kibyrrhaiotes were now responsible for the defense of the islands, but also the coastal areas opposite them, which were all now treated as strategically integrated space. What is more, in that very same period, administrative and economic developments led to the creation of the Apotheke of the Aegean Sea, more evidence of an emerging distinct administrative identity for the islands.[46] The Apotheke was part of a new system of supply for the army that the Roman government put in place, for which the seals of the kommerkiarioi, agents of the Apotheke, are critical evidence. The islands were part of this new organization, and it should be no surprise that one as large and rich as Lesvos would also be inducted in the new system.[47]

View North to North west in the direction of Lemnos and Tenedos from Molyvos. To the right the edge of the Troad. The Vandals of Belisarios would have sailed south from the Babas promontory to the right due South/Southwest to the left.

We get a sense of how Lesvos might have fit into wider imperial plans and logistical concerns by a passage in Prokopios, who writes in the 6th c. during the reign of Justinian. Here we read that back from his victorious campaigning in North Africa, Belissarios brought to the capital Vandal prisoners whom he inducted into new military units. Some of those individuals were put on ships on their way to the eastern front and, while sailing by Lesvos, “with sails fully deployed and catching the wind”, they overpowered the sailors and set sail for the Peloponnese, thence sailing back to Africa.[48] This short passage marks, in an indirect fashion, Lesvos’ position in Roman sea lanes during the Middle Ages. The island was central to North-South travel routes. On occasion it would be visited by ships that sailed the interior passage from Methymna, east towards Adramytion before turning  South to Mytilene and likely putting to port wherever necessary in the protected waters between Lesvos and Asia Minor. Alternatively, as the case was with the rebellious Vandals, one could take the western route, sailing off Sigri and catching the steady Aegean Northerlies that would propel one southward. The significance of Sigri as a stopping point in Aegean travel is confirmed by Theophanes the Confessor, who, writing in the early 9th c. notes, as he accounts for the later years of Justinian’s reign, that the Alexandrian bishop Elpidios was ordered to the capital in chains only to die in transit, as his ship docked at Sigri.[49]

The place of Lesvos in imperial planning is also evident in the tenth century Book of Ceremonies, which preserves a stadiodromikon (a sea journey itinerary calculated in miles) for the campaign led by the koubikoularios Konstantinos Gongylos against the Cretan Emirate in 949 CE. This document provides a detailed maritime route between Constantinople and Crete, on which Lesvos is a stepping-stone. We see here that the fleet starts from Constantinople, proceeding to Herakleia, whence to Prokonnesos. From Prokonnesos the fleet moves to Abydos and then to Ta Peukia, to Tenedos, to Mytilene, then Chios, whence to Samos, Phournoi, Naxos, Ios, Thera and Therasia. From Therasia the fleet crosses to Ta Christiana, whence to Dia and finally to Crete, for a total of 792 roman miles.[50] The frequent stops on so many different ports of call likely resulted from the prodigious consumption of water by the crews of any oar powered fleet.[51] An alternative itinerary, one that took the pilgrim Adomnan from Crete to Constantinople in the 7thcentury, eschews most of the stops, with Naxos and Tenedos being the only ports of call between Crete and Constantinople. In this case however, we are likely dealing with a sail-powered merchantman travelling in plain summer.[52] Much like the mutineering Vandals in Prokopios’ account, Adomnan likely sailed to the west of Lesvos leaving Sigri and Methymna to his east as he aimed for Tenedos. Overall, in thinking about Lesvos’ place in the Aegean communications networks, one should note that from Late Antiquity on we saw a dramatic decline in traffic in important Asia Minor emporia such as Miletos and Ephesos, as a result of silting of their harbours. This, in turn, led to a rerouting of trade, with mariners opting for harbours on the large Aegean islands such as Lesvos, Chios and Samos.[53]

The Caldera of Thera. Aerial view by kallerna, in the public domain

As the discussion of Aegean travel itineraries integrates Lesvos into a wider maritime geography, it is useful to return to our sources from the Middle Ages and once more read Theophanes, where Lesvos is connected to the rest of the Aegean by way of a natural disaster. In 726 CE Therasia, off Thera exploded in what was its largest volcanic eruption in historical times. Theophanes notes on this event:

a vapour as from a fiery furnace boiled up for a few days from the depth of the sea between the islands of Thera and Therasia. As it gradually became thicker and filled with stones because of the heat of the burning fire, all the smoke took on a fiery appearance. Then, on account of the density of the earthy substance, pumice stones as big as hills were thrown up against all of Asia Minor, Lesbos, Abydos, and coastal Macedonia, so that the entire surface of that sea was filled with floating pumice. In the midst of so great a fire an island that had not previously existed was formed and joined to the Sacred Island, as it is called; for, just as the aforementioned islands Thera and Therasia had once been thrown up, so was this one, too, in the present days of God’s enemy Leo.[54]

What do we make of this offhand reference to Lesvos? Theophanes describes here one of the most important geological events of the European Middle Ages; an event that clearly left its mark on people’s consciousness all the way to the capital itself. The Roman state in the aftermath of this eruption had to manage the after-effects on its littoral, both the island world and the mainland. It was even argued by Theophanes that the eruption so affected the emperor Leon III that he moved faster down the path of iconoclasm because of it, interpreting the eruption as evidence of God’s wrath.[55] The geographical references in this short paragraph are therefore not insignificant. They are an attempt on the part of a metropolitan writer to circumscribe the event and make it make sense for his readers. There are therefore three islands mentioned here, of which Thera and Therasia are the epicenters of the event. The rest of the Aegean insular world only appears with Lesvos as its representative, while the mainland is marked by references to Asia Minor and Macedonia. One city, that of Abydos on the Hellespont likely marks the outer range of the phenomenon described, namely the carpeting of the entire area by volcanic ash. Numerous, historically significant islands could have been mentioned here and yet Theophanes only mentions Lesvos, perhaps marking it for its economic and cultural significance, or likely expressing the ways in which Constantinopolitan circles viewed the Aegean, a place at times defined by Lesvos.

