Byzantine Trade Privileges To Venice in PDF

Journal of Medieval History 30 (2004) 135–160
www.elsevier.com/locate/jmedhist
Byzantine trade privileges to Venice in the

eleventh century: the chrysobull of 1092
Peter Frankopan
Worcester College, Oxford OX1 2HB, UK
Abstract
The question of the grant by the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos of an extensive
series of concessions to Venice in the late eleventh century has generated considerable atten-
tion among modern commentators. Of particular importance is the correct assessment of the
date at which the generous privileges were awarded. Recent treatments of this subject have
concluded that the traditional dating of 1082, which sets the Byzantine award in the context
of the Norman attacks on Epirus of 1081–1085, is likely to be correct. This paper offers a
rather different interpretation, arguing that the correct context for the concessions is in fact
1092. Moreover, it is stressed that this is the date provided on both the full versions of the
chrysobull which survive in Latin translations. The paper sets out the case in support of this
date on literary, palaeographical, numismatic and contextual grounds. Apart from having an
impact on analysis of Byzantium’s relations with Venice in the eleventh century, this new
interpretation also has important implications for our assessment of the Byzantine context
for the First Crusade.
# 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Venice; First Crusade; Byzantium
The award by the Emperor Alexios I Komnenos of an extensive series of conces-

sions to Venice in the last quarter of the eleventh century marks a critical and infa-
mous moment in the history of the Byzantine empire as well as of Venice itself.1
Certainly, there can be no doubt that the grant of privileges—specifically those with
commercial implications—had long-reaching consequences. The access to Byzantine
markets which was granted by Alexios I Komnenos, both in Constantinople and in

