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Thematic Session of Free Communications:

EPIRUS REVISITED – NEW PERCEPTIONS


OF ITS HISTORY AND MATERIAL CULTURE – PART 2
Conveners: Lioba Theis, Christos Stavrakos, Galina Fingarova, Fani Gargova

Lorenzo Riccardi,
Unitary but Incomplete and in Part Lost.
The Mosaics and the Scuptural Decoration of the Parigoritissa in Arta:
Status Quaestionis and Some Observations

Brendan Osswald,
The State of Epirus as Political “Laboratory”

Galina Fingarova,
The Church of St. Mary in Apollonia as a Milestone between East and West

Katerina Kontopanagou,
The Christian Monuments of Epirus in the 17th and 18th C.:
Creating the Social and Economic Profile

Christos Stavrakos,
Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Foundation Legends of Monasteries in Epirus:
Interactions/Connections between the Past and Present and Its Understanding in the Society
Brendan Osswald

The State of Epirus as Political “Laboratory”

Even during the “classical” period, the Byzantine political system was never an inviolable one
and was never constrained by unmodifiable rules such as a Constitution or a Magna Carta. After
1204, this instability of the political frames and institutions increased even more because of the
general turmoil, and the successor States of the Byzantine Empire had to adapt to the new situation.
Probably more than the Empires of Trebizond and Nicaea/Constantinople, Epirus had to change
even more its way of considering her own political organization, because it had not achieved to
become an Empire itself and also because it had to confront the Restored Byzantine Empire.
That is why we can but observe a continuous adaptation from the rulers of Epirus to the
surrounding circumstances. Michael I ruled without any title, his brother Theodore and successor
took the imperial title and finally Michael II and the subsequent rulers bore the title of despots. But
the signification and content of the despotic title changed a lot through throughout the centuries.
Being a personal and non-hereditary honor received from the Byzantine Emperor and implying a
familial connection with him, it became so closely connected to the land of Epirus that it evolved to
become an almost feodal title; giving to Epirus the status of a despotate. This Epirotic innovation was
imitated in other places of the Byzantine and even Balkan world and despotates may be observed
in Morea, Serres, etc.
Another Epirotic innovation is the increasing importance of its cities in the political system.
Political divisions of Epirus led to the appearance of micro-states being no more than cities and
their hinterlands. So the cities henceforth chose their sovereigns. This situation, recalling the
contemporeanous situation of the Italian City-States, was unheard-of in the pre-Crusade Byzantine
world. We should also observe that the necessity of finding allies and military support in difficult
times led these Orthodox cities to call to non-Greek and even non-Orthodox rulers, which again
should have sounded astounding some centuries or even some decades ago.
This constant adaptability clearly shows that Epirus, as a part of Byzantium, was definitely “a
world of changes”. We can only suppose how, in some sense, revolutionary these events appeared to
the contemporaries.

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