Sklaviniai and Ethnic Adjectives:A Clarification Florin Curta University Florida. USA Abstract:
It has been recently claimed that the first reference to Sklavinia as a territory inhabited primarily by Slavs is to be found in Theophanes Confessor. A particular passage in Theophylact Simocatta in which the word appears has been supposedly mistranslated. In reality, the passage in question contains a reference to Sklavinia at least 150 years older than the Chronographia of Theophanes.Key words: Theophylact Simocatta, Slavs, Sklavinia, Vita Willibaldi.
Having prepared for some time for the trip, Bishop Willibaldof Eichstätt finally departed in 722 for the Holy Land in the company of his father and brother. According to Hugeburc of Heidenheim, who wrote the bishop’s biography half a century later, Willibald embarked at Syracuse and “reached the city of Monemvasia,Morea (Peloponesse) in the land of Sclavinia (et inde navigantes, venerunt ultra mare Adria ad urbem Manafasiamin Slawinia terrae)” most likely in 723 (Vita Willibaldi 93; English translation byC. H. Talbot, from Noble and Head 151)1. Hugeburc’s use of the word Slawiniais the first instance in Latin of a specific name for the “land of the Slavs”2. In a somewhat different form (Sclavinia), the term appears in slightly later sources of the Carolingian age to refer to territories within the Empire, which were inhabited by Slavs (Bertels 160-161)3. Hugeburc could have hardly invented the word, which later entered the specialized language of the Carolingian chancery.If taking at face value her claim that she wrote the biography of Willibald “indictation from his own mouth” one would have to admit that Slawinia was the bishop’s word (Vita Willibaldi 86; English translation from Noble and Head143-144)4. He in turn may have learned it (or rather the original form Sclavinia)in Constantinople, during his sojourn in the City on his return trip from the Holy Land (Ronin 440). The term was certainly in use in Byzantium shortly after AD 800, as attested by the Latin translation of the letter Emperor MichaelII sent to Louis the Pious to justify his attachment to iconoclasm: “de Asiae et Europae partibus, Thraciae,Macedoniae, Thessaloniae, et circumiacentibus Sclaviniis” (Concilia 477)5.
In Greek, the term is employed many times in the Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor, which was finished in the early 810s (Theophanes Confessor 347,364, 430, and 486)6. Theophanes used both the singular and the plural forms of the word to refer to a territory against which the Byzantine emperors ConstansII, Justinian II, and Constantine V launched military expeditions. In at least one case, the Sklaviniai in question are located in Macedonia, while in another,the term is clearly employed for what seems to be a territory under imperial rule(Theophanes Confessor 430 and 486)7. In 810, Emperor Nicephorus I ordered Christians from all the provinces of the Empire to move into the Sklaviniai(Theophanes Confessor 486). This strongly suggests that in the early ninth century, shortly before Theophanes finished the manuscript of his chronicle,the meaning of the word Sklavinia has changed to refer to a territory (recently)conquered and incorporated into the Empire. That, in fact, is the meaning of the word in Ignatius the Deacon’s Life of Gregory of Dekapolis, written around 855.According to Ignatius, at some point during his long sojourn in Thessaloniki between 835 and 841, St. Gregory left the city together with a young disciple and went to a Sklavinia in the hinterland. He returned quickly after for seeing a great deal of bloodshed and unrest to be caused, for reasons that remained unknown, by the exarch of the Sklavinia (Makris 110 and 28-29, for the date of the composition)8. That leaders of Sklaviniai such as the exarch mentioned by Ignatius the Deacon were in the service of the emperor results from the fact that long before embarking on the mission to Moravia together with his younger brother Constantine, St. Methodius is said to have served as archon of a Sklavinia(Kronsteiner 48; Nasledova 87).However, the term Sklavinia was by no means an invention of the ninth century. Before Theophanes, the word appears in the text of the Miracles of St. Demetrius, in a homily of Book I concerning the 586 siege of Thessalonica by 100,000 Sclavenes and other barbarians under the orders of the Avar ruler.That ruler is said to have “gathered all the ferocious tribes of the Sklavinias(τὴν ἅπασαν τῶν Σκλαβηνιῶν θρησκείαν καὶ θηριώδη φυλήν) –for the whole nation took orders from him– mixed them with some other barbarians of different