The Shrine of St. John the Evangelist in Ephesos, whose veneration spread more broadly in the area, reaching Mytilene. Photo by José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro in the public domain.

Another aspect of this description of Lesvos is the specific, paratactic reference next to Asia Minor. As we have already noted the push and pull of Asia was a feature of life in Lesvos, which we observe in other Byzantine sources of the time. In fact, one of the first encounters of St. David of Lesvos, as recorded in the Life of Sts. David, Symeon and George of Lesbos, was with “Anthony a Slave of Christ”, who when asked in the midst of a torrential downpour, where he was from, he pointed towards the opposite coast to Mt. Ida in the Troad.[56] In fact, soon after this encounter, David would leave his family and head towards Ida himself.[57] While in that area, he spent time in the vicinity of Gargara, a town opposite Lesvos, reinforcing the notion of the island’s connection with its Peraia. More than a decade after he had settled in the area and had even founded a monastery, his mother sought to see him and journeyed from Lesvos to Asia, once more reinforcing the idea that this crossing was a routine experience for the population of the island.[58]

After David’s death, his brothers George and Symeon, who had also taken monastic vows, eventually find themselves in Lesvos, though the Life offers no moment of transition, shifting the narrative from Asia to the island without warning as if this crossing was of no consequence whatsoever.[59] Thus, without any foreshadowing we find ourselves in Mytilene, once more in insular space. Once back on the island the two brothers sought their sister Hilaria who was a nun at the otherwise unattested Shrine of the Theologian and Evangelist Ioannes. As noted by the translators of the Life, the proximity of the Island to the famous shrine of the Theologian at Ephesos, likely made the cult of the Evangelist popular in Lesvos.[60] These very same connections to the opposite coast are confirmed when a ship arrives in Lesvos from Smyrna after a five-day journey which likely involved stops in Chios or other neighboring harbours.[61] In this case the boat unloaded 500 modioi of grain as a donation to George and Symeon’s monastery, providing evidence of the larger economic and spiritual connectivity of the area.

Daniel the Stylite from the Menologion of Basil II. Symeon of Lesvos modelled his ascesis on Daniel. Image in the public domain

The Life of Sts. David, Symeon and George of Lesbos also gives us a sense of the spiritual landscape of the island. It is clear from it that there are ascetics roaming the landscape and living outside cities, but these ascetics intersect with the formal ecclesiastical authorities settled in the island’s cities. When he returns to Lesvos, Symeon moves to Mytilene and erects his pillar at the Church of the All-holy Mother of God at Molos by the South Harbour.[62] Here he practiced a form of asceticism with Syrian origins, pioneered by his namesake Symeon the Stylite (c. 390-459 CE). Stylites had not remained a Syrian phenomenon. By the 5th c. St. Daniel (409-490 CE) had brought the practice to the imperial capital, garnering imperial patronage and urban fame. Symeon emulated Daniel by placing his pillar on the outskirts of an urban centre (Mytilene). In that location Symeon assumed an interesting stance. Distanced by the height of his pillar from passers-by, he could contemplate God, while at the same time becoming conspicuous and drawing crowds interested to know more about his piety and reputed sanctity.[63] In fact we read in the hagiographical text that:

For before two years had elapsed all those in authority and positions of honor started coming to the great Symeon for a blessing and confession of their personal sins, not only those nearby and reasonably close, but even those who lived far away; as a result certain people from the church of the Smyrnans brought valuable possessions to him for the building of monasteries for souls [people] which came into being with the help of God and still stand today.[64]

Like a living statue, Symeon became a new kind of landmark, one that competed with the bishop’s cathedral for the attention of Christians. As suggested by the passage above, the stylite’s charisma and the sheer visibility of his person on the pillar made him a focus for the attention of notables, who were otherwise expected to gravitate around the bishop. The situation generated tensions, which brought to Mytilene one of the central dynamics in Christian history, the tug of war between formal and informal Christianity, as seen in the competition between the official Church and the ascetic movement.

The Late Antique basilica at Chalinados is situated in the middle of fields, likely representing an elite attempt to imprint the stamp of Christianity on Lesvos' landscape.

Hagiographical texts notwithstanding, scholarship suggests that Lesvos was slow to get on the Christian bandwagon and that when that happened, it was a top-down process, driven by local elites seeking to adapt to external political and cultural realities. Be it slow to begin, Christianization proceeded apace, leaving its mark on the island in the form of numerous early Christian basilicas that dot the land of the island.[65] Some of those basilicas appear in the middle of rural landscapes, as the case is with the structure at Chalinados. Here local euergetism finds its expression in the suburban or even entirely rural landscapes that had marked elite life in Lesvos since the days of Longos. We do not know to what extent the transition into the so-called “Dark Ages” signified the end of the earlier rural affluence. It certainly dramatically changed the urban life of the island, as it reshaped urban spaces throughout the Roman world in the East. Settlements like Methymna, which had extended all the way to the North facing cliffsides overlooking the water, now retreat, perching themselves on the hill, which is to this day crowned by a Byzantine era fortress (with layer upon layer of Genoese and Ottoman accretions).[66] The lifestyle which was on display in Roman homes and bathhouses of lower Methymna could no longer be materially supported in the much-curtailed Roman realities of the 7th, 8th, and 9th centuries and, what it more, it was also not safe in close proximity to a sea crisscrossed by all manner of maritime threats. These threats are eloquently captured in the following eight-century epistle of Ignatios the Deacon to the Deacon Nikephoros:

You are no more, Crete and Cyprus, Euboea, Lesbos, Sardinia, and bountiful Sicily, rich in possessions, the very firstfruits, so to speak, of the sea. <they are no more,>… because they are in danger of not belonging anymore to Christians and of being set apart because of our sins, a prey to the enemy.”[67]

Ignatios’ passage is fascinating. One the one hand, the obvious emphasis on insecurity explains the aforementioned “migration” of the inhabitants of Methymna towards higher elevations. On the other, we find Lesvos listed among the Eastern Mediterranean’s largest islands, yet another rather clear affirmation of its importance. With the advent of Christianity, before the rise of the troubles alluded to in Ignatios’ letter, this important Aegean Island came to experience sectarianism.

