History questions not worth their own thread IV
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Civciv5
Grand Emperor
Wikipedia calls Berengaria "the Great" and Wu Zetian and Tamar are called "the Great" on some websites.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
You'll occasionally hear Elizabeth I described as "the Great", but it doesn't really have any general currency.
Civciv5 said:
I don't think it does.
I can't find evidence of either being called "the Great" although I can find evidence of both "achieving great things" etc. And I wouldn't take the opinion of "some websites" (or even Wikipedia) as gospel truth when it comes to this. I can find websites which prove that Il Duce was the greatest leader in history and that Megas Alexandros was a Slav. That doesn't make it so.Civciv5 said:
EDIT: I'd nominate Eirene Sarantapechaina for that title. But my opinion holds about as much weight as Wiki's.
So I started posting before I realized that this thread had a page 7, and my post was pretty much "yeah Wu is never really called 'the Great' by anybody and Eirene Sarantapechaina deserved to be called 'the Great' but never was".
And then I clicked on the next page. Well, then.
Now that Masada's replaced me so effectively, maybe I can retire.
And then I clicked on the next page. Well, then.
Now that Masada's replaced me so effectively, maybe I can retire.
Civciv5
Grand Emperor
I have never heard of Eirene something else,while I have heard many things about Wu Zetian and Tamar.
They were both great leaders and (by my opinion) better then that Irene of Athens,who only reigned for 5 years.
They were both great leaders and (by my opinion) better then that Irene of Athens,who only reigned for 5 years.
Five years as empress regnant; nearly a quarter of a century as effective ruler of the state. She pretty much ran everything from 780 onwards; only in 797 did she eliminate her son and become sole ruler. The 797-802 dating is nothing more than a chronological convenience. I have to say, though, Tamar and Berengaria are definitely more obscure than Eirene is.
Her sheer political achievement in becoming the ruler of the Byzantine state was remarkable by itself. She was not the scion of an ancient and respected dynasty who just happened to be female; she was the parvenu widow of an emperor who was himself not particularly well loved in his own lifetime. The Roman imperator was defined by his ability to lead troops into battle from the very start, and that symbology had stayed with the office through the intervening centuries. I do mean his, because women certainly were not remotely close to being permitted to do anything of the sort. That a woman could therefore hold an office whose primary function she could not, by virtue of period gender roles, accomplish, was nothing short of astonishing. To hold the title of Byzantine Emperor was not a bog-standard feudal matter like in the Georgian monarchy or Castilian monarchy, and certainly nothing like the Romanov state of the eighteenth century. Only Wu ever did something so similar in its sheer improbability.
Among her first actions were to reverse the well-entrenched religious, military, and political supporters of the old Syrian dynasty to destroy the lunacy of iconoclasm; that she succeeded in this ought to place her among the greatest political geniuses of all time. (Not to mention its ultimate - positive - influence on Byzantine internal history. Iconoclasm was revived briefly by a few emperors after Eirene's death, but it never gained the sort of ascendancy that it had during the eighth century, and by the middle of the ninth century the whole schism was effectively over.) Her impact on religious life actually made a difference to pretty much everybody in the Byzantine Empire, regardless of wealth or social status, which is kind of a big deal. It's hard to imagine a random poor person in Tskhinvali caring much about anything Tamar and her court did.
And then came the bureaucratic reforms, and even the beginnings of a military revival. Eirene's bureaucracy was created virtually de novo to supply her with an alternative power base to the military; her creation of it and its enduring power actually meant that it's reasonable to describe later Byzantine monarchs as something other than military dictators for the following few centuries, before the bureaucracy was dismantled by the Komnenoi. And the military revival was huge. Revival in a long-term sense is rare in the history of premodern states, especially ones that suffered as mortal a blow as the Byzantine state did in the seventh century. That the Byzantines managed it, beginning with the framework that Eirene created, was extremely impressive. She even successfully defeated her own son, the actual Emperor, in a power struggle that by rights she should have lost before it even started.
This is all encomiastic, of course. She was cruel - that almost goes without saying. She was one of the worst mothers in the history of the world. She could at times be extremely petty, as the paranoid schemer types are wont to be. And even she couldn't keep up her brilliant run forever. She was not a nice human being. But she was a great monarch.
Her sheer political achievement in becoming the ruler of the Byzantine state was remarkable by itself. She was not the scion of an ancient and respected dynasty who just happened to be female; she was the parvenu widow of an emperor who was himself not particularly well loved in his own lifetime. The Roman imperator was defined by his ability to lead troops into battle from the very start, and that symbology had stayed with the office through the intervening centuries. I do mean his, because women certainly were not remotely close to being permitted to do anything of the sort. That a woman could therefore hold an office whose primary function she could not, by virtue of period gender roles, accomplish, was nothing short of astonishing. To hold the title of Byzantine Emperor was not a bog-standard feudal matter like in the Georgian monarchy or Castilian monarchy, and certainly nothing like the Romanov state of the eighteenth century. Only Wu ever did something so similar in its sheer improbability.
Among her first actions were to reverse the well-entrenched religious, military, and political supporters of the old Syrian dynasty to destroy the lunacy of iconoclasm; that she succeeded in this ought to place her among the greatest political geniuses of all time. (Not to mention its ultimate - positive - influence on Byzantine internal history. Iconoclasm was revived briefly by a few emperors after Eirene's death, but it never gained the sort of ascendancy that it had during the eighth century, and by the middle of the ninth century the whole schism was effectively over.) Her impact on religious life actually made a difference to pretty much everybody in the Byzantine Empire, regardless of wealth or social status, which is kind of a big deal. It's hard to imagine a random poor person in Tskhinvali caring much about anything Tamar and her court did.