nations and ordered them to undertake an expedition against the God-protected city of Thessaloniki” (Lemerle 1979, 134)9. Archbishop John of Thessalonica wrote the homilies in Book I of the Miracles of St. Demetrius at some point during the first decade of Emperor Heraclius’ reign (Lemerle 1981, 44 and 80;Macrides 189; Whitby 1988, 116)10. His mention of Sklavinias would thus be two centuries older than Theophanes’. However, according to Paul Lemerle, the word Σκλαβηνιῶν in the tenth-century manuscript Vaticanus graecus 797 is a corrupted form of Σκλαβηνῶν, in which case the tribes in questions would be“of the Slavs”, and not “of the Sklavinias”11. There is in fact no other mention of Sklavinias in the Miracles of St. Demetrius. Moreover, Paul Lemerle’s ammendation makes much more sense in the light of Archbishop John’s concept of “nation”(ἔθνος) and “tribe” (φῦλον). To him, the Slavs, whom he always called Σκλαβίνοιor Σκλαβηνοί, but never Σκλάβοι, were an ἔθνος with many tribes, all of which were called in 586 to participate in the attack on Thessalonica12.Is then Evangelos Chrysos right when claiming that Sklavinia appears“in no Greek source of the sixth or the seventh century” (Chrysos 126)? To besure, his claim refers primarily to a passage in Theophylact Simocatta’s History concerning the military situation on the Lower Danube in the summer of 602,right before the revolt of Phocas:As summer was hastening on, word reached the emperor Maurice that the Chagan was cunningly providing a respite for warfare so that when the Roman troops were wandering at random, he might in a surprise move assault the vicinity of Byzantium. Therefore he ordered the general [Peter, the emperor’s brother] to leave Adrianopolis,and commended him to make the crossing of the Ister. And so Peter prepared to move camp against the horde of the Sklavinia (ὁ μἐν οὖν Πἑτρος κατἁ τῆς Σκλαυηνίας πληθύος στρατοπεδεύσθαι) (293; English translation from Whitby and Whitby 217).Chrysos, following Carl de Boor, the nineteenth-century editor of Theophylact’s History, took the word Σκλαυηνίας to be not a noun, but an adjective modifying the noun πληθύς (Carl de Boor, in Theophylact Simocatta 345;Chrysos 125-126). He therefore endorsed Mary and Michael Whitby’s translationof κατἁ τῆς Σκλαυηνίας πληθύος as “against the Sclavene horde” Besides relying on the authority of Carl de Boor, Chrysos’s main argument is that “the adjective sklavinios is known also from the Old Slavonic version of the Vita Methodii”, the second chapter of which contains the phrase knyazhenie slavensko. This, according to Chrysos (and Radoslav Katičić, who apparently translated the text to him into Byzantine Greek) must correspond to the Greek phrase Σκλαυηνία αρχή(Chrysos 126 n. 8). Leaving aside the unwarranted assumption that the Life of Methodius is not an original work in Old Church Slavonic, but a translation from Greek –an assumption not supported by any shred of evidence and contrary to everything that has so far been written on the Life of Methodius by generations of scholars (Dvornik, Ondruš, Petkanova, Birnbaum)– it is significant that Chrysos could not find a single text in Greek in support of his idea that the word Σκλαυηνία is an adjective13. For at a closer look, it appears that no such adjective exists in the (medieval) Greek language. When in need to refer to the quality of being “Slavic” medieval authors writing in Greek used instead σκλαυήνικος,σκλαβινικός, or σκλαβικός. For example, when referring to the boats the Slavs used to attack Thessalonica, the unknown author of Book II of the Miracles of St. Demetrius wrote of σκλαβικῶν νηῶν (Lemerle 1979, 177). According to the equally unknown author of the early seventh-century military treatise known as the Strategikon, in order to be efficient Roman units of light infantry needed to have short lances, like those of the Slavs, λαγχίδια Σκλαβινίσκια (Dennis andGamillscheg 422)14. Both Leo the Wise and Constantine Porphyrogenitus wrote of Slavic people as Σκλαβικὰ ἔθνη (Dennis 470; Moravcsik 138 and 140)15. In the late eleventh-century Life of St. Clement of Ochrid attributed to Theophylact of Ochrid, the letters invented by Constantine-Cyril to render the sounds of Old Church Slavonic are called σθλοβενικὰ γράμματα (Iliev 82 and 70-71, for authorship and date)16.None of those terms appear in Theophylact Simocatta’s work. As a matter of fact, there is no adjective derived from the noun Σκλαυηνοί/Σκλαβηνοί, which is commonly translated into English as “Slavs”17. Wherever Theophylact needed an adjective modifying a noun, he preferred to use Σκλαυηνοί/Σκλαβηνοί