Tel.: +44 (0) 1865 278300.
E-mail address: peter.frankopan@worc.ox.ac.uk (P. Frankopan).
1
I am extremely grateful to Cyril Mango and James Howard-Johnston for their helpful comments at
various stages in this article’s gestation. Any errors, of course, are my own.
0304-4181/$ - see front matter # 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jmedhist.2004.03.005
136 P. Frankopan / Journal of Medieval History 30 (2004) 135–160
much of the rest of the empire, the removal of duties and taxes to which Venetian
traders were subjected, and the establishment of a Latin quarter of the imperial
capital, represented concessions which gave the Venetians an unprecedented pos-
ition within Byzantium—and one which was rapidly built on following Venice’s
belated but extremely successful participation in the establishment of the Crusader
States, and which served to consolidate the city state’s position in the eastern Med-
iterranean as a whole.
Even putting to one side the anti-Latin riots of the 1170s, the pogroms at the
start of the following decade, and even the sack of Constantinople itself by the
knights of the Fourth Crusade under the personal supervision of the doge in
1204—which all serve to mark the culmination of the competition and tensions
between Byzantium and Venice—the extent to which Alexios’ grant of privileges
served to limit the foreign policy decision-making, and indeed the commercial man-
oeuvrability of his successors, became clear immediately after his death in 1118.
Even as early as the 1120s, Venice had sought and had been able to apply pressure
on John II to re-confirm the concessions which they had been awarded previously,
and to maintain their position within Byzantium—at the expense not only of the
rival maritime city states, but also of the ability of Alexios’ heirs to reduce the
stranglehold which Venice was maintaining and tightening on the eastern and
western flanks of the empire, as well as in Constantinople itself. As such, therefore,
it is not surprising that modern scholars so often connect Alexios’ grant with
Byzantium’s ultimate downfall and the disaster of 1204.
The purpose of this paper is therefore to examine and assess the initial grant
made by Alexios I Komnenos; to look at the concessions which were given by the
emperor; and above all, to consider when the privileges were made and what the
context for their award was. For while the issue of the date of the grant has been
the subject of considerable debate, careful consideration of the primary material
leads to a rather different series of conclusions to that usually proposed by modern
scholars. And these in turn have important implications for analysis of the First
Crusade, and particularly for our understanding of Alexios’ orientation towards
the West in the years immediately before the emperor’s appeal to the pope for mili-
tary assistance at the Council of Piacenza in March 1095.
The concessions awarded to Venice are recorded in five sources. Two of these,
the Chronica per extensum descripta and the Chronica brevis were written in the
thirteenth century by the Venetian doge, Andrea Dandolo, with the latter text pre-
sumed to have been a draft for the longer and more comprehensive former. Neither
work goes into great detail about what privileges were awarded by the Byzantine
emperor, though both record that a chrysobull was brought back to Venice.
The shorter work says only that the chrysobull accorded the doge the title of
protosebastos, and contains no record of any other benefits offered at this time.2
Dandolo’s other account goes into more detail, stating that the emperor not only
2
Andrea Dandolo, Chronica brevis, ed. E. Pastorello, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, vol. 12, part 1
(Bologna, 1938), 363.
P. Frankopan / Journal of Medieval History 30 (2004) 135–160 137
granted the doge (and his successors) the rank of protosebastos, but also gave him
jurisdiction over Croatia and Dalmatia.3 Neither source says anything about further
or additional incentives or concessions awarded at this or indeed at any other time.4
Full accounts of the privileges are to be found elsewhere. Two Latin translations
survive of Alexios’ grant folded into later chrysobulls of Manuel I and Isaac II con-
firming and extending the concessions in 1148 and 1187, respectively.5 The two texts
appear to be independent of each other, with the older document closer to the original
Greek, both in terms of vocabulary, syntax and case endings than its later counterpart.
According to David Jacoby’s recent palaeographical assessment, this Latin document
was itself a copy of an original translation drawn from the Greek original. However,
this hypothesis primarily reflects a need to reconcile the award of privileges with the
idea that Alexios’ grant must be dated to the 1080s.6 This missing Latin document
does not survive, if it ever existed. The Greek original of the text is no longer extant.
There are no substantial or substantive differences between the two Latin ver-
sions, with the critical exception of the date which appears at the end of each docu-
ment. The edition which is attached to the grant of 1148 states that Alexios made
his award in the Byzantine year 6200 (i.e. 692 A.D.), while that of 1187 provides a
year of 6600 (1092 A.D.) for the ratification of the concessions.7 The cause and sig-
nificance of this divergence will be considered below.
The terms of the privileges accorded to Venice by the Emperor Alexios appear in
one other text, namely the Alexiad of Anna Komnene, a source that we know was
compiled in the middle of the 12th century. Near the end of her account of the
Norman attacks on Byzantium in the 1080s, and shortly before reporting the death
of the redoubtable leader, Robert Guiscard, the author comments that the emperor
(her father) was so grateful to the Venetians for their support against the Normans
that he awarded them a series of concessions, before going on to note what these
were in summary form. The fact that Anna’s list corresponds so closely to the two
Latin documents which provide the full text of the grant has convinced many com-
mentators that Anna must have been able to draw on the original grant itself, or
failing that, on an accurate précis of it.8
3
Andrea Dandolo, Chronica per extensum descripta, ed. E. Pastorello, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores,
vol. 12, part 1 (Bologna, 1938), 217.
4
For some comments on the relationship between these two texts, S. Borsari, Venezia e Bisanzio nel
XII secolo: I rapporti economici (Venice, 1988), 136–8.
5
M. Pozza and G. Ravegnani, I trattati con Bisanzio, 992–1198 (Venice, 1993); S. Borsari, ‘Il crisobullo
di Alessio I per Venezia’, Annali dell’Instituto Italiano per gli studi storici, 2 (1970), 124–31; Urkunden zur
älteren handles und Staatsgeschichte der Republik Venedig, ed. G. Tafel and G. Thomas, 3 vols. (Vienna,
1857), vol. 1, 51–4.
6
D. Jacoby, ‘The chrysobull of Alexius I Comnenus to the Venetians: the date and the debate’, Jour-
nal of Medieval History, 28 (2002), 199–204, esp. 202. See below and no. 46.
7
Pozza and Ravegnani, Trattati con Bisanzio, 44–5.
8
Anna Komnene, Alexias, ed. D. Reinsch and A. Kambylis (Berlin, 2001), VI.5.x, 178–9. Also see Ia.
Liubarskii, ‘Ob istochnikakh ‘‘Aleksiady’’ Anny Komninoi’, Vizantiiskii Vremennik, 25 (1965), 119; J.
Howard-Johnston, ‘Anna Komnene and the Alexiad’, in: Alexios I Komnenos—Papers, ed. M. Mullett
and D. Smythe (Belfast, 1996), 278–9.
Given the fact that the author of the Alexiad does not admit to using an original
source here, nor purports to quote directly from it, would more naturally suggest
the latter here—in other words, that she was relying on a summary of the conces-
sions, rather than on the original text itself. Certainly, Anna’s tendency elsewhere
in the text is to include the documents in full whenever she has had access to
them—as in the case of a letter sent by the emperor to Henry IV of Germany, a
chrysobull in which Alexios gave full executive authority to his mother, Anna
Dalassene, during his absence from Constantinople in 1081, and in the case of the
Treaty of Devol.9 Moreover, the hypothesis that Anna was relying on a summary,
rather than on the grant itself might also help explain why the report of the grant
is clearly misplaced in the Alexiad.10
Either way, however, whether Anna was drawing on the original or not, it is
worth stressing that all three full accounts derive, in one way or another, from the
document which granted the concessions to Venice in the first place. This allows us
some certainty over what it was that Alexios had promised to the Venetians—even
if it does not tell us when or why he had decided to make this series of concessions.
All three sources which drew on the original grant state that the doge was given
the title of protosebastos, that the patriarch [of Grado] was accorded the rank of
hypertimos, and that both would be paid corresponding annuities.11 All three sour-
ces note that the emperor agreed to pay a sum of money in gold on a yearly basis
to the churches in Venice; and all single out the church of St. Mark, reporting that
it was not only granted special treatment by the emperor, but that the Venetians’
rivals in Constantinople—the Amalfitan community—would be responsible for
paying an annuity to maintain the principal church in Venice.12 The Venetians’
special status within the empire was further confirmed by the award of an area of
the imperial capital, specifically the ‘‘ancient quay belonging to the Hebrews’’,
stretching from the Jews’ Gate to the Vigla tower, which was set aside exclusively
for Venetian traders.13 We learn that similar arrangements were made elsewhere in
the empire.14 And above all, we are told that taxes on Venetian shipping—whether
importing or exporting goods—were not only sharply reduced but were removed
altogether, removing commercial barriers, and dramatically incentivising the Vene-
tians to trade with and in Byzantium.15
The Latin versions contain supplementary details which do not appear in Anna
Komnene’s text. For example, the full texts of the award state that the titles which
were accorded to the doge and to the patriarch were to be granted to all their
respective successors.16 The texts also specify exactly how much was to be paid by
9
Anna Komnene, Alexiad, III.6.iv–viii, 101–3; III.10.iii–viii, 112–4; XIII.12, 413–23.
10
Below, 9,16.
11
Pozza and Ravegnani, Trattati con Bisanzio, 38; Anna Komnene, Alexiad, VI.5.ix, 178.
12
Pozza and Ravegnani, Trattati con Bisanzio, 38–9; Anna Komnene, Alexiad, VI.5.ix, 178–9.
13
Pozza and Ravegnani, Trattati con Bisanzio, 39; Anna Komnene, Alexiad, VI.5.ix, 179.
14
Pozza and Ravegnani, Trattati con Bisanzio, 39–40; Anna Komnene, Alexiad, VI.5.ix, 179.
15
Pozza and Ravegnani, Trattati con Bisanzio, 41–3; Anna Komnene, Alexiad, VI.5.ix, 179.
16
Pozza and Ravegnani, Trattati con Bisanzio, 38.
the emperor to the churches of Venice, something which Anna Komnene does not
mention.17 Likewise, the full versions of the grant note how much the Amalfitan
community in Constantinople was to provide the church of St. Mark in Venice—a
detail which is not recorded by the Alexiad.18 And the full documents go further
than Anna Komnene in recording exactly which areas were to be set aside for
Venetian traders, how many anchorages were to be reserved for Venetian ships,
and where these were.19 Other details too appear in the Latin versions and not in
Anna’s text, such as the fact that the church of St. Andrew in Dyrrakhion was to
be given to the Venetians together with its property and revenues—with the excep-
tion of materials which were stored there for the imperial navy.20
Other elements which do not appear explicitly in the Alexiad may be cases of the
author paraphrasing what the chrysobull tells us. Thus, Anna’s summary says
nothing about the inviolability of the emperor’s grant, or about the fact that the
award of property in particular which was to be recorded in a praktikon could not
be challenged by any individual, church or monastery.21 Nor does Anna record, as
the two documents do, that any infringement of the concessions, privileges or
grants made to the Venetians would be punishable with a substantial fine, made up
of an immediate payment of 10 lb of gold and compensation fixed at four times the
value of any goods which had been misappropriated.22 However, while Anna does
not comment on these matters explicitly, her observations amount to much the same
thing—albeit in abbreviated form. So, while the Alexiad is not specific here about
the protection extended to the Venetians, the text does state clearly that as a result
of the emperor’s grant, Venetians were henceforth able to trade without interference
as they so wished, and that they were completely free from Byzantine authority.
This statement about the access to markets and the protection which Venice was
given should be seen to complement what we learn from the chrysobull itself.23
In other words, therefore, the omissions which Anna makes in her summary of
the trade and other privileges either reflect details of secondary importance or are
simply paraphrases of long passages of text contained in the original. Even her
comment that the Venetians were to be accorded property in Constantinople,
;
Dyrrakhion and wherever else they demanded it (‘jai poi pos’ m ejeîmoi
;
gsgramsj’) essentially represents a synopsis of the list of towns recorded in full in
the two Latin versions of the grant.24 As such, therefore, the issue of what was
17
18
Ibid.
19
Ibid.
20
21
22
Ibid.
23 ; ; ; ; ; ;
Thus, ‘‘s
o de d
g leîfjm, s
gm elpjqiam atsjî1 afglijm epjigrem em parai1 saî1 t‘ p
o s
gm enjtriam
; ; ;
‘Pxlaixm v xqai1, rse amesx1 elpjqet;rhai jaì jas o atsjî1 bjtkgs
a s om ;l
gse l ‘
gm tpe;q jjlleqjijt
;
e‘ seqa1 sim
o1 eirpq anex1 s dgljrix eirjjlifjlemg1 paqeveim vqi jai jbjkj^t e‘ m o1, akk nx p arg1
; ‘
e mai‘ q‘ xla€ij^g1 enjtria1,’’ Anna Komnene, Alexiad, VI.5.ix, 179.
24
Ibid. C.f. Pozza and Ravegnani, Trattati con Bisanzio, 40.
awarded to Venice by the Emperor Alexios provides only limited room for
manoeuvre and scope for dispute.
What is rather more problematic is the question of the date of the grant, and
therefore, the context for the favouritism which was lavished on the Venetians.
This topic has been the cause of much debate and considerable discussion among
modern commentators. It is curious indeed that the conclusions which have been
reached here and which have come to be accepted almost unanimously, involve dis-
pensing with what the three principal sources tell us about when the concessions
were awarded. Debate has invariably been focused on whether the chrysobull
whose text is recorded in the two Latin translations and which also appears in
summary form in the Alexiad dates to 1082 or to 1084, with the first of these dates
being by far the most favoured.25 A date of 1092 has also been suggested, although
the case has not been put entirely convincingly.26 As Thomas Madden has recently
made clear in a thorough and considered investigation, the overwhelming majority
of modern scholars now accept that the privileges were awarded to Venice in 1082,
and furthermore, that there are no real grounds to challenge this conclusion.27
