Lying at the periphery, yet not too far from the Centre – interrelationship between Crimean Cherson and Constantinople in the early medieval period

0448357 - SLÚ 2016 eng C - Conference Paper (international conference)
Čechová, Martina
Lying at the periphery, yet not too far from the Centre – interrelationship between Crimean Cherson and Constantinople in the early medieval period.
2015.
[Late Antique and Medieval Postgraduate and Early Careers Conference 2015. Connections, Networks, & Contexts. Edinburgh (GB), 17.04.2015]
Institutional support: RVO:68378017
Keywords : Crimean Cherson * early Middle Ages * Black Sea * Byzantine Empire

I will focus on the interrelationship between Cherson and Constantinople. Being at the edge of the Empire, moreover, on the border that was restless most of the time, Cherson was an extremely important town for Byzantine policy. Nonetheless, both the written and archaeological sources testify that the citizens of Cherson were often not loyal to the central government. Despite of that, Cherson served as a place of exile where in particular political exiles were sent. This ambivalence will be discussed in my paper. Why would the Emperors send people to a place that was not entirely controlled by them? To which extent and when was Cherson “autonomous”? Why could the citizens of Cherson dare revolt? What means did the central government use not to lose this extremely important territory?
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0250087