And then came the bureaucratic reforms, and even the beginnings of a military revival. Eirene's bureaucracy was created virtually de novo to supply her with an alternative power base to the military; her creation of it and its enduring power actually meant that it's reasonable to describe later Byzantine monarchs as something other than military dictators for the following few centuries, before the bureaucracy was dismantled by the Komnenoi. And the military revival was huge. Revival in a long-term sense is rare in the history of premodern states, especially ones that suffered as mortal a blow as the Byzantine state did in the seventh century. That the Byzantines managed it, beginning with the framework that Eirene created, was extremely impressive. She even successfully defeated her own son, the actual Emperor, in a power struggle that by rights she should have lost before it even started.
This is all encomiastic, of course. She was cruel - that almost goes without saying. She was one of the worst mothers in the history of the world. She could at times be extremely petty, as the paranoid schemer types are wont to be. And even she couldn't keep up her brilliant run forever. She was not a nice human being. But she was a great monarch.
Louis XXIV
Le Roi Soleil
And, unfortunately, she's known in the west mostly as a footnote in the story of Charlemagne.
Civciv5
Grand Emperor
You have proved your standpoint.
I now regard her as a great leader,however not as great as Wu Zetian or Tamar.
She reminds me of Wu Zetian,who also was cruel and eliminated all her opponents and so became Empress regnant of China.
I now regard her as a great leader,however not as great as Wu Zetian or Tamar.
She reminds me of Wu Zetian,who also was cruel and eliminated all her opponents and so became Empress regnant of China.
Civciv5
Grand Emperor
Tamar presided over the "Golden age" of the medieval Georgian monarchy.Her position as the first woman to rule Georgia in her own right was emphasized by the title mep'e ("king"), commonly afforded to Tamar in the medieval Georgian sources.
Tamar's association with the period of political and military successes and cultural achievements, combined with her role as a female ruler, has led to her idealization and romantization in Georgian arts and historical memory. She remains an important symbol in Georgian popular culture and has been canonized by the Georgian Orthodox Church as the Holy Righteous Queen Tamar (წმიდა კეთილმსახური მეფე თამარი
, with her feast day commemorated on 14 May (O.S. 1 May).
Her reign was a golden age for Georgia,the culture,the arts and the religion flourished.
She expanded the empire into Armenia and vassalized the Empire of Trebizond,she resisted and repelled muslim invasions. She was the one who hold the empire together and after her death the Georgian Empire quickly disintegrated. She was one the greatest women that ever lived.
Tamar's association with the period of political and military successes and cultural achievements, combined with her role as a female ruler, has led to her idealization and romantization in Georgian arts and historical memory. She remains an important symbol in Georgian popular culture and has been canonized by the Georgian Orthodox Church as the Holy Righteous Queen Tamar (წმიდა კეთილმსახური მეფე თამარი
, with her feast day commemorated on 14 May (O.S. 1 May).Her reign was a golden age for Georgia,the culture,the arts and the religion flourished.
She expanded the empire into Armenia and vassalized the Empire of Trebizond,she resisted and repelled muslim invasions. She was the one who hold the empire together and after her death the Georgian Empire quickly disintegrated. She was one the greatest women that ever lived.
Civciv5
Grand Emperor
It is of Wikipedia.
That's an understatement. She makes Sheila Haywood look like Sarah Connor. For that reason I wouldn't be inclined to call her "Great", since that generally suggests some degree of moral approval in addition to historical significance.
One correction I would dare to make to your post is that the iconoclasm controversy wasn't a schism. There was no "iconoclastic church" to rival an "iconophile" one. It was a struggle within the one church.
Civciv5, if you haven't heard of her it's probably because you know her under the name Irene (which is the usual romanisation).
On the subject of "Great"s, these things aren't set in stone. It's quite possible for people to acquire the epithet in some quarters and not others. Some people today refer to the late Pope as "John Paul the Great" quite regularly, while to others that looks just odd. Also, people may acquire the epithet after a very long time has passed. Alfred the Great was never known as such until the nineteenth century, nearly a thousand years after his death.
mayor
Heart & Mind
I secretly hope he "just" owns A LOT of history books which he consults when necessary
True. Oops.
If we're giving out "the Great" based on moral approval, I'd say that no monarch at all deserves it, because monarchy sucks and I strongly disapprove of it, and I'd also say that no Pope deserves it, because the papacy sucks and I strongly disapprove of it. So...yeah.
Norwich basically reproduced the chronicles (ignoring other textual primary sources, let alone epigraphy and archaeology), avoided secondary material except in truly ancient cases like Gibbon, and analyzed them from the view of an aging white aristocratic (Tory, but that hardly needs to be said) British male whose classical Eton and Oxbridge education, yeah, tended to focus more on personalities than on anything else. His view of Eirene is rather colored by that lens; he rarely if ever discussed institutions except for the themata (ignoring Haldon's or Treadgold's analysis, of course), and only then because Gibbon did, and so missed Eirene's bureaucratic reforms. And of course there was nothing about gender studies, or indeed anything outside the confines of Constantinople unless it were a military campaign (described, in true Byzantine fashion, with trite wording that makes it almost impossible to tell battles apart). He also did not do a particularly good job of analysis of events over the medium to long term, and missed a lot of significant stuff that comes up quite often in historiography because of that.
You know, I've been bugging you to read other books on the subject for aaaaaaages now.
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