in attributive genitive. “Hordes of Slavs (πλήθη Σκλαυηνῶν)” appear many times in the History, but there is no Slavic horde (Theophylact Simocatta 52, 53, 226, 232,etc.). Moreover, the term πληθύς (or its equivalent πλῆθος, more often used in plural form) meaning “multitude” is commonly translated as “horde” when in the company of an attributive genitive referring to the Slavs, to barbarians, or to enemies, in general (Theophylact Simocatta 253, 271, and 293 for hordes of barbarians; Theophylact Simocatta 293 for hordes of enemies)18. Nowhere in Theophylact’s History is any noun for “multitude” accompanied by an adjective derived from an ethnic name. The horde against which Peter prepared to move camp were therefore not Slavic, but of (or in) the Sklavinia19.This interpretation is substantiated by the evidence of the textual context.According to Theophylact, Peter was about to cross the Danube, as the following paragraph explains that a scribo appointed by Emperor Maurice was to furnish ferry boats to the Roman army under Peter’s command, “so that they might cross the river (ὅπως τὸν ποταμὸν διανήξονται)” (Theophylact Simocatta 293; English translation from Whitby and Whitby 217). The attributive genitive of the plural noun for “barbarians” is also used to refer to the land across the river Danube as separate and different from the land of the Romans (Theophylact Simocatta295)20. In other words, the name of the land across the Danube from the Roman provinces in the Balkans is the “land of Slavs”, or Sklavinia. As Gennadii Litavrin has long noted, this appears to be a name on a par with such notions employed by ancient Greek or Roman ethnographers as Scythia, Germania, or Sarmatia, all of which had no clear definition in either territorial or political terms (Litavrin1984, 195). In any case, Theophylact’s Sklavinia has no political, but only territorial sense: the horde against which Peter was preparing to move was that of a particular territory inhabited by Slavs, and not an army of an organized polity established by Slavs in that region across the Danube.Despite Evangelos Chrysos’s claims to the contrary, therefore, Theophylact Simocatta is the first author to have used the term Sklavinia with the meaning“land of the Slavs”, and he did so more than a century before Hugeburc of Heidenheim and Theophanes Confessor. Theophylact finished his History inca. 630, for the last events mentioned in his work are Heraclius’ victory over Rhazates in 627, the death of Khusro II, and the conclusion of peace with Persia in the following year. He is often compared to George of Pisidia or the authorof the Chronicon Paschale, for having composed substantial parts of his narrative in the optimistic mood of the late 620s, after Heraclius’ triumph (Olajos 1981,417-424; Olajos 1981-1982, 41; Olajos 1988, 11; Whitby 1988, 39-40). It has also been suggested that, since his History focuses exclusively on the Balkans and the eastern front, Theophylact’s goal was to explain the events of 626 in the light of Emperor Maurice’s policies in the Balkans and the East (Curta 2001, 56).Beginning with Book VI of his work, he relied on what Hans Wilhelm Haussig once called the Feldzugs journal, a campaign diary written at some point after Phocas’ accession of 602 by a participant in Priscus’ and Peter’s campaigns against the Slavs and the Avars (Haussig 296; for Theophylact’s use of the campaign diary,see Curta 2001, 56-59). Some have even suggested that for the chapters VIII 5.5to VIII 7.7 narrating the events of 601 and 602, particularly Phocas’ revolt of November 602, Theophylact may have used reports of surviving participants,such as Godwin, general Peter’s second-in-command. Indeed, Godwin is the one who “crossed the river [Danube], destroyed hordes of enemies in the jaws of thes word, secured a large body of captives, and acquired great glory” (Theophylact Simocatta 217; see Olajos 1988, 152). Could then the use of Sklavinia at VIII5.10 be attributed to Godwin, Theophylact’s alleged source? In my opinion, the answer must be negative for a variety of reasons. First, this is the only instance of Sklavinia not only in the chapters believed to have been based on interviews with Godwin, but also in the entire work of Theophylact. Second, when in need to refer to the lands across the Danube in which the soldiers in Peter’s army were ordered to pass the winter of 602/603, Theophylact employed a periphrasis,ἐν ταῖς τῶν Σκλαυηνῶν χώραις (Theophylact Simocatta 293)21. Irrespective of the bombastic style of his narrative, Theophylact’s choice of a periphrasis at thispoint cannot be just as a