There are several eminently sensible reasons to date the grant of privileges to the
early 1080s. We know, for example, that in July of 1090, the doge, Vitale Falier,
made a donation to the monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore of properties in Con-
stantinople which had been originally granted by the Emperor Alexios and which
correspond closely to those which are mentioned in the chrysobull.28 This would
appear to provide clear evidence that the chrysobull itself and the privileges it
bestowed must have been awarded before this date. The fact that Domenico Silvio,
doge of Venice between 1070–1085, held—and used—the title of ‘‘imperial proto-
sebastos’’ in separate, private documents drawn up in Venice in May and June
1083, would also appear at first glance to provide a terminus ante quem for the
award of the concessions recorded in the Alexiad and in the two Latin docu-
ments.29 And so would the fact that Andrea Dandolo’s shorter work, the Chronica
25
F. Chalandon, Essai sur le règne d’Alexis I Comnène (Paris, 1900), 82; F. Dölger, Regesten der
Kaiserkunden des oströmischen Reiches von 565–1453, 3 vols. (Berlin, 1924–1932), vol. 2, no. 1081;
E. Frances, ‘Alexis Comnène et les privilèges octroyés à Venise’, Byzantinoslavica, 29 (1968), 17–27;
M. Martin, ‘The chrysobull of Alexius I Comnenus to the Venetians and the early Venetian Quarter in
Constantinople’, Byzantinoslavica, 39 (1978), 19–23; O. Tûma, ‘The dating of Alexius’ chrysobull to the
Venetians: 1082, 1084 or 1092?’ Byzantinoslavica, 42 (1981), 171–85; D. Nicol, Byzantium and Venice
(Cambridge, 1988), 58–9; M. Balard, ‘Un marché à prendre: l’invasion occidentale’, in Constantinople
1054–1261. Tête de la chrétienté, proie des Latins, capitale grecque, ed. M. Balard (Paris, 1996), 187–8.
26
A. Tuilier, ‘La date exacte du chrysobulle d’Alexis I Comnène en faveur des Vénitiens et son con-
texte historique’, Rivista di Studi Bizantini e Neoellenici, 4 (1967), 27–48. Howard-Johnston notes the
date in passing, ‘Anna Komnene’, 295. Also note Jus Graeco-Romanum, ed. C. Zachariae von
Lingenthal, 8 vols. (Leipzig, 1856–1870), vol. 3, 438, 522.
27
T. Madden, ‘The chrysobull of Alexius I Comnenus to the Venetians: the date and the debate’, Jour-
nal of Medieval History, 28 (2002), 23–41.
28
S. Giorgio Maggiore, ed. L. Lanfranchi, 3 vols. (Fonti per la storia di Venezia, Sez. II—Archivi
ecclesiastici, Diocesi Castellana, Venice, 1960–1968), vol. 2, 169, no. 69.
29
Famiglia Zusto, ed. L. Lanfranchi (Fonti per la storia di Venezia, Sez. II—Archivi privati, Venice,
1955), 6, 9, nos. 1–2.
brevis, records that a chrysobull granting the title of protosebastos was given to the
doge during the reign of Domenico Silvio.30
These pieces of evidence have been used to argue that the concessions were
awarded to the Venetians while Domenico Silvio was doge, and before 1083 at
that. Given that both the Latin records of the chrysobull say that it was issued
in the month of May in the fifth indiction, it has now come to be accepted that
Alexios made his generous grant to Venice in 1082—which was indeed the fifth
indiction.31
This hypothesis would also seem to fit neatly with what we know about
Byzantium in the early 1080s. Alexios had spent much of the first year of his reign
dealing with a major Norman attack on Epirus and on the western flank of the
empire. In spite of his best efforts to contain the redoubtable Robert Guiscard and
to slowly suffocate the invading force, the emperor had suffered a heavy and
humiliating defeat by Dyrrakhion in the autumn of 1081, where he had been lucky
to escape with his life.32 Although this loss did not immediately seal the fate of
Dyrrakhion itself, the town was subjected to a lengthy siege, before finally capitu-
lating in the spring of 1082, most likely at the start of February.33
In the aftermath of the defeat, the emperor appears to have set about trying to
out-manoeuvre the Normans behind their backs, seeking to undermine their pos-
ition in southern Italy and therefore to distract their attention from Byzantium
itself. Thus, says Anna Komnene, Alexios set about contacting a wide group of
magnates in Europe, seeking to win their support against Guiscard. Letters were
therefore duly sent to the pope, to the Archbishop of Capua, to Hermann of
Lombardy and to the princes (‘so t1 pqiccipa1’) and all the leaders of the Keltic
;
lands (‘ pamsa1 so t1 aqvgco t1 s^ xm jeksij^ xm vxq^ xm’), urging them to move
against the Normans in Italy.34 The author of the Alexiad then quotes in full a let-
ter which was sent to Henry IV of Germany, in which the German emperor was
promised a marriage union by Alexios, as well as a very substantial amount of
money indeed (360,000 pieces nomismata) in return for his co-operation.35
The traditional dating of this round of Byzantine diplomacy to the spring of
1082 would therefore seem consistent with the reward being offered to Venice
30
Dandolo, Chronica brevis, 363.
31
32
Anna Komnene, Alexiad, IV.6.i–IV.8.iv, 131–40; William of Apulia, Gesta Roberti Wiscardi, ed.
M. Mathieu, La geste de Robert Guiscard (Palermo, 1961), IV, 226; G. Loud, The Age of Robert Guis-
card. Southern Italy and the Norman conquest (Singapore, 2000), 214–8.
33
William of Apulia, Gesta Roberti Wiscardi, IV, 230, Geoffrey Malaterra, De rebus gestis Rogerii
Calabriae et Siciliae Comitis et Roberti Guiscardi Ducis fratris eius, ed. E. Pontieri (Bolgna, 1927–1928);
Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, vol. 5, part 1; Anna Komnene, Alexiad, V.1.i, 141; Lupus Protospatharius,
Annales, in: Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, vol. 5, p. 61; Anonymous of Bari, Ignori civis
Barensis sive Lupi Protospatae chronica ab anonymo auctore Barensi, ed. L. Muratori, Rerum Italicarum
Scriptores, vol. 5, p. 153. For some comments on the date of the fall of Dyrrakhion, Ia. Liubarskii,
Aleksiada, 499–500, no. 479.
34
Anna Komnene, Alexiad, III.10.i, 112.
35
Anna Komnene, Alexiad, III.10.iii–viii, 112–4.
around the same time. In other words, therefore, Alexios’ grant of privileges to the
Venetians would fall into a wider context of the emperor seeking to do whatever he
could to out-flank Guiscard and to gather support against the Normans. As such,
therefore, rewarding Venice was aimed at maintaining pressure on the invading
force following the capture of Dyrrakhion and the establishment of a Norman
foothold on both sides of the Adriatic and Ionian Seas.
However, there are some major problems here. In the first place, Anna does not
associate an appeal to Venice with those made to other leaders. Nor, indeed, does
the author make any connection between the chrysobull itself and Alexios’
attempts to put pressure on the invaders, or to any other event or events which
took place in 1081–1082. It is troubling too that the report of the emperor’s
contacts with the West is misplaced in the text, appearing not after the fall of
Dyrrakhion but in fact before Alexios had even set out against the Normans in
1081. This suggests both that Anna was herself not sure of the date and context for
her father’s diplomatic initiatives, and also (consequently) that the assumption and
presumption that the dispatch of letters to magnates and dignitaries in the West
should be dated to 1082 may itself be flawed.36
If this serves to unsettle the presumed context for the grant of privileges to
Venice in 1082, then the certainty with which this dating has been proposed and
accepted is further undermined by the fact that a careful assessment of the western
sources—both material and contextual—rather point to the fact that Alexios’ con-
tacts with individuals in western Europe, which appear in the Alexiad, actually
date not to 1082, but in fact to the following year. It is no coincidence, surely, that
while the German court chroniclers are silent about envoys from Byzantium arriv-
ing in 1082, a major embassy is reported to have arrived in 1083. The fact that the
report of the gifts brought by the Byzantines at this occasion correspond closely
with those which are recorded in the Alexiad, coupled with the fact that the source
which reports the embassy is both well-informed and (crucially) chronologically
reliable, suggests rather that the diplomatic initiatives which Anna mentions took
place not in 1082, but rather, a year later.37 The major incentives which the
German emperor was promised might also explain why Henry IV’s Italian
expedition of 1083 was altogether a more ambitious, better prepared and more
committed effort than his campaign of the previous year, which saw his withdrawal
after securing only modest gains.38
The dating of the chrysobull and of the concessions to 1082 becomes more prob-
lematic still when the primary material is looked at as a whole. For, in order to
36
The significance of the misplacing of Anna’s commentary on the emperor’s dealings with the west in
the early 1080s is not noted by many modern historians, e.g. Chalandon, Essai, 81, T. Lounghis, ‘The
failure of the German–Byzantine alliance on the eve of the First Crusade’, in: Actes du XVe Congrès
International d’études Byzantines, 2 vols. (Athens, 1979–1981), 2, 198–207.
37
Ekkehard of Aura, Chronicon, in: Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, vol. 6, 205. C.f. Anna
Komnene, Alexiad, III.10.vii, 114. For some comments about Ekkehard’s reliability, F.-J. Schmale and
I. Schmale-Ott, Frutolfs und Ekkehrads Chroniken (Darmstadt, 1972), 31–42.
38
Therefore note I. Robinson, Henry IV of Germany, 1056–1106 (Cambridge, 1999), 214, 222ff.
justify a date of 1082, several bold steps need to be taken to discount what the evi-
dence actually tells us about when Venice was favoured by the Byzantine emperor.
To judge from the position of the summary of the grant in the Alexiad, concessions
were awarded to the Venetians not in 1082, but three years later, in 1085, half-way
through the second Norman attack on Epirus, immediately before the death of
Robert Guiscard (July 1085), though after a series of naval battles, including one
major encounter which saw the Venetians sustain heavy casualties.39
The chronology of the Alexiad is often extremely erratic, and it is prudent not to
set much store by the author’s placement of specific incidents and episodes in the
text—unless of course there is other source material which can confirm that events
did indeed happen in the order in which the author reports them.40 As such, there-
fore, the flaws with Anna Komnene’s sequence of events elsewhere in the text
means that it is not implausible or difficult to argue that the author has simply mis-
placed her account of the concessions. However, the same fluid approach is harder
to justify for the two Latin versions of the chrysobull itself.
Although both documents give differing dates for the award of privileges, there
can be little doubt that the difference between the two here is the result of scribal
error, and that the dates provided by both documents is, to all intents and pur-
poses, the same. The later copy of the chrysobull, that which is appended to the
further grant of Isaac II Komnenos in 1187, states that Alexios had made his
award of the concessions contained in the document in the Byzantine year 6600—
in other words, in 1092.41 The date provided by the other version, that appended
to the grant of Manuel I in 1148, is clearly incorrect, citing the Byzantine year
6200, or 692 A.D. for Alexios’ award.42 The contradiction here is not hard to rec-
oncile, with the natural and logical explanation for the discrepancy to be found in
the misreading of the earlier copyist of the Latin figures DC for the figures CC—
thereby creating the anomaly of 400 years.43
And that this is what has happened here can be confirmed by the fact that this is
not the only time in the manuscript that the scribe misreads this combination of
figures and makes the same error: therefore, the confirmation of Alexios’ privileges
by his son, John II, is erroneously dated to the Byzantine year 6234 (726 A.D.),
instead of to 6634 (1126 A.D.), when we know that John eventually approved the
re-confirmation of his father’s concessions in the face of sustained military and
diplomatic pressure from Venice.44 In other words, therefore, both Latin versions
39
For Guiscard’s death, Anna Komnene, Alexiad, VI.6.ii, 179–80, Lupus, Annales, 62, Malaterra, De
Rebus Gestis, III.41, 82. For the sea battle, Anna Komnene, Alexiad, VI.5.v–ix, 177–8; Chalandon,
Essai, 92–3; Liubarskii, Aleksiada, 517, no. 628; Loud, Robert Guiscard, 222.
40
For some examples of the disorder of Anna’s account elsewhere, see Ia. Liubarskii, ‘Zamechaniya k
khronologii XI knigi ‘Aleksiada’ Annyi Komninoi’, Vizantiiskii Vremmenik, 24 (1963), 47–56; R.-J. Lilie,
Byzantium and the Crusader states, tr. J. Morris and J. Ridings, (Oxford, 1993), 259–76.
41
42
43
C.f. Madden, ‘Chrysobull of Alexius I Comnenus’, 38–9.
44
Pozza and Ravegnani, Trattati con Bisanzio, 55–6; Madden, ‘Chrysobull of Alexius I Comnenus’, 39.
carry the same date, which is extremely significant given the fact that they are
likely to be independent of each other.
It is curious, therefore, that modern commentators simply put the two separate
and complementary pieces of evidence to one side, dismissing what these docu-
ments say in order to justify the dating of 1082. In order to do so, it is stated that
both scribes were mistaken and that in place of the year 6600, they should in fact
say 6590—in other words, 1082 A.D.45 The grounds for this suggestion are limited
indeed; and in fact, the need to justify the supposed error here has led David
Jacoby to speculate that there was an earlier Latin copy which the 1148 and 1187
scribes were working from and that this version had introduced an erroneous date,
recording the date of 6600, in place of 6590.46
This additional document—which if it ever existed has now been lost—is the
only way in which a palaeographical explanation can be offered to support the
hypothesis that the year cited on both extant copies is incorrect, given that both
scribes appear to make the same mistake as each other entirely independently. And
in this respect, then, it should also be stressed that even if there had been a third
document from which the 1148 and 1187 versions were derived, its existence alone
is not enough to demonstrate that the year had indeed been written down incor-
rectly in the first place; or to put it another way, it does not explain why this copy-
ist would have got the date wrong in his version of the bull.
One of the reasons why the date of 1092 has been discounted comes from the
fact that both documents state that the chrysobull was issued in May of the fifth
indiction. This too has been used to discount 1092 in favour of 1082, since while
the latter was indeed the fifth indiction, the former was the 15th. However, there is
a more convincing explanation for the discrepancy here. For, rather than dispen-
sing with the annual date of 6600 in favour of the indiction number, it is possible
to suggest how these might be reconciled. Certainly, the step of modifying the date
from 6600 (DC) to 6590 (DXCII) requires a greater and bolder step than to correct
the indiction from misreading the Greek 0 ie (signifying the 15th indiction) and sim-
