Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - PAIXUE (Classicising learning in medieval imperial systems: Cross-cultural approaches to Byzantine paideia and Tang/Song xue)

Teaser

In the medieval Eurasian cultural and geopolitical space, Byzantium and China stand out as two centralised imperial orders that drew on allegedly unbroken, in fact purposely constructed, traditions of classicising written learning. Their distinctiveness in preserving classical...

Summary

In the medieval Eurasian cultural and geopolitical space, Byzantium and China stand out as two centralised imperial orders that drew on allegedly unbroken, in fact purposely constructed, traditions of classicising written learning. Their distinctiveness in preserving classical traditions has been indirectly noted by Arnason and Wittrock, who have stated that ‘with the partial exceptions of Byzantium and China, continuities linked to imperial traditions were of limited signicance in the early second millennium’. Classicising paideia gained new life in Byzantium from the dialectics that characterised iconoclasm and its aftermath through the tenth to twelfth centuries and beyond, with important changes to the canon. In medieval China, it began with the promotion of guwen 古文, or ancient style prose, by the eighth-century thinkers, Han Yu and Liu Zongyuan, and was subsequently taken up by reform-minded literati during the Northern (960–1127) and Southern Song (1127–1279) periods, resulting in on-going revisions of the canon and competing accounts of what it meant to revive the ways of the ancients. For present purposes, ‘classicising learning’ is defined as command of the Byzantine Atticising style (or sociolect; attikismos/attikizein/attikōs legein) and Chinese ancient style (guwen), as well as of the relevant, and continually evolving, canon of authoritative texts. It also involves the ability to employ both in public discourse, with those who carried such learning being known as pepaideumenoi or logioi and shi 士 = literati, respectively.

Striking convergences point to ‘analogical investigations’ (G. E. R. Lloyd) shared by elites in both imperial systems at the far ends of Eurasia. In both Byzantium and China systems of value developed that were based on the possession of classicising learning and that the second-tier service elite of pepaideumenoi and shi – who asserted themselves as arbiters of this learning – could appeal to as the basis of their cultural and political authority. Particularly during the eleventh century, in the wake of societal transformations prompted by demographic change, economic growth, and shifts in the constellations of power, the imperial courts’ interest in recruiting capable ofcials and concomitantly rising numbers of middling-class literati seeking career opportunities resulted in novel approaches to teaching and examining classicising learning, as well as in changes in the classical canon. In both, moreover, increasing strife and factionalism over ever-scarcer resources began undermining imperial authority, and, eventually, both systems suffered catastrophic failure with the Jurchen Jin conquest of Kaifeng in 1127 and the Crusader conquest of Constantinople in 1204. These events, in turn, had comparable consequences for the decentralisation of classicising learning in Laskarid and Palaiologan Byzantium, and in Southern Song China. However, such structural convergences must not eclipse the substantial, and equally instructive, divergences between Byzantium and China. Most basically, paideia and xue operated within specic contexts, and thus possessed distinct meanings and cultural signicances. But there were other notable contrasts. To start with, there were vast differences in scale, both in terms of geographical space and the number of individuals involved in classicising learning – a difference that is further heightened by signicant disparities in the amount of surviving sources, with the Chinese side being far better documented. Classicising learning in China underwent frequent transformations but remained uncontested as the legitimate social competence. In Byzantium, by contrast, it become integrated into the Christian empire over the period of long late antiquity and subsequently found itself mostly in synergy with Christian and church ideals (in the case of grammar and rhetoric), but still occasionally challenged by them (in the case of Neoplatonic philosophy),

Work performed

The project team has started work on their respective research monographs and co-authored articles. The first analyzes classicising learning in its respective setting in the Byzantine and Tang/Song empires including examination systems and the relevance of classicising learning for governance. The second offers a case study on the eleventh century in order to test the analytical value of the convergences and divergences outlined above and to better understand the dynamics behind them, adding to recent innovative research on the eleventh century in both cultures. The third is dedicted to gardens of pleasure in Komnenian Byzantium and Song China, with a fourth – on epistolography – under way.

