CONSTANTINE VII, porphyrogenitus, emperor of the east.

Leiden, Jan Bouwensz for Louis Elzevier, 1611.

      First edition, edited by Johannes van Meurs (Meursius), who gave the work its title, De administrando imperio, by which it has since been generally known. Written in the mid tenth century by the Byzantine emperor, Constantine VII, porphyrogenitus, it is preserved in one eleventh century manuscript, from which stem three sixteenth-century copies (one of which is not of the complete text). Meurs based his text on the copy made by Antony Eparchus in 1509, which had passed to the Bibliotheca Palatina at Heidelberg (and to the Vatican in 1623).De administrando imperio is a manual of statecraft addressed to the emperor’s son, Romanus. One ‘of the most important historical documents surviving from mediaeval Byzantium’, it includes a ‘comprehensive historical and geographical survey of most of the nations surrounding the empire, starting with the Saracens to the south-east, fetching a compass round the Mediterranean and Black Seas, and ending with the Armenian states on the eastern frontier . . . . The first-hand information comes mainly from Italy, from the Balkans and Steppes, and from Armenia. In Armenia the advance of the Roman arms and the retreat of the Saracens involved a complicated Roman diplomacy in the numerous and jealous principalities beyond the eastern frontier. In a divided and enfeebled Italy, during the interim between the empires of Charlemagne and Otto, Byzantium was for the last time in its history a strong military and diplomatic influence. The only hint of anxiety comes from the north, where the watchful eyes of the foreign ministry observed intently the even shifting kaleidoscope of the political scene, as Magyar and Slav, Russian and Pecheneg, Chazar and Alan made their complicated moves between the Caucasus and the Carpathians. There is no doubt that the De administrando imperio was a secret and confidential document. It tells too much about the principle of imperial foreign policy and diplomacy . . . to be safe for publication . . . . This confidential character of the book, confirmed, if confirmation be required, by its manuscript history and by the circumstances that later writers betray no knowledge of it, enhances its value. It is no partial document of propaganda, fudged up to impress domestic or foreign circles. Much of it is an honest appreciation of the contemporary political situation, compiled from information upon which the government based its day-to-day foreign policy. And, as such, it is unique’ (Moravcsik & Jenkins, eds, De administrando imperio pp. 11–14).‘The book is a sometimes brilliant treatise on the rituals of Byzantine statecraft, a statement of practical wisdom that would have warmed the heart of an Aristotle or a Cicero – and a discussion of the in and outs of politics, war, and diplomacy that would have impressed Thucydides . . . . Its maxims remained at the heart of Byzantine diplomacy, foreign policy, and conception of its being and purpose well into the final phases of the decline of the empire. It may therefore stand as the most mature work of political thought produced by the empire and it is significant that it is, primarily, a work on “international” politics’ (Brown, International relations in political thought pp. 99–100).Simoni C157; Willems 65.