ply noting the indiction as 0 e (5th).47 This would help explain the error of the indic-
tion number, and would allow a consistent reading of the date as May of the 15th
indiction 1092 for Alexios’ award of the concessions to Venice.
In this way, the capricious ‘correction’ of the dates provided by the two separate
Latin documents which has routinely been done by modern historians can be seen
as trying to shoe-horn the evidence without clear justification in order to satisfy a
received view that privileges were granted to the Venetians in 1082.48 And the
45
See for example, Pozza and Ravegnani, Trattati con Bisanzio, p. 36; Madden, ‘Chrysobull of Alexius
I Comnenus’, 39–40.
46
Jacoby, ‘Chrysobull’, 203–4.
47
The hypothesis that both Latin versions of the text record the same (incorrect) indiction prompts one of
two conclusions. Either Jacoby is correct in asserting the existence of a third (lost) document from which
both the 1148 and 1187 reports derive, where this first scribe made the mistake; or alternatively, the two
(extant) Latin versions are not independent of each other, as Jacoby himself asserts, ‘Chrysobull’, 201–2.
48
For example (and most notoriously), Tafel and Thomas, Urkunden, vol. 1, 54.
extent to which this is itself highly misleading comes from the sanguine observation
that to reach this conclusion requires dismissing the evidence of the Alexiad (which
dates the concessions to 1085), and also of modifying two documents which pro-
vide the full text of the chrysobull, both arbitrarily, but also without offering com-
pelling justification for doing so. In other words, it involves dismissing the evidence
provided by all three of the principal sources here, in favour of a context which
seems to fit Alexios’ grant better.
Part of the problem here stems from the fact that 1092 is simply considered an
inconvenient and unrealistic date for Alexios to have been making such great con-
cessions. However, there are good grounds here to support precisely the opposite—
namely that 1092 is in many ways a much more suitable and credible date for the
emperor’s dealings with Venice than 1082.
It is striking, for example, that while the full version of the text talks of the sup-
port which Venice had given the emperor against the Normans, it does not men-
tion that the concessions were conditional on future and continued assistance
against either Guiscard, the Normans, or indeed against anyone else for that mat-
ter. In fact, to judge from the chrysobulls, the Normans and the threat which they
posed does no more than provide a broad background to explain why the relation-
ship between Byzantium and Venice was as strong as it was at the time of the grant
of privileges. It is striking, therefore, that Guiscard is not mentioned in the text of
the chrysobull; indeed, even the Normans do not appear by name in the grant, and
are only indirectly referred to at the start of the text.49
The omission of any mention to the Normans more than in passing certainly jars
with what is normally presumed about the purpose of the treaty—that it was
aimed at both rewarding the Venetians for their help, and ensuring their continued
support against Robert Guiscard and the Normans. Instead, the text of the chryso-
bulls—and indeed of the summary which appears in the Alexiad—is almost exclus-
ively involved with trade; with the benefits which Venice would accrue from and in
Byzantium; of the ways in which their goods would be protected from taxation and
from disputes.
Certainly, if the absence of mention of military support in the future is surpris-
ing, then so too is the fact that the chrysobull draws attention to the help which
the Venetians had given in the past not simply against the Normans in general, but
by Dyrrakhion in particular.50 This is a wry comment indeed if the bull really did
date to May 1082, for the town had fallen to the Normans only a matter of weeks
earlier.51 The gracious thanks for Venice’s help therefore ring rather hollow if set
against a time when Dyrrakhion was no longer in Byzantine hands. It would be far
more reasonable and realistic to date the emperor’s appreciation (and therefore the
chrysobull itself) to after the recovery of that town—which certainly did not take
49
50
51
Above, 7 and no. 33.
place until the end of 1083, at the very earliest, and perhaps not until as late as the
middle of 1085.52
In this respect too, the mention of property to be given to Venice in Dyrra-
khion—including the church of St. Andrew—is not so much impractical as com-
pletely implausible in 1082.53 Even if the Byzantines were willing to make promises
on the basis of the future recovery of that town, it is hard to see that the Venetians
would have set much store by this. Rather, this too would be consistent with
Byzantine, rather than Norman, control of the town, and consequently points to a
date after 1083 at the very earliest, and potentially even two years after that.
Furthermore, the fact that the chrysobull explicitly exempts those parts of
Dyrrakhion which belonged to the church of St. Andrew which were used by the
imperial navy, is impossible to square with a hypothesis that the town was occupied
by the Normans at the time of the award of the concessions set out here. It is not
just that the Venetians were being promised rewards which Alexios was not able to
give in 1082; it is also difficult to see how the emperor could have claimed that the
Byzantine navy was still using part of the town for storage purposes at that time
and that he therefore reserved the right to retain control over it. And the signifi-
cance of the comment about the navy’s stores should be underlined by noting the
present tense in the Latin translations here: in other words, the imperial navy was
still using the stores at the time of the chrysobull’s issue.54 This all but rules out dat-
ing the chrysobull to May 1082, for it is simply not believable that the imperial navy
was operating warehouses in a town which had been lost in the spring of that year.
This therefore points convincingly to the fact that the chrysobull cannot have
been issued until after Dyrrakhion was recovered—in other words, not before
1083, and perhaps not even until after 1085. However, it does not help confirm or
support a date of 1092. But other elements contained in the text do. In particular,
the list of towns which are recorded in the text of the grant where the Venetians
were to have the right to trade and where they were to be exempted from taxes is
highly instructive. The chrysobull provides a lengthy list of the principal ports on
the empire’s seaboard, from Dyrrakhion on the north-western flank, through
Athens, Corinth, Thebes and Thessaloniki, to Attaleia, Adana, Mamistra, Tarsos,
Laodicaea and to Antioch in the east.55
However, while this list at first seems to be a comprehensive register of
Byzantium’s main ports and therefore (presumably) its primary trading posts, a
52
According to William of Apulia, although much of Dyrrakhion was recovered by the Byzantines at
the end of 1083, the citadel remained in Norman hands, William of Apulia, Gesta Roberti Wiscardi, V,
vv. 80–8, 240. The Alexiad says nothing about the recapture of the town at this time. See P. Frankopan,
‘The imperial governors of Dyrrakhion in the reign of Alexios I Komnenos’, Byzantine and Modern
Greek Studies, 26 (2002), 77 and no. 46.
53
54
Thus, Alexios granted all that property which belonged to the church of St. Andrew ‘‘sine tamen
apparatus qui in eis [existentibus imperialibus pensionalibus] repositis est, quasi debens ad chelandia
dari’’, Pozza and Ravegnani, Trattati con Bisanzio, 40.
55
number of locations which we would certainly expect to find mentioned are not
named. Most obvious here are Crete and Cyprus, the two largest and most impor-
tant islands in the eastern Mediterranean. While some historians have tried to
explain their absence from the list by claiming that they were deliberately dis-
counted by the emperor precisely because of their importance, it is perhaps more
productive and useful to note that both islands had risen against Alexios by the
start of 1091, with imperial authority not restored until the second half of 1092, if
not in fact much later still.56 In other words, therefore, the omission of Crete and
Cyprus from the list of towns would seem entirely consistent with the date of the
chrysobull to 1092, since this was a time when the emperor was in no position to
promise trading rights on either island—something of which the Venetians them-
selves would no doubt have been more than aware. In any event, the exclusion of
these islands is certainly striking.
Nor are Crete and Cyprus the only notable locations not to feature in the
chrysobull. For while Khios does appear, no other islands in the eastern Aegean
are mentioned. Lesbos, Samos and Rhodes, as well as lesser islands such as Pat-
mos, Leros and Lipsos, which we might have expected to appear on the list of
towns and islands are conspicuous by their absence. The fact that they are not
mentioned is again extremely significant. It is surely no coincidence that we know
that the Turkish pirate, Çaka, had begun to ravage the Aegean with increasing suc-
cess at the start of the 1090s. Indeed, as we learn from the Alexiad, the Epitome
Historion of John Zonaras, as well as from a speech presented by John the Oxite to
the emperor, all the principal islands located close to the western seaboard of Asia
Minor were lost at this time.57 We know too from other sources that pressure in
the region as a whole had made life all but impossible by the early 1090s.58 It is not
56
For some comments on the omissions from this list, R.-J. Lilie, Handel und Politik zwischen dem
byzantinischen Reich und den italienischen Kommunen Venedig, Pisa und Genua in der Epoche der Komnenen
und der Angeloi (1081–1204) (Amsterdam, 1984), 50–61; Borsari, ‘Il crisobullo’, 118; D. Jacoby, ‘Italian
trade privileges and trade in Byzantium before the Fourth Crusade’, Annuario de estudios medievales, 24
(1994), 351–7. For some comments on the dates of the restoration of imperial authority on Crete and
Cyprus, P. Gautier, ‘Défection et soumission de la Crète sous Alexis Ier Comnène’, Revue des Etudes
Byzantines, 35 (1977), 215–27; D. Tsougarakis, Byzantine Crete from the 5th Century to the Venetian Con-
quest (Athens, 1988), 78–80; A. Savvides, ‘Can we refer to a concerted action among Rapsomates, Caryces
and the emir Tzachas between A.D. 1091 and 1093’, Byzantion, 70 (2000), esp. 124–7; P. Frankopan.
‘Challenges to imperial authority in Byzantium: revolts on Crete and Cyprus at the end of the eleventh
century’, Byzantion, 74, in press.
57
Anna Komnene, Alexiad, IX.1.i–IX.3.iv, 258–65; John Zonaras, Epitome Historiarum, ed. M. Pinder
and T. Büttner-Wobst, 3 vols. (Bonn, 1841–1897), vol. 3, XVIII.22, 736–7; P. Gautier, ‘Diatribes de
Jean l’Oxite contre Alexis Ier Comnène’, Revue des Etudes Byzantines, 28 (1970), 35, 8–10.
58
Acta et diplomata graeca medii aevi sacra et profana, ed. F. Miklosich and J. Müller, 6 vols. (Vienna,
1860–1890), vol. 6, 42–4, 57–8, 81–90; Akolouthia tou hosiou kai theophorou patrou hemon Khristodoulou
tou thaumatourgou (Athens, 1990), 7–157; P. Karlin-Hayter, ‘Christodoulos: Rule, Testament and Codicil
of Christodoulos for the Monastery of St. John the Theologian on Patmos’, Byzantine Monastic Foun-
dation Documents, ed. J. Thomas and A. Constantinides Hero, 6 vols. (Washington, DC, 2000), vol. 2,
564–606. Also see P. Gautier, ‘La date de la mort de Christodule de Patmos’, Revue des Etudes
Byzantines, 25 (1967), 233–7.
surprising, therefore, to find these places absent from the list of towns and loca-
tions mentioned in the chrysobull if this was issued in 1092—rather than a decade
beforehand—since this later date offers an obvious explanation for their absence,
while the earlier does not.
Likewise, the omission from the list of locations of Smyrna, which has been cited
as offering the best natural harbour in western Asia Minor, is also conspicuous. As
the author of the Alexiad repeatedly tells us, the town served as Çaka’s base from
the very end of the 1080s onwards, when he began to cause serious disruption in
the Aegean.59 Concessions granted in this port in 1092—as on Rhodes, Lesbos and
Samos, and on Crete and Cyprus—would have been worthless for Alexios to offer
given that imperial authority had been dislocated there, and it seems both improb-
able and highly unlikely to think that the Venetians would have accepted privileges
in locations that were out of Byzantine control. The dating of the chrysobull to
1092 is the most obvious explanation, therefore, for their omission from this list.
Conversely, then, the appearance of Khios was something which the emperor
could still proffer, since it seems that this island did indeed remain in imperial
hands for most—though not all—of the period that Çaka’s aggression disrupted
the eastern Aegean. We know from the Alexiad that the island was captured at
some point by the Turk, apparently following the disastrous expedition of Niketas
Kastamonites.60 However, we also know that as soon as Khios had fallen, a new
expedition was immediately equipped and dispatched from Constantinople with the
result that order was very quickly restored.61 And although it is difficult to provide
a time frame here with any confidence for the island’s fall or recovery, or for the
period of time between the two—given that Anna is our only source here and given
that the Alexiad provides little internal evidence—it is striking that Khios appears
to have been the centre for Byzantine operations against Çaka throughout much of
the last decade of the eleventh century before the Turk’s murder by the sultan of
Nicaea, Kilidj-Arslan.62 This therefore suggests that the appearance of the island
on the list of places where the Venetians would have concessions is neither difficult
to explain, nor for that matter, surprising.63
In this way, therefore, the generous inducements being offered by the emperor
were designed to draw Venice beyond the Adriatic—as is implied directly or
59
Anna Komnene, Alexiad, IX.1.ii, 258; also VII.8.x, 226; IX.3.i, 264; XI.5.i, 335.
60
Anna Komnene, Alexiad, VII.8.ii, 223.
61
Anna Komnene, Alexiad, VII.8.iii, 223.
62
e.g. Anna Komnene, Alexiad, VII.8.iv, 223–4; VII.8.v, 224; VII.8.x, 226.
63
The omission of the ports of the Black Sea—such as Sozopolis, Mesembria and Ankhialos—from the
list of towns to which Venice was offered access also needs to be explained. The disturbances caused by
the Pechenegs to the north of Constantinople and in the north-eastern Balkans in the 1080s until their
crushing defeat at Lebounion in 1091 presumably had an extremely detrimental affect on these towns
and on trade in this region. Moreover, the emergence of the Cumans as the dominant force on the
steppes in the early 1090s also suggests that the northern coast of the Black Sea continued to be affected
at this time. Ankhialos was used as Alexios’ military headquarters during the Cuman invasion of 1094/
1095—suggesting that this town at least had assumed a specifically military (rather than economic) pro-
file in this period, Anna Komnene, Alexiad, X.3.i–ii, 287–8; X.4.i, 290.
indirectly by associating the chrysobull with Robert Guiscard’s attacks on Byzan-