way to avoid repetition of the word Sklavinia22.Why then did he use the word at VIII 5.10? An attentive examination of the entire passage covering the events of the summer of 602, up to the order of the emperor to his troops to spend the winter in the lands of the Slavs (VIII 5-8to VIII 6.1) shows that Theophylact was at pains describing three different movements of armies and peoples in relation to the river Danube, which he viewed as separating the Empire from the barbarians. On one hand, Peter’s troops under the command of Godwin crossed the river against the Slavs, taking large numbers of captives with which the Romans wanted to return to the Roman provinces inthe Balkans, but “Godwin for a time prevented them from doing this” (Whitby and Whitby 217). Meanwhile, the qagan of the Avars dispatched an army “to destroy the nation of the Antes, which was in fact allied to the Romans” (Whitby and Whitby 217). It remains unclear whether the Avar army moved along the left or the right bank of the river Danube. Given that Godwin and his troops were still north of the river, it is possible that the Avars moved along the southern bank, through what was theoretically Roman territory. That much results from the description of the third concomitant movement of people: “In the course oft hese very events, large numbers defected from the Avars and hastened to desert to the emperor” (Whitby and Whitby 217)23. Furthermore, the expedition of the Avars against the Antes is specifically attributed to the Chagan’s reaction to the“Roman incursions” (Whitby and Whitby 217)24. In other words, in response to the Roman attacks on the Slavs, the Avars decided to attack the traditional allies of the Romans farther to the east. The Chagan regarded the Slavs north of the Lower Danube as his subjects, even if he had previously agreed to treat the Danube “as intermedium (μεσίτης) between Romans and Avars” and to allow the Romans “to cross the river against the Sclavenes”25. From a Roman point of view, therefore, a distinction needed to be made between those barbarian lands which were under the direct rule of the Chagan, and the territory which, though theoretically under Avar rule (at least in the eyes of the Chagan), was effectively controlled by more or less independent Slavs. Both were on the other side of the Danube, in contrast to the “land of the Romans” to the south from that river.In the context of the account of the events of the summer of 602, Theophylact needed something to draw a sharp distinction between them. It was from the lands under the direct rule of the Chagan that those Avars came, who would later defect to the Romans. Conversely, it was against the territories controlled by independent Slavs that the Roman troops moved under the command of Godwin. “Hordes of barbarians were surging around the land on the opposite bank of the Ister (τὸ πλήθη βαρβάραων περικυμαίνειν τὴν χώραν τὴν ἀντίπεραςτοῦ Ἴστρου)” (Theophylact Simocatta 293: English translation from Whitby andWhitby 218). Godwin’s operations of 602, however, were directed only against one of those hordes, namely that from Sklavinia, “the territory of the Sclavenes”in which the Roman troops would soon be ordered to spend the winter.Theophylact Simocatta’s use of the word Sklavinia –the first such instance in the literature written in Greek– is nothing more than a narrative device, the role of which is to focus his audience’s attention upon a particular part of the barbarian lands north of the river Danube in the context of a paragraph covering the rather complicated events of the summer of 602. Instead of an attributive genitive, such as commonly used in his work to refer to the quality of being Slavic, Theophylact invented a name for the land of the Slavs derived from the very name he used for them in the History. The territorial meaning of the word was linked to, and in fact limited by the specific circumstances described in the paragraph in which it was used. Theophylact did not employ any other, similar names of barbarian territories or lands derived from ethnic names. There is no Avaria and no Tourkia in Theophylact’s History. That there is instead a Sklaviniais largely due to his peculiar style and narrative strategies. It may well be that Theophylact did not in fact invent the word, and that the term was already used occasionally at the time to refer loosely to the lands inhabited by Slavs.However, it is only in the early ninth century that the territorial meaning was firmly established, thus allowing a shift towards a political interpretation, as the“lands of the Slavs” began to move inside the Empire.