Eirine of Athens empress of the Romans was exiled to Lesvos by Nikephoros I in 802 CE
Stephanos Lekapenos
Leon Phokas
Ioannis Orphanotrophos
Konstantinos Monomachos

Famous exiles who spent time in Lesvos. They mostly resided in Mytilene and Methymna.

The Roman world was repeatedly riven by doctrinal controversies and Lesvos was not a be a stranger to them. It seems that in the early days the local episcopal authorities leaned towards Arianism, and this might explain the absence of a Bishop of Lesvos from the council of Nicaea. A little later, in the council of Seleukia, the Bishop of Lesvos, a man by the name of Euagrios, was deposed for his homoian leanings. By the sixth century two bishoprics are now present on the Island, after the emergence of Methymna as an alternative centre to Mytilene. At this point, bishop Zacharias of Mytilene refrains from condemning the Miaphysite patriarchs Anthimos and Severos, suggesting to us that he likely shared their beliefs. A more “orthodox” ecclesiastical history appears to emerge by the 8th c. when hagiographical texts attest the presence of St. Andrew of Crete as an iconophile exile in Eresos.[68] With Andrew, Lesvos reconnects to its classical Roman past in a rather different manner. It once more emerges as a place of exile. Early in the 9th c. the deposed empress Eirini was sent to Lesvos, to put some distance between her and her supporters in the capital. Eirini likely died on the island, whence her body was transferred to the monastery she had founded on the Island of Prinkipos.[69]

The story of Eirini’s exile to Lesvos deserves our attention. In recording this event Theophanes specifically notes that the emperor Nikephoros I:

Being aware that all men were annoyed at him and fearing that, mindful of the liberalities of the pious Irene, they should invite her again to assume power, in the month of November, while a severe winter was upon the land, the merciless man, instead of pitying her, banished her to the island of Lesbos and ordered that she be securely guarded and receive no visitors whatever.[70]

Once more, little is said about the island, but much is implied. Eirini was originally exiled to her privately endowed monastery on the Island of Prinkipos. Yet, it is clear that Prinkipos was too close to her circle of influence. Too many people politically aligned to her were in proximity and that made her dangerous even while in exile. Lesvos on the other hand was distant enough that sending her there made sense. As we already saw Lesvos was far enough from the capital but firmly in the Constantinopolitan planers’ minds, so as to appear like a safe choice. This intermediate position – not too close, not too far – was what made it suitable as a place of exile. It is therefore not surprising that Patriarch Ignatios, Stephanos Lekapenos, Leon Phokas, Ioannis Orphanotrophos, and Konstantinos Monomachos were exiled in Lesvos, to name but some of the most famous people to set foot on the island in the wake of Eirini’s stint. The five men listed above present of smorgasbord of exiled privilege. Ignatios is one of the protagonists of ninth century ecclesiastical politics, a conservative ecclesiast, who clashed with Photios and found himself in exile in the process, having made enemies at the imperial palace. In the end, the island was deemed too distant for effective control over this notable church figure, and he was brought back to Terebinthos in the Propontis.[71] Some eighty years later, Stephanos Lekapenos, son to emperor Romanos, deposed his father in an effort to claim the throne for himself, only for Konstantinos Porphyrogennetos to claim his familial privilege – he had after all been born to the palace, only to be sidelined by Romanos – and exile the plotter first to Prokonesos in the Propontis, then to Rhodes and eventually to Lesvos. Here Stephanos spent the first few years in Mytilene, only to later on be moved to Methymna. While in Lesvos at a distance from the imperial palace, Stephanos remained a point of reference for friends of the Lekapenoi and was involved in a coup attempt against Konstantinos that was thwarted. It thus seems that despite the distance, which made the island a safe place of exile for Eirini, Lesvos was nevertheless still well within the capital’s horizon, so much so that the prime minister to Konstantinos’ son Romanos II, Ioseph Bringas placed Stephanos under close guard.

One way or another it seems that authorities remained satisfied with Methymna as a place for exiled potentates and only a few years later Leon Phokas, brother to the famous warrior emperor Nikephoros and noted commander himself, was sent there along with his own son Nikephoros. Once more, Methymna proved all too well connected to the capital and Leon continued plotting against Tzimiskes. The sources relating Leon’s exile explicitly place Abydos, on the mouth of the Hellespont, in direct contact with Methymna, thus providing a possible pathway for communications between the capital and the island. In this case, it was the bishop of Abydos who remained in contact with the exiled warrior.[72] In 1042, Lesvos became home for another illustrious exile, the capable and ever-scheming Ioannes Orhpanotrophos, who was exiled from the capital by his own relative and now emperor, Michael V. It is unclear if Ioannes would have overlapped with Konstantinos Monomachos, a well-connected civil administrator, who eventually became emperor in the middle of the century reigning for thirteen years in Constantinople. Monomachos lived in Lesvos with Skleraina, his aristocratic lover, from 1035 to 1042, before they both moved to Constantinople, once the widowed Empress Zoe recalled them to the capital, where he became her spouse, while Skleraina entered the palace as the official imperial lover.[73]