tium—and into the Aegean and the eastern Mediterranean. So the concessions
should be seen as forming part of a concerted and deliberate attempt to sup-
plement Byzantium’s efforts against the Turks at a time when pressure was steadily
building on the emperor in the east. And in this respect, it is also worth pointing
out that at the start of the 1090s, the problems being posed in Asia Minor were by
no means limited to Çaka. We know that Turks elsewhere had sought to equip
themselves with fleets in the years immediately before the First Crusade—which
not only sharpened the threat of permanent Turkish presence in western Anatolia
as a whole, but also to the imperial capital itself.64 This then provides an important
backdrop to the award of the concessions to Venice, which furthermore helps
explain the scope and nature, as well as the timing of Alexios’ grant: the emperor
was looking to find support from the Venetians against the Turks.
It should not come as a surprise to learn, therefore, that while there is little rec-
ord of imperial naval activity in the Aegean before 1092, we know that soon after
this date at least two major expeditions were launched—one to recover Crete and
Cyprus, and one which was directed against the western coast of Asia Minor
proper—which appear to have been based on substantial naval power.65 It is
tempting to suppose, therefore, that Venetian naval support was both a fruit borne
of the emperor’s concessions, and that this followed soon after the conclusion of
the agreement with Venice. This conclusion must remain hypothetical, however,
since the chrysobull itself says nothing specific about what benefits Byzantium were
to draw from the extension of privileges, and also because the Alexiad’s accounts
of the expeditions do not provide any firm evidence which points specifically to
Venice—even though there is a convincing suggestion that Venetian naval support
lay behind the successful Byzantine maritime operations of the mid-1090s.
Wider analysis of what the chrysobull tells us and of the history of Byzantium in
the 1080s and 1090s can also be used to support a dating of 1092. As has already
been mentioned, the content, scope and purpose of the concessions themselves and
of the chrysobull are not military in nature. Thus, while there is a brief mention of
the help which Venice provided the empire in the recent past by Dyrrakhion, the
thrust of the bull, of the terms outlined and the privileges listed within, are clearly
to do with the stimulation of trade. So, while there is no comment about when the
Venetians would support Byzantium again (whether against the Normans or any-
one else) what form future assistance would take, or whether help was restricted
to specific regions (for example), the text goes into great detail as to where the
Venetians would receive privileges, how commercial disputes would be settled, and
specific taxes to which Venetian vessels would be exempt and liable to. Certainly,
the focus of the document is such that were it not for the presumed context of the
64
Anna Komnene, Alexiad, VI.10.v, 190; H. Hagenmeyer, Epistulae et chartae ad historiam primi belli
sacri spectantes: die Kreuzzugsbriefe aus den Jahren 1088–1100 (Innsbruck, 1901), 133.
65
Anna Komnene, Alexiad, IX.2.i–iv, 261–3; VII.8.iii–x, 223–6; IX.1.iii–ix, 259–61. For the date of
these expeditions, Frankopan, ‘Crete and Cyprus’, 8–14.
Norman attacks on Byzantium in the early 1080s it would be difficult to conclude

