From Universal Christian Empire to Proto-National Community: Transformations of Conception of Roman Identity in Byzantine Literature Between the 11th and 13th Centuries

The Byzantine Empire underwent in the period from the end of the 11th to the beginning of the 13th century a fundamental transformation of its political position as a result of the Seljuk conquest of Asia Minor, the rise of Italian merchant republics in the eastern Mediterranean and the Crusades, which culminated in the conquest of Constantinople and the establishment of the Latin Empire. As a result of this development and also the structural reforms carried out by the emperors of the Komnenian dynasty, there were also changes in the position of the Byzantine élite, especially the Constantinople bureaucratical class, which was subsequently reflected in a shift in the reflection of their own identity. This transformation is reflected in historical texts, especially of a literary nature, whose authors came primarily from the class of educated bureaucrats. Based on the analysis of selected sources, both literary and epistolary, the work outlines the gradual transformation of the idea of what it means to be a Roman, and comes to the conclusion that if it was previously possible to become a Roman, now a person could only be born Roman. The identification of Romans and Hellenes combined the rehabilitation of the legacy of ancient Greece and the view of Byzantine society as a proto-national community.