As we close the digression on Lesvos as a place of exile, let us return to the Life of Sts. David, Symeon and George of Lesbos, according to which the people of Lesvos remained staunchly committed to the veneration of the icons. Whether that is true or not we can certainly not say. That text is after all a partisan document. We cannot know if the “heretical” bishop Leon, whom the writer of the vita describes as a “pig” entering and defiling a church building, was not in fact popular among the islanders.[74] Questions of heresy and orthodoxy are at the core of this vita’s storyline and yet, beyond the attempt to cast the island and its people as dedicated orthodox Christians, the plot also reinforces the idea that the island and the capital were in regular commune. The island’s heretical governor sails to the capital when afflicted by sickness. Then, when fearing for his life he seeks the intercession of the all too Orthodox St. Symeon, who boards a ship to the imperial capital as if this was a routine journey. Plotlines of exile and sanctity appear to link the empire’s nerve centre with the provinces and in this context, the heretical bishop Leon, himself travels to Constantinople in order to seek support against St. Symeon, whose popularity was, as we already saw, a problem to his episcopal authority.[75]

There is no way to know if the stories related in the Life of Sts. David, Symeon and George of Lesbos bear any connection to reality. It is conceivable that the islanders were far more indifferent to questions of Orthodoxy than the pious hagiographer wants us to believe. Haldon and Brubaker suggest that we should think of popular attitudes towards iconoclasm as far more pliant and fluid as people were readier to follow imperial will than what pious texts might suggest in their effort to recast the conflict as a heroic struggle of good against evil.[76] That said, the actual depictions of the journeys of the vita’s heroes in space speak of a general understanding that Lesvos was indeed integrated into these wider geographies. The story of the Saints Symeon and George of Lesvos gets even more interesting as in the later stage of their lives they get involved in the process known as the Triumph of Orthodoxy, which brings an end to the iconoclastic controversy. If their vita is to be trusted they attended the synod, which under the guidance of patriarch Methodios put an end to the division of the Church and restored the icons. What is more, Symeon was appointed synkelos to the patriarch and George was offered the see of Ephesos.[77] Once more, we have evidence of the links of the island to Constantinopolitan affairs. Moreover, we see natives of Lesvos involved in ecclesiastical affairs at the Thrakesion Theme, where Ephesos was located. While George refused Ephesos, he was in the end compelled to assume the episcopate of Mytiline. The two brothers returned to their homeland on an imperial warship, further demonstration of the imperial capital’s and the palace’s interest in the affairs of the island.[78]

The Life of Sts. David, Symeon and George of Lesbos take us well into the Middle Byzantine period, when the Roman polity recovers from the overlapping political, religious, and military crises that led to its dramatic shrinking in the seventh and eighth centuries to restore its economic health, administrative effectiveness and military might. In this period Byzantium embarks on a dramatic era of expansion that lasts all the way to the middle of the eleventh century. Lesvos now finds itself in a newly pacified Aegean, where imperial fleets destroy the Emirate of Crete and neutralize the Muslim naval threat to the islands, to create a new sea of relatively safe maritime trade and commercial activity.[79]

The Triumph of Orthodoxy (843 CE). According to the Life of Sts. David, Symeon and George, holy figures from Lesvos played a part in the proceedings. Photo in the pubic domain

By the eleventh century, before the eruption of the existential crisis brought about by the combined invasions of the Normans, the Seljuk Turks and the Patzinakoi, the Roman Empire flourished under conditions of peace. It is likely that this new prosperity and the attendant population explosion are reflected in the fact that the bishopric of Methymna was elevated to the rank of Metropolis, ranked in the Notitia Episcopatum above that of Lakedaimon.[80] The prosperity of the island is also likely reflected in Manuel Komnenos’ decision to establish a third bishopric on Lesvos, at Iera (likely modern Gera). This ecclesiastical see will persist all the way into the 14th c. after which point we lose trace of it. It likely did not survive the transfer of the island to Genoese rule. The establishment of this bishopric, though, in a location where to this date one finds some of the most fertile and productive lands of Lesvos, suggests that population growth and wealth may have been the drivers behind this decision.[81]

As we look to the history of the island in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, it is important to note that Lesvos became the subject of negotiations between the Roman state and Venice, as Constantinople sought Venetian support in its war against the Normans during the stormy 1080s. Lesvos was, however, excluded from the agreement reached, which opened a significant part of the Roman polity’s harbour to duty-free Venetian trade.[82] Soon after, in 1089, Alopos the governor of the island abandoned it in view of the coming invasion by the Smyrna-based emirate of Tzahas. When Tzahas’ fleet arrived, only Methymna resisted, its guard and population relying on the strong fortifications of the settlement.[83] By 1091, having dealt with the threat on the Patzinakoi in the Balkans, Alexios Komnenos was able to dedicate resources to the reconquest of the island. Likely after a suggestion of his mother, Anna Dalassene, Alexios appointed Konstantinos Dalassenos commander of the Roman forces to operate against Tzahas in the Aegean. Dalassenos worked with the leader of the Roman army, Konstantinos Opos to reconquer Mytilene, which marked the return of Lesvos back under Roman rule. Having lost Mytilene, Tzachas retreated towards Smyrna, however, Dalassenos’ fleet intercepted him and destroyed most of his ships. Konstantinos Dalassenos returned in triumph to Constantinople, where he will be known as the Thalassokrator, the master of the sea.

Geopolitical turmoil notwithstanding, the eleventh and twelfth centuries were a period of economic growth. In this era of prosperity, we may also trace the rise in prominence of the area of Gera, as this is reflected in the Life of Gregorios Bishop of Assos.[84] Here we have an individual born to well-established, affluent parents in Akorne of Gera. An interesting aspect of Gregorios’ life is that at a rather early age he moves to the capital as part of an otherwise unattested imperial decree that brought to the imperial circle children from the island’s notable families. If that bit of information is actually reflective of actual imperial policies we see here the elite of Lesvos getting more closely tied to the imperial centre through the inculcation to its offspring of metropolitan ideals and paideia. Gregorios had religious vocations and found himself on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, at a time under Crusader rule. Now, we cannot know with any certainty if the information related in the vita is in fact accurate. That said, it is worth considering the geopolitical dimensions of this story. Manuel’s reign was one when Constantinople directly interfered into the affairs of the kingdom of Jerusalem.[85] Gregory’s journey to Jerusalem would have brought him to the Holy Land at a time when a Komnenian princess, Emperor Manuel Komnenos’ niece, Theodora, was wed to the Crusader king, bringing with her a dowry that filled the coffers of the Kingdom. Was Gregory in her suite or general entourage? Was his pilgrimage and fifteen-year stay in the Holy Land an act of devotion, or did his three years of study in the capital in fact prepare him for a different kind of service to the polity of the Romans?[86] Either way, much as Ioannis Krallis would draw a map of Africa and the Southeast Asia with a legend including a detailed depiction of the Holy Land, highlighting its links with Late Ottoman Lesvos, so does the Life of Gregorios Bishop of Assos bring a Roman from Medieval Lesvos to the very same territory. Returning from Jerusalem, Gregorios finds himself in Constantinople where he is consecrated bishop of Assos – the sister town of Methymna on the Asia Minor shorelines to its North – by the bishop of Ephesos.[87]