that this was anything other than a trade treaty, concerned with the granting of
substantial commercial privileges for economic—or rather for non-military—pur-
poses.
In this respect, then, the association which the chrysobull has assumed with the
Norman attacks needs to be refuted. Certainly, the full text of the document says
nothing to suggest that the concessions awarded by the emperor were directly
linked to Venice’s past or present support against the Normans. Rather, their par-
ticipation in resisting Robert Guiscard’s invasions appear in an introductory pass-
age which seeks to stress the communality of Byzantium and Venice’s interests, of
their recent experiences.
The Alexiad too needs to be taken carefully. For although Anna implies that the
privileges were linked to Venice’s support against the Normans, it is clear that the
summary of these which she provides is misplaced in her account—since Alexios’
award certainly did not date to 1085 as suggested by its position in Anna’s history.
Given that it seems likely that the author either had access to the original grant
itself, or to a summary of this, the most plausible explanation for Anna’s own
error is that either she was unaware of the date of the bull, or concluded—as
almost all modern historians have done—that the date of 1092 provided by both
versions of the chrysobull was incorrect, and that the context for Alexios’ generous
award must have been the attacks of Robert Guiscard and the Normans at the
start of her father’s reign.
Of course, it is perhaps not hard to understand how Anna or later historians
would reach this conclusion, given the scale of the emperor’s award, and also, it
might be said, the lack of an obvious context which would set the privileges to
1092. Indeed, Chalandon simply dismisses 1092 on the basis that this seemed too
late to make sense to him, without offering any further consideration here.66 Other
scholars offer no fuller explanations for discounting the date provided by both full
versions of the text—even though in fact 1092 does fit neatly with what was going
on in and around Byzantium around this time.
Apart from the fact that to accept 1082 requires concluding that all three princi-
pal sources for Alexios’ concessions are incorrect in their dating, and that the basis
of the emperor’s grant means that we have to accept the forward-looking terms of
the bull as a retrospective award for services already performed—which is not alto-
gether as convincing as some historians would have us believe—it is also worth
stressing that it is indeed possible to suggest a wider context which would support
the dating of 1092, to the point in fact, where this date would look far the most
convincing—even if we did not have this date enshrined on two independent docu-
ments recording Alexios’ grant.
For example, although the Alexiad does include a brief section which deals with
the emperor’s diplomatic initiatives with leaders in western Europe in the early
1080s, Alexios’ appeals for help would appear to have been the exception rather
66
Chalandon, Essai, 82.
than the norm—at least for the first decade of his reign. By the end of the 1080s,
however, the emperor was beginning to look outside Byzantium with increasing
regularity in order to harness and gather support to deal with problems both
within and on the periphery of the empire.
We know, for example, that Alexios sought and received help from Robert of
Flanders in the form of 500 Flemish knights who arrived in Byzantium in the mid-
dle of 1090.67 Not long after, the emperor sent a letter to Robert to ask for further
support.68 Similar appeals were sent out elsewhere to other magnates in the build-
up to the First Crusade.69 Alexios had also sought to build a cordial relationship
with the pope, Urban II, softening Byzantium’s position towards the Papacy with
the proposed re-instatement of Urban’s name on the diptychs in Constantinople
and apparently refusing to intervene in the plight of the Greek clergy in southern
Italy at the very end of 1089.70 Indeed, so close had the emperor become to Urban
following the latter’s election to the Pontificate in 1088, that Alexios could expect
that the pope would provide military assistance against the Pechenegs before the
demise of the steppe nomads at the battle of Lebounion in 1091, and also for his
support in trying to muster aid in Croatia not long beforehand.71
Certainly, one of the key themes in Alexios’ reign is the fundamental re-orien-
tation of Byzantium westwards in the years immediately before the First Crusade,
as the pressures exerted by the steppe nomads to the north, and by the Seljuk
Turks in Asia Minor, became ever more acute—something which is clear also from
the tension within the empire and from the repeated attempts to depose the
emperor in this period. That the sharp rise in pressure, and the orientation west-
wards, can be dated with some accuracy to the start of the 1090s would therefore
provide a natural context for the concessions awarded to Venice around this time,
with the privileges serving as another case, and another example, of the emperor
looking outside the empire for solutions at an increasingly difficult time.
67
Anna Komnene, Alexiad, VII.6.i, 218; VII.7.iv, 220–1.
68
Hagenmeyer, Epistulae et chartae, 130–6. For some discussion of the veracity of this letter,
Chalandon, Essai, 330–6; E. Joranson, ‘The problem of the spurious letter of Emperor Alexius to the
Count of Flanders’, American Historical Review, 50 (1950), 811–32, P. Schreiner, ‘Der Brief des Alexios
I Komnenos an den Grafen Robert von Flandern und das Problem gefälschter byzantinischer Kaisers-
chreiben in den westlichen Quellen’, in: Documenti medievali Greci e Latini. Studi Comparativi, ed. G. de
Gregorio and O. Kresten (Spoleto, 1998), 111–40; C. Gastgeber, ‘Das Schreiben Alexios’ I. Komnenos
an Robert I. Flandern. Sprachliche Untersuchung’, in: de Gregorio and Kresten, Documenti, 141–85.
However, also see M. de Waha, ‘La lettre d’Alexis Comnène à Robert Ier le Frison’, Byzantion, 47
(1977) 113–25; J. Shepard, ‘Aspects of Byzantine attitudes and policy towards the West in the 10th and
eleventh centuries’, Byzantinische Forschungen, 13 (1988), 106–9.
69
See for example, Shepard, ‘Aspects’, 102–10.
70
W. Holtzmann, ‘Die Unionsverhandlungen zwischen Kaiser Alexios I und Papst Urban II im Jahre
1089’, Byzantinishe Zeitschrift, 28 (1928), 38–67; D. Stiernon, ‘Basile de Reggio, le dernier métropolite
grec de Calabre’, Rivista di Storia della Chiesa in Italia, 18 (1964), 189–226; A. Becker, Papst Urban II
1088–99, 2 vols. (Stuttgart, 1964–1988), vol. 2, 88ff.
71
Anna Komnene, Alexiad, VIII.5.i, 245; P. Frankopan, ‘Co-operation between Constantinople and
Rome before the First Crusade: a study of the convergence of interests in Croatia in the late eleventh
century’, Crusades, 3, in press.
In this respect too, the placing of the grant to the Venetians in the early 1090s is
also specifically significant—even though at first glance, it might appear to sit at
odds with the appeals for military help which were evidently aimed at re-enforcing
the Byzantine army, above all in Asia Minor. However, the trade treaty with
Venice had a secondary purpose—namely the injection of capital into the econ-
omy.
As we know from the numismatic evidence for the later eleventh century, debase-
ment of the Byzantine coinage was spiralling out of control even before Alexios
took the throne in 1081.72 We know that economic conditions in the empire were
desperate by this time from literary sources too, partly because the Alexiad tells us
that the imperial treasuries were empty (which is perhaps not surprising), but also
because the emperor had to resort to confiscating church treasures in order to
finance his war against the Normans. Indeed, in August 1082, he had to convene a
synod to apologise for the expropriation, vowing never to do this again.73 His
pledge did not last long, since he undertook a further round of fund-raising in
the same manner only a few years later in order to pay for an ill-fated attack on
Dristra.74
It is perhaps no coincidence, therefore, that not long before 1092 Alexios
appears to have been about to take precious metals and objects from the church
for a third time, earning him a fierce rebuke from John the Oxite.75 It is not diffi-
cult to understand that the shortfall created by the loss of territory, the resultant
fall in revenues, the disruption caused to short and long-distance trade caused by
upheaval and pressure in almost every part of the empire and the decline in tax
revenues from these sources, must have been acute indeed by the start of the
1090s—particularly considering that a Byzantine field army had been maintained
for over a decade without a break by this time, again with obvious implications for
financial expenditure by the central government and for loss of manpower (and
therefore decline in productivity) in urban and rural areas.
It was the issue of the breakdown of the Byzantine economy which the conces-
sions with Venice were meant to address, and which in fact the terms of the treaty
make clear. The removal of barriers of taxation to Venetian shipping—whether
importing or exporting goods—was intended and bound to stimulate trade, and,
moreover, would thereby revitalise the monetary economy, albeit in the long run.
It would also of course bring in goods and foodstuffs which were in short supply as
the result of a decline in production that must surely be associated with the
increased turbulence in Asia Minor, the Aegean, Crete and Cyprus, and the area to
72
See for example, P. Grierson, ‘The debasement of the bezant in the eleventh century’, Byzantinische
Zeitschrift, 47 (1954), 379–94; C. Morrisson, ‘La dévaluation de la monnaie byzantine au XIe siècle’,
Travaux et Memoires, 6 (1976), 3–29.
73
V. Grumel, ‘L’affaire de Léon de Chalcédoine, le Chrysobulle d’Alexis Ier sur les objets sacrés’,
Revue des Etudes Byzantines, 2 (1944), 127. Also V. Tiftixoglu, ‘Gruppenbildungen innerhalb des
Konstantinopolitanischen Klerus während der Komnenzeit’, Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 62 (1969), 42.
74
Anna Komnene, Alexiad, V.2.v, 145.
75
Gautier, ‘Diatribes’, 35, 8–9.
the north of Constantinople which had been ravaged by steppe nomad raiders for
nearly 20 years without interruption.76 And as the archaeological record shows
convincingly, the two decades which followed the award to Venice saw a sharp
improvement in the monetary economy and in the built environment of at least
some of the towns listed in the bull. This would seem to suggest that the conces-
sions to the Venetians did indeed translate relatively quickly into an important
stimulation of the local economies to which access had been granted.77
That this is the correct context for the chrysobull and that the date of 1092 is
right can be further supplemented by noting a major change in the monetary econ-
omy almost immediately afterwards: while the bull dates to May 1092, by the
autumn of the same year, an entirely new coinage had been introduced, in limited
numbers at first, before becoming properly established towards the very end of the
eleventh century. It would seem plausible that the introduction of this coinage—
which was issued in five denominations—was designed to meet demand for an
anticipated increase in trade. In other words, therefore, it is no coincidence that the
Alexios’ re-coinage followed so soon after his treaty with Venice.78
Put simply, in addition to offering concessions to the Venetians to win their sup-
port against a backdrop of rising pressure in Asia Minor and in the eastern Medi-
terranean, the emperor had been trying to stimulate the economy, therefore putting
in place the logistical arrangements necessary to meet demand both of the local
population, but also, presumably, of the Venetians traders themselves who needed
a monetarised economy in order to buy and sell products efficiently. This would
therefore also go some way towards explaining the large number of denominations
and also the grip which was re-imposed by the emperor and by Constantinople in
managing and maintaining a stable currency—which was an essential pre-requisite
for foreign trade. And that Alexios’ re-coinage had a specific motivation, of course,
is also extremely important, not least since few if any explanations are usually
offered by modern historians as to why (or how) the re-coinage itself took place in
1092—and not earlier (or later). And in this respect, it is worth noting too that the
significance of Alexios’ liberalisation of trade and his stimulation of the Byzantine
76
See for example, A. Harvey, ‘Financial crisis and the rural economy’, in: Mullett and Smythe,
Alexios I Komnenos, 167–84.
77
See for example, The Laconia survey. Continuity and Change in a Greek rural landscape, ed. W.
Cavanagh, J. Crouwel, R. Catling and G. Shipley, 2 vols. (British School at Athens, London, 2002), vol.
1, 361–8, 400–1.
78
Alexios’ recoinage is normally dated to the autumn of 1092, partly on the basis of the evidence of
coin hoards from the 1090s, e.g. D. Metcalf, Coinage in South-Eastern Europe (Oxford, 1979), 104–7;
O. Iliescu, ‘Premières apparitions au Bas-Danube de la monnaie réformée d’Alexis Ier Comnène’, Etudes
Byzantines et post-Byzantines, 1 (1979), 9–17; E. Oberländer-Tarnoveanu, ‘Quelques aspects de la circu-
lation monétaire dans la zone de l’embouchure de Danube au XIIe siècle’, Dacia, 23 (1979), 265–73;
M. Hendy, Coinage and money in the Byzantine empire 1081–1261 (Washington, DC, 1969), 96–8. How-
ever, a useful terminus ante quem of March 1093 is provided by literary reference to the new coinage in
sources relating to Khristodoulos of Patmos, C. Morrisson, ‘Le Michaèlaton et les noms de monnaies de
la fin du XI siècle’, Travaux et Mémoires, 3 (1968), 369–74, and C. Morrisson, ‘Le nomisma hyperpère
avant la réforme d’Alexis I Comnène’, Bulletin de la Société française de numismatique (1973), 385–7.
economy were not lost on the emperor. Thus, to commemorate the first issues of
his new coinage, he took the step of crowning his son, John II, as co-emperor.79 As
such, therefore, the concessions to Venice were not so much just part of a general
re-orientation of Byzantium westwards; they were a fundamental part of the
empire’s re-structure.
The ambition of Alexios’ initiative also goes some way towards explaining the
scale and the generosity of what the emperor was offering by way of privileges. For
while the grant is usually seen as the successful extraction of an extremely high
price by the Venetians, and one which gave them a vice-like grip on the Byzantine
economy, a more productive way of seeing Alexios’ award is to consider what this
in turn tells us about Byzantium at the start of the 1090s, and in the years immedi-
ately before the First Crusade. As such, then, the treaty reveals both the extent of
the weakness of the empire’s position in this period, and of how dramatic Alexios’
efforts to save Byzantium had become by the last decade of the eleventh century—both
of which are instructive in allowing us to understand rather better the emperor’s
appeal to Urban II at Piacenza in March 1095, less than three years later.
This then provides us with a compelling context to support the conclusions
which we have reached about the award of privileges to Venice and of the chryso-
bull’s date, not to the 1080s, but to 1092. It is important to stress, therefore, that
this date is not inconsistent with other pieces of information contained within the
grant itself, and furthermore, that it is possible to square it with the other elements
which have led historians to assert other dates here.
For example, it is possible to explain the full implication of the award of the title
of protosebastos which is mentioned by the Alexiad, by the full versions of the
grant and by Andrea Dandolo’s longer work.80 Although Domenico Silvio, and his
successor Vitale Falier, are both known to have used this title before 1092, the key
point about the confirmation in the 1092 chrysobull here was that the doge and all
his successors (my italics) would be entitled to use this title—a right which was also
extended to the Patriarch of Grado and to his successors too.81
The importance of picking up on this nuance here sits neatly with the astute
observation made in the most recent treatment of this subject regarding the ques-
tion of authority over Dalmatia and Croatia which appears in Dandolo’s longer
work but not in the two Latin copies of the chrysobull (nor in the Alexiad): as
Madden convincingly points out, the correct reading of the passage concerning the
extension of the doge’s powers specifically involves the addition of Croatia to his
titulature and to his authority.82 This, like the extension of titles to the respective
79
Regii Neapolitani Archivi: Monumenti edita ac illustrata, 6 vols. (Naples, 1845–1861), vol. 5, nos. 457,
458, 462, 464–7.
80
Anna Komnene, Alexiad, VI.6.iv, 180; Pozza and Ravegnani, Trattati con Bisanzio, 38; Dandolo,
Chronica brevis, 363; Dandolo, Chronica per extensum descripta, 217.
81
Thus, Anna Komnene, Alexiad, VI.6.iv, 180; Pozza and Ravegnani, Trattati con Bisanzio, 38. The
distinction is not made by Dandolo, nor for that matter the extension of the titles to the doge and the
patriarch’s respective successors recorded.
82
Dandolo, Chronica per extensum descripta, 217; Madden, ‘Chrysobull of Alexius I Comnenus’, 35.
heirs of the doge and the patriarch represented an important new concession to
Venice. Of additional, and critical interest here, is the fact that no doge used the
full title set out in the bull during the 1080s. Indeed, in official documents drawn
up in 1087, 1088, 1089 and 1090, Vitale Falier was referred to only as doge of
Venice and Dalmatia and imperial protosebastos.83 Conversely, after 1092, Falier is
recorded as doge of Venice, Dalmatia and Croatia and imperial protosebastos.84
This is also the style used by Falier’s successor, Vitale Michiel, who took the
throne in 1096 from the very start of his reign.85
While this too provides an important clue about the date of Alexios’ grant, it
also poses a problem for us, for the extension of the doge’s titulature and authority
to include Croatia is not mentioned in the full text of the award—even though the
addition and use of Croatia in the Venetian ruler’s form of address corresponds
very precisely with the grant of 1092. It is perhaps understandable why this is not
mentioned by the Alexiad.86 However, less easy to explain is the failure of the
grants to mention Croatia and the extension of the doge’s rights. One possible sol-
ution here is that there was a second round of concessions awarded by the emperor
contemporaneously, for one reason or another, which added to the privileges
which had already been awarded. It is unclear why this might have happened.
Nevertheless, the possibility that there may have been a parallel grant made at
around the same time may have important implications for our understanding of
the agreement struck between the emperor and the Venetians, if indeed subsidiary
or additional terms were concluded at this time.87
The only other element here which needs clarification concerns the grant of
properties in Constantinople which are recorded in the texts of the chrysobulls.
The same properties appear in a ducal donation to the monastery of San Giorgio
Maggiore in July 1090. This donation specifically refers to the fact that these were
given to Venice by Alexios and recorded in a chrysobull and a praktikon, which
83
SS. Trinità e S. Michele arcangelo di Brondolo, ed. B. Lanfranchi Strina, 3 vols. (Fonti per la storia
di Venezia, Sez. II—Archivi ecclesiastici, Diocesi Clodiense, Venice, 1981), vol. 2, 84, no. 32 (September
1087); F. Corner, Ecclesiae Venetae antiques monumentis nunc etiam primum editis illustratae ac in dec-
ades distributae, 13 vols. (Venice, 1749), vol. 3, 155 (August 1088); SS. Secondo ed Erasmo, ed. E.
Malipiero Ucropina (Fonti per la storia di Venezia, Sez. II—Archivi ecclesiastici, Diocesi Castellana,
Venice, 1958), 6, no. 1 (September 1089); Lanfranchi, S. Giorgio Maggiore, 169, no. 69 (July 1090);
Madden, ‘Chrysobull of Alexius I Comnenus’, 35–6, no. 77.
84
V. Lazzarini, ‘I titoli dei dogi di Venezia’, Nuovo archivio Veneto, n.s. 5 (1903), 287.
85
Lazzarini, ‘I titoli dei dogi di Venezia’, 287; Madden, ‘Chrysobull of Alexius I Comnenus’, 36.
86
The Alexiad’s failure to mention the extension of authority being offered to the doge might be put
down as a case of the author seeking to show Alexios (her father) in the best possible light, and there-
fore choosing not only to gloss over the award of Croatia, but to omit mention altogether.
87
One suggestion here might be that the concession of Croatia was awarded in exchange for a major
injection of capital into the Byzantine economy, either in the form of a loan, or of a one-off grant. There
is, however, no direct evidence to support either conjecture. Nevertheless, the correspondence of timing,
the numismatic evidence both from the re-coinage itself but also from the apparent surge of availability
of precious metals, and the wider geo-political contexts may be instructive here that Venice did offer a
specific quid pro quo for access to the Byzantine markets and for the privileges offered by the emperor.
outlined the physical boundaries of the property in question.88 When this chryso-
bull and praktikon may have been issued is not clear, although Anna Komnene
does comment that her father had promised a series of rewards to the Venetians
soon after coming to the throne which would be confirmed by one or more chryso-
; ;
bulls (‘apjpkgqxh grjmsai di
a vqtrjbj tkkxm kjcxm elpedxhemsa’).89
This would therefore mean that this passage of text in the chrysobull of 1092
was re-confirmation of a grant which Alexios had given in the past. That this
might be the case is perhaps not as unusual as might be thought, for re-confir-
mation of awards was by no means rare. Indeed, the Venetian pressure during the
first years of John II Komnenos’ reign was designed to force the emperor not to
extend the concessions given to them by his father some three decades earlier, but
to compel him to re-affirm that the privileges granted by Alexios I were still valid.90
But in this case, there may again be a sensible solution, for just as the nuances of
the titles and authority being granted in the chrysobull of 1092 need to be picked
up, so too does the fact that along with the confirmation of properties in
Constantinople came the grant of landing stages and anchorages, which do not
seem to have been awarded previously, and which are not attested to in Falier’s
donation of 1090.91 In other words, therefore, the chrysobull of 1092 would mark
the confirmation of grants of properties which had been awarded in the past, as
well as an important new concession—namely landing stages in the imperial capi-
tal. This obviously finds a neat echo with the confirmation and extension of dogal
titles also attested to by the chrysobull. It also means again that the chrysobull
must date logically to after 1090, as the Falier donation must precede the wider
and more extensive award made by the emperor. It is curious, then, that there is no
reference to the grant of land to Falier (whenever this may have happened), or
indeed to any other grants previously made by Alexios in the text of the chrysobull.
Nevertheless, the existence of imperial grants dating to before 1092 does raise
some questions as to what these were concerned with, and when they were issued.
One might even try to speculate here by suggesting that Anna misplaced the sum-
mary of the 1092 bull because she knew, for one reason or another, that Alexios
had made some formal award to Venice at some point during the Norman assaults
on Byzantium, which may or may not have included the land mentioned by the
Falier donation of 1090. Certainly, if an award had been made during the 1080s,
and specifically during the early 1080s, it would go some way towards explaining
the note in Dandolo’s short profile of Domenico Silvio’s reign in his Chronica
brevis, where the doge is reported as having received the title of protosebastos in a
chrysobull from the emperor, evidently before his abdication at the start of 1085.92
88
Lanfranchi, S. Giorgio Maggiore, 169, no. 69.
89
Anna Komnene, Alexiad, IV.2.ii, 123.
90
Pozza and Ravegnani, Trattati con Bisanzio, 51–6; Nicol, Byzantium and Venice, 80–1.
91
Thus c.f. Pozza and Ravegnani, Trattati con Bisanzio, 39, and Lanfranchi, S. Giorgio Maggiore, 169,
no. 69.
92
Dandolo, Chronica brevis, 363.
Of course, the fact that Alexios may have conferred titles and other rewards in
one or more chrysobulls on the Venetians during the Norman attacks is not hard
to believe, even if these do not survive. However, it is worth stressing that these
need not have been substantial grants—and certainly not as generous and as wide-
ranging as those outlined in the 1092 bull. After all, the Venetians themselves had
good reasons to oppose Robert Guiscard’s invasion of Byzantium, which estab-
lished, at least for a short period, a Norman foothold on both sides of the Adriatic
and Ionian Seas, and what is more, at its narrowest point. So Venice would have
been protecting its own interests in helping the Byzantines deal with the attacks
and of strangling the Norman initiative in Epirus. Indeed, their commitment to
harassing Norman shipping, persistent efforts to engage the enemy vessels and the
heavy casualties which they sustained on more than one occasion rather suggests
that Venice was just as much keeping an eye out for itself as it was for the new
emperor—something which might also explain the horrific treatment meted out to
Venetian sailors who were captured by the Normans at the start of 1085, with the
logic here that the Venetians were just as much the Normans’ enemies as the
Byzantines.93
And just to drive this point home, it is worth noting the Venetian reaction to an
earlier raid on the coast of Dalmatia in the mid-1070s which represented a Norman
challenge to their own authority and to their own power: having finally driven the
Normans off with a display of naval force, the doge summoned representatives of
the Dalmatian towns in February 1075 and made them swear not only to oppose
invaders more vigorously in the future, but to never allow outsiders onto their
land ever again.94 Thus, while Anna emphasises the concern which the Venetians
displayed about having their rewards confirmed before they agreed to take on the
Normans in 1081, and suggests that negotiations with Venice were only concluded
after a considerable time had elapsed after Alexios’ coronation in April 1081, it
is worth questioning whether this says more about the author’s views about
foreigners and westerners than it necessarily does about what demands, if any, the
Venetians actually made at this time.95 The fact that we can establish that Venetian
warships were patrolling the sea by Dyrrakhion no later than July 1081 means that
this possibility should not be discounted given the logistical problems posed by the
fact that Alexios only took the throne three months earlier.96 In other words,
therefore, Venice had its own reasons to frustrate Norman ambitions, and their
support of Byzantium in the 1080s does not require a major grant or unrestricted
access to the empire’s trade markets to explain it.
Some conclusions can therefore be drawn about the privileges which were gran-
ted to Venice by the Emperor Alexios I Komnenos. In spite of the attempts of
93
Anna Komnene, Alexiad, VI.5.viii, 178.
94
Tafel and Thomas, Urkunden, vol. 1, 41–3; D. Mandic, ‘Gregorio VII e l’ocupazione Veneta della
Dalmazia nell’anno 1076’, in: Venezia e il levante—fino al secolo XV, ed. A. Pertusi, 2 vols. (Florence,
1973), vol. 1, 453–71; Nicol, Byzantium and Venice, 55–6.
95
Anna Komnene, Alexiad, IV.2.ii, 80–1. Also Shepard, ‘Aspects’, 96–100.
96
Anna Komnene, Alexiad, IV.2.iii, 81; William of Apulia, Gesta Roberti Wiscardi, IV. 286, 218.
modern scholars to associate the grant of extensive commercial concessions to the