The team has also embarked on the rst.ever attempt to grasp core actors among Byzantine pepaideumenoi systematically/quantitatively in a meta-database, the Edinburgh Database of Byzantine Literati (eByzLiD). This database draws on existing prosopographies, such as PmbZ, PBW, PLP, and puts sociological approaches to classicising learning in Byzantium on rmer grounding. The searchable factors recorded include: region of family origins, place of birth, social background; number and relative position amongst (educated) brother(s); rank at death; patronage relations; attested/presumed performances in ‘rhetorical theatra’, and career postings across the empire.

Final results

The recent move towards global and comparative history has resulted in growing interest in ‘Axial Age’ studies and its medieval sibling, eleventh-century ‘Eurasian transformations’, new work on Rome and Sasanian Iran, or South-East Asia and the Eurasian mainlands in the longue-durée, and is reected in recent projects on the ‘global’ middle ages. Eisenstadt’s pioneering comparative study of imperial systems (1963) now nds company in a number of synoptic, rather than comparative, handbooks on empires, or aspects of imperial states, of varying geographical and chronological scope. All of these take a comprehensive approach to the polities and societies of pre-modern Eurasia, and sometimes beyond, but for want of an alternative tend to juxtapose chapters written by experts in their respective elds.

PAIXUE, by contrast, consciously limits itself to an in-depth comparison of two imperial systems, focusing on one seminal feature and its ramications in both. Such structural-comparative approaches have also been gaining momentum in recent years, e.g., with focus on the Roman and Han empires, ancient Greek and Chinese philosophy and science, and ancient literature. Yet there has been no attempt to analyse any aspect of medieval Byzantine or Chinese cultures systematically and in-depth from a cross-cultural vantage point.

PAIXUE has thus entered literally uncharted territory and is in the process of unlocking considerable potential utility for Byzantinists, Sinologists, classicists, and medievalists, as well as for intellectual historians, comparative historians, and historians of empire. PAIXUE has begun opening up the eld of classicising learning (and empire) in Byzantium and China – so far only accessible to classicists, Byzantinists, and Sinologists – to scholars of medieval and pre-modern cultures in general by creating a sharable terminology and framework that can be adapted by other disciplines. It propels scholarship on education and empire in both Byzantine studies and Sinology, and closes existing gaps. At the same time, it creates the promising new eld of comparative Sino-Byzantine studies and raises novel questions by exploring, in the eld of classicising learning, structurally analogous mechanisms of centralised empire in the formation of institutions, practices, and values. It promotes innovative ways of cooperation in the humanities, such as publications co-authored across the two disciplines, and the creation of a project database that will provide Byzantinists with advanced research tools on the sociology of paideia, and both disciplines with quantitative/‘typological’ surveys of imperial literati performance culture to facilitate further qualitative analysis.

PAIXUE will host a series of three major conferences. The rst – ‘Comparative approaches to the Chinese and Byzantine imperial orders’ (May 2019) brings together one Byzantinists with Sinologists to discuss, in eight sessions, various aspects of classicising learning and empire: Classicising learning and empire; Literary practices; Literati identity and empire; Imperial bureaucracy; Courts and capitals; New urban elites and the economy; Military elites and military culture; Empire and periphery, plus a respondent/discussant for each of these sections who is either a Byzantinist or a Sinologist, arriving at 24 active participants altogether. The respondents, often members of the PAIXUE advisory board, will also staff a concluding Round Table discussion. The second conference – ‘Classicising Learning, Performance, and Power: Eurasian Perspectives from Antiquity to the Early Modern Period’ (December 2019) – will additionally include classicists, medievalists, Islamicists, Ottomanists, and, importantly, experts in legal history and feature some 33 speakers; the third – ‘Visual culture and the Classics in Byzantium and medieval China’ (presumably June 2020) – art historians and experts in visual culture.

In terms of writ

Website & more info

More info: http://paixue.shca.ed.ac.uk/.