As we find ourselves in the Komnenian era, we may look at one more instance where events set in motion in Constantinople bring Lesvos into the historical record. In 1148, during the reign of Manuel Komnenos, a fleet was dispatched towards Kekryra, which at the time had been under Norman occupation. As Efthymiadis and Kaldellis explain, the early 14th century Metaphrasis of Niketas Choniates’ History notes that Stephanos Kontostephanos, husband of Anna, the emperor’s sister, commanded the fleet, which sailed to Molivon (which we must assume was Methymna), where it met the Venetian fleet with which they were to jointly operate. The 14th c. text notes that the two fleets docked in separate harbours while in Molivon, probably to avoid any flareups between their sailors and marines. What is notable in this 14th century reference is that this is the first ever attestation in Greek on the name Molyvos for Methymna.[88]

Even before this one short reference, in 1281 CE, as Michael VIII, the Roman emperor ruling the so-called Empire of Nicaea signs the treaty of Nymphaion with the Genoese, as he prepared to re-conquest Constantinople from the Latins, Lesvos becomes part of the negotiations. In exchange for their naval support, the Genoese are given the right to establish trade colonies in Lesvos’ general vicinity. They thus gain access to and settlements in Anaia, Smyrna, Adramyttion, Chios, and the Island of Lesvos itself, adding the island into trade networks that extend all the way from the Aegean to Genoa and way beyond to England and the Flanders.[89] With this reference to expansive geographies I bring this short survey of the history of Byzantine Lesvos to a close, eschewing reference to the era of Genoese rule under the Gattilusio lords and the very final years of Roman rule. In closing this account, which is based on relatively scant evidence, I ask the reader to nevertheless keep in mind the persistent theme of connectedness that runs through this account. Much as we see in discussions of Ottoman and Modern Lesvos, the story of this island in Late Antiquity and the Roman Middle Ages is one of connections and of horizons which link it with wider, administrative, social, political, and religious as well as cultural horizons. It is the story whereby an island, the very root of the term insular, transcends isolation to connect with wider worlds and participate in vibrant processes of mobility.

[1] İbrahim Oğuz, Midilli’de osmanli vakiflari (Mersin University Doctoral Thesis, 2014), 70-71

[2] A. Ellis-Evans, The Kingdom of Priam: Lesbos and the Troad Between Anatolia and the Aegean (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019) for Lesvos’ position between a west and north-facing Aegean and the Troad to the East

[3] A. Kaldellis, Romanland: Ethnicity and Empire in Byzantium (Boston: Belknap Press, 2019) for the contours of a Roman history of Byzantium; A. Kaldellis, The Byzantine Republic: People and Power in New Rome (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), for the political nature of this Roman state; A. Kaldellis, Hellenism in Byzantium: The Transformations of Greek Identity and the Reception of the Classical Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) for the ethnic dimension of this very Romanness.

[4] For a review of important questions relating to the operation of the Medieval Roman state’s bureaucracy see: J. Haldon, “Bureaucracies, Elites and Clans: The Case of Byzantium, c.600–1100,” in P. Crooks & T. H. Parsons ed., Empires and Bureaucracy in World History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016),147-69; for a discussion of the impersonal nature of the bureaucracy in the Roman Middle Ages see: D. Krallis, “Impersonal Governance in Byzantium: Bureaucracy, Friendship, and Psellos’ Letters,” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 65 (2025), 99–126; A. Kaldellis, The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium (Oxford, 2024), 418-22 for a summary presentation of administrative change in the so called “Dark Age” of Byzantium.

[5] M. F. Köprülü, translated, edited, with an introduction by Gary Leiser, Some observations on the influence of Byzantine institutions on Ottoman institutions (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1999) for the strong case offered in the original 1931 monograph in Turkish, on the Byzantine origins of Ottoman administration, ritual, and institutions in general. For a survey and critique of this maximalist thesis see C. Kafadar, Between Two Worlds: The Construction of the Ottoman State (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 35-44

[6] Example of Lydos reference to hippodrome archives as seen in Ioannes Lydos, De Magistratibus 3.19 in A. C. Bandy ed., Ioannes Lydus. On Powers or the Magistracies of the Roman State (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1983), p. 162, lines 2–5.; On the Theban Cadastre, a rare case where we have a surviving state document on taxation, see: N. Svoronos, “Recherches sur le cadastre byzantin et la fiscalité aux XI et XII siécles: Le cadastrede Thèbes,” BC 83 (1959), 1–145.

[7] The classic study of peasant society in Macedonia by A. Laiou, Peasant Society in the Late Byzantine Empire: A Social and Demographic Study(Princeton: Princeton University Press,1977) was based on such Athonite materials. For these very Athonite collections one relies on the 23 volumes of the Archives de l’Athos series published over the past half a century by Peeters out of Paris. For Patmos see E. Branousi, Βυζαντινάέγγραφα της Μονής Πάτμου: Α΄ Αυτοκρατορικά: διπλωματική έκδοσις, Γενική εισαγωγή, Ευρετήρια, Πίνακες (Athens: National Hellenic Research Foundation, 1990).