Venetians with the Norman attacks on Byzantium between 1081 and 1085, a date
of 1092 for the emperor’s award is considerably more plausible. Part of the reason
why this has not been asserted convincingly in the past stems from the fact that
historians have tended to follow Anna Komnene’s implied link between her
father’s grant and the Norman attacks. Curiously, it is not only the Alexiad’s posi-
tioning of this episode which has been arbitrarily corrected (with no attention paid,
incidentally, as to why the author might have made this mistake); but strenuous
efforts have been made in order to justify amending the dates given by two full and
independent Latin translations of the concessions awarded to Venice—again, with-
out explaining how or why such a supposed error might have found its way in to
the texts.
There is every reason to think that Alexios may have awarded limited privileges
during the efforts to deal with the Normans of Robert Guiscard, and to suppose
that these were granted by chrysobull, as Anna Komnene and Andrea Dandolo
note, and as documents from Venice confirm.97 However, such rewards took
the form of property and perhaps also the title of protosebastos which the doge
Domenico Silvio used on at least two occasions in 1083.
By 1092, however, confronted with serious economic difficulties, as well as
increasing pressure in Asia Minor and the Balkans, and within the empire itself,
Alexios had begun to look beyond Constantinople for solutions. In this respect, his
attempts to attract foreign capital in order to stimulate the economy, as well as to
bring in goods and foodstuffs to supplement the decline in productivity which is
specifically mentioned by Theophylact of Ohrid and by John the Oxite in this per-
iod, compare neatly with other initiatives which the emperor was taking around
this time to boost his military capabilities.98
Above all, however, the emperor’s award of concessions was designed to extend
a series of inducements which would offer Venice very substantial incentives to
operate beyond their usual arena, pulling them further into the Aegean and
towards Asia Minor, where their help and assistance would go a long way to help-
ing Byzantium to deal with the Turks. Moreover, and perhaps no less importantly,
the incentives being offered to Venice brought with them a subsidiary effect of sti-
mulating the Byzantine economy, of providing an alternative source of supply, and
even, in the best case scenario, of serving to show to the Turks the benefits of
peaceful co-existence with the empire and its allies. In this, Alexios’ decision to
turn to Venice and to use commerce as a means of defusing a military threat, has
an obvious parallel with the treaty extended to the Rus’ at the start of the tenth
century, where again Byzantium had sought to promote and underline the fact that
peace was more rewarding to the empire’s neighbours than hostility.
97
Anna Komnene, Alexiad, IV.2.ii–iii, 122–3; Dandolo, Chronica brevis, 363, Lanfranchi, Famiglia
Zusto, 6, 9, nos. 1, 2.
98
Note therefore, A. Harvey, ‘The land and taxation in the reign of Alexios I Komnenos: the evidence
of Theophylakt of Ochrid’, Revue des Etudes Byzantines, 51 (1993), 139–54.
Thus, in May 1092, Alexios issued a chrysobull awarding a sweeping series of

