The Role of the “Image of the Other” in the Interaction of Civilisations. The Armeno-Byzantine Contact Zone (10th — 11th Centuries))

Abstract

Armenian medieval historiographers, scholars-monks (vardapets), who belonged to the intellectual elite of the Armenian society, were closely linked with the ruling houses and the top clergy of the country. They were the creators of the ideas concerning the Byzantine Empire. Their desire to introduce the lands of Armenia into the sphere of Byzantine political influence was logically interwoven into their doctrine with the introduction of Byzantine ideological values into Armenian social and political thought. All these factors determined the creation of a positive image of Byzantium — a legal suzerain of the Armenian kingdom and the only supporter of the Armenians in the struggle against the Persians, Arabs and Turks. Therefore, they purposefully diminished the influence of two major «instruments of alientation», political and confessional, which divided Byzantium and Armenia. What is more, they see an ideal of rulers in the persons of the Byzantine emperors. For armenian medieval historiographers the existence of the armenian lands as a part of the «Greek country» at the beginning of the 10th cent. was convenient, and at the end of the 11th cent. — natural and common. The historiographers demonstate tolerance towards the imperial orthodoxy, and the set of ideological and political understandings formed by the 10th cent. in Byzantium has a serious impact on the socio-political theory of the armenians these days. During the desintegration of the armeno-byzantine contact zone the armenian social conscience under pressure of seljuks reliases itself from the influence of the byzantine ideological values, Byzantium starts to estrange itsef from the armenian world, wherease it’s image is considerably fading. And from the end of the 11th – beginning of the 12th cent., after the utlimate collapse of the contact zone, the image of Byzance becomes totally negative (in all of its aspects: government, ethnos, confession). This negative modification of Byzantine Empire’s image goes over from the medieval to the new and newest armenian historiograpgy. The fall of the armeno-byzantine contact zone entailed not only disappointment in the might of the Byzantine state, but also changes in the mentality of the armenian society.

Keywords

• the image of the other
• the interaction of civilizations
• the exchange of ideologemes
• the im-age’s transformation
• byzantine and armenian historiographers of the 10–11 cent.
• the in-struments of assumption
• the instruments of substraction
• образ другого
• взаимодействия цивилизаций
• обмен идеологемами
• трансформация образа
• византийские и армянские историографы x–xi в.
• инструменты присвоения
• инструменты отчуждения