[8] Ch. Constantinidis & M. Tsitimaki, «Αρχιτεκτονική και λατρευτική ιδιορρυθμία σε ναούς της Λέσβου: Η διαφύλαξη ιερής ανάμνησης από την Υστεροβυζαντινή περίοδο σε νεότερα προσκυνητάρια», in Ήρως Κτίστης, μνήμη Χαράλαμπου Μπούρα, vol. Ι (Athens, 2018), 675-76 for the possible dating of the Taxiarchis monastery in the Gattilusio era.

[9] A. Spanos, « Ἡ συλλογὴ χειρογράφων τῆς Μονῆς Λειμῶνος », in A. Spanos ed., Ιερά Μονὴ Λειμῶνος Ιστορία – Παλαιογραφία – Τέχνη: Πρακτικὰ Συνεδρίου Μονὴ Λειμῶνος, 27-30 Σεπτεμβρίου 2001 (Athens, 2009), 40-45 and specifically p. 42-43 on the provenance of said manuscripts, on a possible local scriptorium, and on defunct monasteries, presumably of the Byzantine era.

[10] S. Efthymiadis & A. Kaldellis, The Prosopography of Byzantine Lesbos, 284-1355 A.D.: A Contribution to the Social History of the Byzantine Province(Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2010 = Denkschriften der philosophish-historischen Klasse v. 403 = Veröffentlichungen zur Byzanzforschung v. 22), 36-37 on epigraphy.

[11] M. Tsitimaki, «Ο ναoς τoυ αγίου Στεφάνου στον «Παλιό» Μανταμάδο Λέσβου, Μια Πρώτη Προσέγγιση», in Αφιερωμα στον ακαδημαϊκοΠαναγιώτη Λ. Βοκοτόπουλο (Αθήνα, 2015), 47-55, 54 for the 10 th c. dating; A. Conze, Reise der Insel Lesbos (Hannover, 1865), table X.I offers a drawing of the following inscription was found by the altar of the Hagios Stephanos church: ὀ δᾶμος/ Ἀ[δ]οβογιώναν Δηϊοτάρωεὐεργετήκοισαν/ τὰν πόλιν πόλλα καὶ μέγαλα ἀρέτας ἔννεκα/ [κ]αὶ εὐνοίας τᾶς εἰς ἐαύταν.

[12] For a survey of Lesvos’ history in the Roman era and in the early centuries of Constantinopolitan rule see: A. Kaldellis, Λέσβος και ανατολικήΜεσόγειος κατά τη ρωμαϊκή και π ρώιμη βυζαντινή περίοδο (100π.Χ – 600μ.Χ.): Μελέτη των κοινωνικών, πολιτικών και θρησκευτικών δομών [Lesbos and the Eastern Mediterranean in the Roman and Early Byzantine Period (100 BC – 600 AD): A Study of Social, Political and Religious Structures] (Thessaloniki: Herodotos, 2002).

[13] A. H. M Jones, The cities of the Eastern Roman Provinces (Oxford, 1971 – first edition 1937) and its related publication The Greek City from Alexander to Justinian (Oxford, 1940) form a useful if dated introduction to the urban history of the Eastern Mediterranean; C. Foss, “Archaeology and the “Twenty Cities” of Byzantine Asia,” American Journal of Archaeology 81.4 (1977), 469-86 for an overview of urban realities after the end of Antiquity.

[14] G. L. Huxley, Anthemius of Tralles (Cambridge, Mass., 1959); G. Downey, “Byzantine Architects,” Byzantion 18 (1946-48), 112-14; The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, vol. 1, 109

[15] A. H. M Jones, The cities of the Eastern Roman Provinces (Oxford, 1971), xiv.

[16] For the goods in question see: I. Touratsoglou & E. Chalkia, The Kratigos, Mytilene Treasure: Coins and valuables of the 7th century AD (Athens, 2008); C. W. Bowersock, Hellenism in Late Antiquity (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990), 1-13 for cultural continuity in Late Antiquity. Specifically quoting Ioannes bishop of Ephesos on the myriad pagans he encountered in the lands around Tralles, the very city that produced Anthemios. Notably, Lesvos was itself slow to adopt Christianity.

[17] G. Dagron, “The Urban Economy, seventh to twelfth centuries,” in A. Laiou ed. The Economic History of Byzantium 2 (Washington DC: Dumbarton Oaks research Library and Collection, 2002), 393-461 for a comprehensive overview of developments in urban life from the end of Antiquity to the end of the Middle Byzantine era, with extensive bibliographical references; M.Veikou, Byzantine Histories, Settlement Stories: Kastra, «Isles of Refuge», and «Unspecified Settlements» as In-between or Third Spaces. Preliminary Remarks on Aspects of Byzantine Settlement in Greece (6th-10th c.), in: Οι βυζαντινές πόλεις (8ος-15ος αιώνας): Προοπτικές της έρευνας και νέες ερμηνευτικές προσεγγίσεις, ed. Τ. Kioussopoulou (Rethymno 2012), 159-206 for the transformed urban world of the Roman world after Late Antiquity.

[18] W. Brandes & J. Haldon, “Revenues and Expenditure,” in E. Jeffreys, J. Haldon, R. Cormack eds., The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Studies(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 562-69 on tax assessing and collecting; W. Brandes & J. Haldon, “Towns, Tax and Transformation: State, Cities and their Hinterlands in the East Roman World, C. 500–800,” in Towns and their Territories Between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 141-72 specifically for the transformative role of taxation in these new conditions; J. Haldon, “The Idea of the Town in the Byzantine Empire,” in G. P. Brogiolo and B. Ward-Perkins ed., The Idea and Ideal of the Town between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (1999) for state interventionism in provincial town affairs.