concessions to Venice, sharply reducing, and even removing altogether, duties and
other taxes in order to attract Venetian traders south. This date can be confirmed
by the Latin translations of the grant, although both mistake the indiction number
for this year. It can also be supported by Alexios’ coin reform, which began shortly
afterwards. The extension of the doge’s authority to include Croatia, as well as
Dalmatia took place at the same time, as is clear from the amending of the style
used by Vitale Falier and his successors from this date onwards. While some pre-
vious grants of lands were re-confirmed at this time, important new concessions
were also awarded in 1092—most specifically the addition of landing stages set
aside for exclusive use by Venetian traders. The fact that these were granted to the
Venetians only in 1092, and not earlier, sits comfortably and above all logically
with the fact that the Falier donation of 1090 makes no mention of them; further-
more, a suitably sensitive reading of the text of the chrysobull shows that the
nuance of this part of the emperor’s grant was specifically the award of these land-
ing stages, which points convincingly to the fact that they post-date July 1090.
The date of 1092 is also consistent with the other internal evidence contained
within the text of the grant. The reference to the Venetians being given property in
Dyrrakhion is simply not plausible before the town was fully recovered in 1085.
Nor is the fact that the chrysobull refers to the Byzantine navy’s continued use of
one part of this town for its own storage. The towns and islands that were included
in the grant, and more importantly those which were excluded from the list of loca-
tions where Venice was to be given trading rights, also points tellingly to 1092,
when the eastern Aegean and the eastern Mediterranean were beset with piracy
and anarchy, respectively. Conversely, there is no obvious context or explanation
for the omission of these towns and islands which might provide contextual sup-
port for a date for the chrysobull in the early 1080s. And the date of 1092 is also
consistent with what we can establish about the re-orientation of Byzantium west-
wards immediately before the First Crusade, about the increasing co-operation and
indeed the partial reconciliation with the Latin Church in the same period, and
about Alexios’ attempts to harness and attract support from outside the empire in
order to bolster it at a time of mounting pressure both from within and without.
This then presents a new view of the context for and dating of the privileges
granted to Venice by the Emperor Alexios. These conclusions also allow us to
dovetail the full versions of the text with what we learn from Dandolo’s longer
work, the Chronica per extensum descripta, which records that the chrysobull was
issued during the reign of Vitale Falier (therefore after 1085)—although the pos-
ition of this episode might easily mislead if not properly considered.99 However, it
99
The logical explanation for the position of Dandolo’s comment about the chrysobull at the start of
Vitale Falier’s reign is that it was placed here by way of juxtaposition with the causes of the downfall of
Domenico Silvio. This means that the position of this episode should not be taken at face value. Rather,
the mention of Falier’s concessions are presumably designed (and positioned) to show that he, unlike
Silvio, had been able to increase Venice’s power and prestige, Dandolo, Chronica per extensum descripta,
216.
is possible to reconcile all five sources which are relevant here, to account for the
apparent contradictions between them and to explain the divergences in what they
tell us.
The specific build-up to, and indeed the occasion of, the grant is not possible to
determine, which is at least partly the result of the failure of the Byzantine source
material for the early 1090s, where information is extremely scarce. However, it is
perhaps too much of a coincidence to note that the Patriarch of Grado, Peter
Badoaro, was not only in Constantinople in person in 1092, but died in the
imperial capital in that year.100 It is not known whether he died before or after the
bull was issued, nor can it be asserted with confidence that he was in Byzantium
with the specific intention of witnessing the treaty being drawn up, as no signa-
tories appear at the end of the text.101 If he did pass away before the bull was
issued, the granting of a title and pension to the patriarch and his successors was
certainly a neat way of making sure that negotiations did not draw to an uncer-
emonious standstill while a new figure was appointed.
Moreover, the patriarch’s presence in Constantinople provides a tempting expla-
nation as to why this individual was granted a high-ranking title in the first place.
One reason for this concession, of course, was the general rapprochment between
Alexios and the church in Europe in the late 1080s and early 1090s. But the pres-
ence of the patriarch in person obviously provided another. Alexios had shown a
long time ago that he understood that the presence of senior churchmen as wit-
nesses to formal agreements went some way towards adding an additional level of
legitimacy to his dealings with westerners which was designed to ensure their co-
operation.102 As he was to find out during the First Crusade, while appealing to
the spiritual sensitivities of secular magnates brought its benefits, it also came at a
price.
Peter Doimi de Frankopan is Senior Research Fellow at Worcester College, Oxford, and Faculty
Research Fellow in Medieval and Modern Greek at the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages at
Oxford University. He is the author of several articles about Komnenian Byzantium, and of a forth-
coming major study of the Emperor Alexios I Komnenos (1081–1118).
100
Dandolo, Chronica per extensum descripta, 217.
101
The only names included on the (Latin) versions are those of a certain George, protoanthypatos for
the Byzantines, and one Machitarius, for the Venetians, Pozza and Ravegnani, Trattati con Bisanzio,
43–4. This contrasts sharply with the list of witnesses on other documents from this period—such as
the Treaty of Devol, which was signed by a host of eminent western and Byzantine individuals, Anna
Komnene, Alexiad, XIII.12.xxviii, 422–3.
102
Thus Euthymius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, had been used by Alexios to witness and formalise the
surrender of Bohemond in 1083, no doubt in order to impress upon the Normans that the agreement
which they were making with the emperor was sacred, P. Gautier, ‘Le typikon du sébaste Grégoire
Pakourianos’, Revue des Etudes Byzantines, 42 (1984), 131. This was not the only step which Alexios
took at this time to underline the religious significance to the invaders, Anna Komnene, Alexiad, VI.1.iv,
169–70.

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Journal of Medieval History 30 (2004) 135–160

Byzantine trade privileges to Venice in the

Keywords: Venice; First Crusade; Byzantium

The award by the Emperor Alexios I Komnenos of an extensive series of conces-

indirectly by associating the chrysobull with Robert Guiscard’s attacks on Byzan-

Norman attacks on Byzantium in the early 1080s it would be diﬃcult to conclude

modern scholars to associate the grant of extensive commercial concessions to the

Thus, in May 1092, Alexios issued a chrysobull awarding a sweeping series of

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