[19] A.G. Alexakis text and notes, trans. by S. Wessel, The Greek Life of St. Leo bishop of Catania (BHG 981b) (Bruxelles: Société des Bollandistes, 2011); D. Krallis, “Time, Space, and Physical Reality: Byzantine Authors and the Materiality of the Roman Imagined Community,” V. N. Vlyssidou ed., Byzantine Authors and their Times (Athens: NHRF, 2021), 190-94 for the story of Leon bishop of Catania; for the interpretation of this story as one of Mediterranean connectivity; Longos 2.33 for the Sicilian goatherd.

[20] Attaleiates, History, 224, Kaldellis & Krallis 409-10

[21] Theodosios the Deacon, The Capture of Crete may have inspired Attaleiates’ account.

[22] On Theodosios the Deacon’s work see: L. Andriollo, “Il De Creta capta di Teodosio Diacono fra epos storico ed encomio imperial,” Rivista di Studi Bizantini e Neoellenici 47 (2011), 31–56; for the text see: H. Criscuolo, Theodosii Diaconi De Creta capta (Leipzig: Teubner, 1979)

[23] A.G. Alexakis text and notes, trans. by S. Wessel, The Greek Life of St. Leo bishop of Catania (BHG 981b) (Bruxelles: Société des Bollandistes, 2011)

[24] L. Zavagno, The Byzantine City from Heraclius to the Fourth Crusade, 610–1204 Urban Life after Antiquity (Cham: Palgrave, 2021), 127 on state investment in Aegean defensive structures.

[25] A. Moffatt & M. Tall tr., Constantine Porphyrogennetos: The Book of Ceremonies vol. 2 (Canberra, 2012), 657

[26] On the wider issue of the Roman state’s investment in the Aegean during the so-called “Dark Ages”, see: N. Poulou-Papadimitriou, “The Aegean during the ‘Transitional’ period of Byzantium: the archaeological evidence,” in James Crow and D. Hill eds. Naxos and the Byzantine Aegean: Insular Responses to Regional Change (Athens, Norwegian Institute in Athens, 2018), 29-50

[27] R. Van Dam, Rome and Constantinople: rewriting Roman History During Late Antiquity (Waco TX, Baylor University Press, 2010), 53-54 on Constantinople’s demography and its need to “import” provincials to maintain and grow its population; Efthymiadis & Kaldellis, The Prosopography of Byzantine Lesbos, 30

[28] M. Hendy, Studies in the Byzantine Monetary Economy c. 300-1450 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 588-89 for references to Prodromos.

[29] Theophanes Continuatus, in Bekker 1838: 55, 18-21

[30] A-M. Talbott, “Life of St. Theoktiste of Lesbos” in Holy women of Byzantium: ten saints’ lives in English translation (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1996), 95-116

[31] P. Zerlentes, «Περί του αξιοπίστου του συναξαρίου Θεοκτίστης της οσίας», BZ 10 (1901), 159-65

[32] Talbott, “Life of St. Theoktiste of Lesbos,” 106

[33] Talbott, “Life of St. Theoktiste of Lesbos,” 108 on the Euboean hunter

[34] Talbott, “Life of St. Theoktiste of Lesbos,” 108 on oblivion

[35] Talbott, “Life of St. Theoktiste of Lesbos,” 110-111

[36] Talbott, “Life of St. Theoktiste of Lesbos,” 110 [18]

[37] Lor the Life of St. Lazaros see: R. P. H. Greenfield, The Life of Lazaros of Mt. Galesion: An Eleventh-Century Pillar Saint (Washington D.C. 2000); for the connectedness of villages, D. Krallis, “Popular Political Agency in Byzantium’s Village and Towns” Byzantina Symmeikta 28 (2018), 21-3

[38] Y. Rotman, Byzantine Slavery and the Mediterranean World (Harvard University Press, 2009) for a review of slavery and the slave trade in the Byzantine world.

[39] Talbott, “Life of St. Theoktiste of Lesbos,” 115

[40] Theophanes Continuatus, in Bekker 1838: 299–300 for raids in the North Aegean all the way to

[41] Strabo, Geography, 1.3.19 in H. L. Jones Strabo, Geography, books 1-17 in 8 volumes (New York: Loeb Classical Library, 1917), 223

[42] Zosimos, 2.33.1 in F. Paschoud ed. tr., Zosime, Histoire nouvelle I (Paris : Les Belles Lettres, 1971), 105

[43] O. Seek, Notitia dignitatum accedunt notitia urbis Constantinopolitanae et letercula provinciarum (Berlin, 1876), 45, 5-8

[44] A. C. Bandy ed. tr., Ioannes Lydus, On Powers or The Magistracies of the Roman State (Philadelphia, 1983), 127, (2.29.14-21).

[45] P. Lemerle, Les plus anciens Recueils des Miracles de saint Démétrius (Paris, 1979-81), I. p. 231

[46] G. Zacos, A. Veglery, Byzantine Lead Seals, no.211

[47] S. Cosentino, “Pillars of Empire: The Economic Role of the Large Islands of the Mediterranean from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 76 (2022), 277 on the Apotheke and Lesvos.

[48] Prokopios, Wars, 4.14.18

[49] Mango & Scott, The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor, 354x

[50] A. Moffatt & M. Tall tr., Constantine Porphyrogennetos: The Book of Ceremonies vol. 2 (Canberra, 2012), 678 book 2.45; On the stadiodromikon see: J. H. Pryor, “The Stadiodromikon of the De Cerimoniis of Constantine VII, Byzantine Warships, and the Cretan Expedition of 949,” in The Greek Islands and the Sea, ed. J. Chrysostomides, C. Dendrinos, and J. Harris (London, 2004), 77–108.

[51] J. Pryor, “Water, water everywhere, Nor any drop to drink’. Water supplies for the fleets of the First Crusade,” in M. Balard, et al., eds, Dei gesta per Francos: études sur les croisades dédiées à Jean Richard (Aldershot, 2001), 21-8 on water consumption on oared fleets.

[52] E. Malamut, Les îles de l’empire byzantine: VIIIe–XIIe siècles (Paris, 1988), 539 for a more direct journey from Crete to Constantinople, one that eschews many of the steps outlined in the De Cerimoniis; J. Pryor, “Shipping and Seafaring,” in E. Jeffreys, J. Haldon, R. Cormack eds., The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 484 on voyages over open sea usually avoided, with the example of Mytilene to Athens as a direct trip not usually undertaken.

[53] M. Gerolymatou, Αγορές, έμποροι και εμπόριο στο Βυζάντιο (9 ος ος – 12 α.) (Athens, 2008), 129

[54] Mango & Scott, The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor, 559

[55] Mango & Scott, The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor, 559

[56] Douglas Domingo-Forasté, “Life of Sts. David, Symeon, and George of Lesbos.” in Byzantine Defenders of Images: Eight Saint’s Lives in English Translation, edited by Alice-Mary Talbot, 142–241. Byzantine Saints’ Lives in Translation 2. (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1998), 155

[57] Domingo-Forasté, “Life of Sts. David, Symeon, and George of Lesbos,” 156

[58] Domingo-Forasté, “Life of Sts. David, Symeon, and George of Lesbos,” 160-1

[59] Domingo-Forasté, “Life of Sts. David, Symeon, and George of Lesbos,” 171

[60] Domingo-Forasté, “Life of Sts. David, Symeon, and George of Lesbos,” 172, note 151 on the cult of St. Ioannes

[61] Domingo-Forasté, “Life of Sts. David, Symeon, and George of Lesbos,” 175; H. Ahrweiler, “La région de Smyrne entre les deux occupations turques, 1081-1317,” TM 1 (1965), 1-204 on the relationship between the area of Smyrna and the islands beyond it.

[62] Domingo-Forasté, “Life of Sts. David, Symeon, and George of Lesbos,” 165 on the Church of the All-holy Mother of God; 187 on the ten cubit pillar and the visiting potentates; 191 on competition with and persecution by the local bishop.

[63] Domingo-Forasté, “Life of Sts. David, Symeon, and George of Lesbos,” 187 on the ten-cubit pillar and the visiting potentates; 191 on competition with and persecution by the local bishop.

[64] Domingo-Forasté, “Life of Sts. David, Symeon, and George of Lesbos,” 191 on attracting local potentates.

[65] A. Kaldellis, “Lesbos in Late Antiquity: Live Evidence and New Models for Religious Change,” in W. Caraher, L. J. Hall, and R. S. Moore, eds., Archaeology and History in Medieval and Post-Medieval Greece: Studies on Method and Meaning in Honor of Timothy E. Gregory (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008) 155-167.

[66] L. Acheilara, «Μήθυμνα», Αρχαιολογικό Δελτίο 56-59 2001- 2004, Χρονικά Β6 (Αθήνα, 2012), 4-5 with reference to Classical and Hellenistic housing.

[67] C. Mango with S. Efthymiadis ed., tr., The Correspondence of Ignatios the Deacon (Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection: Washington DC, 1997), 104 lines 35-41, 105 for the translation.

[68] I. Fountoulis, «Ο Άγιος Ανδρέας Κρήτης, η Ερεσός και ο Μέγας Κανών», Λεσβιακά αγιολογικά μελετήματα Α’, 59-64.

[69] C. Mango & R. Scott, The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor: Byzantine and Near Eastern History AD 284-813 (Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1997), 657-8

[70] Mango & Scott, The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor, 657

[71] For a summary of these events see Efthymiadis & Kaldellis, The Prosopography of Byzantine Lesbos, 87; for Ignatios in Lesvos see: Andrew Smithies & John M. Duffy (eds.), Nicetas David: The Life of Patriarch Ignatius (Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection: Washington DC, 2013), 40 line 20.

[72] For a summary of these events with relevant bibliography see Efthymiadis & Kaldellis, The Prosopography of Byzantine Lesbos, 104-5

[73] For a summary of these affairs see Efthymiadis & Kaldellis, The Prosopography of Byzantine Lesbos, 92

[74] Domingo-Forasté, “Life of Sts. David, Symeon, and George of Lesbos,”178

[75] Domingo-Forasté, “Life of Sts. David, Symeon, and George of Lesbos,”185-7

[76] J. Haldon & L. Brubaker, Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era, c. 680-850: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 197-247 for a critical take on evidence of iconoclastic action and the nature of iconophile story-telling that challenge the usual narratives regarding the nature of the controversy.

[77] Domingo-Forasté, “Life of Sts. David, Symeon, and George of Lesbos,”225-7

[78] Domingo-Forasté, “Life of Sts. David, Symeon, and George of Lesbos,” 226-32, specifically 231-2 for the return on a dromon.

[79] A. Laiou, Economic History of Byzantium (Washington: Dumbarton Oaks), 737

[80] Laurent, Le Corpus des sceaux de l’ empire Byzantin, vol. 1, l’église, pp. 623-24, Notitia 11, p. 344

[81] Laurent, Le Corpus des sceaux de l’ empire Byzantin, vol. 1, l’église, pp. 573

[82] S. Borsari, «Il crisobullo du Alexio I per Venezia,» Annali dell’Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Storici 2 (1970), 112-31; T. F. Madden, “The Chrysobull of Alexius I Comnenus to the Venetians: The Date and the Debate,” Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002), 23-41 for a bibliographical tour and a summary of scholarship.

[83] Anna Komnene, Alexiad, VII. 8. p. 222

[84] Σοφιανός, Ο Άγιος Γρηγόριος Επίσκοπος Άσσου (Αθήνα: Ακαδημία Αθηνών, 2004)

[85] R.-J. Lilie, Byzantium and the Crusader States, 1096-1204 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 175- 76 on Manuel Komnenos’ marital diplomacy.

[86] M. Angold, Church and Society in Byzantium under the Comneni, 1081–1261 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) for a discussion of Constantinople’s 12th century efforts to control the  training and appointment of bishops.

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