Gregory Pakourianos
Fresco of Gregory Pakourianos at Bachkovo.
Died1086
AllegianceByzantine Empire
RankStrategos of Theme of Iberia
WarsByzantine–Seljuq Wars in the East and Battle of Dyrrachium

Gregory Pakourianos[a] (died 1086) was a Byzantine politician and military commander. He was the founder of the Monastery of the Mother of God Petritzonitissa in Bachkovo[1] and author of its typikon. The monks of this Orthodox monastery were Iberians.[2][3][4]

Life

Background

The ossuary of the Bachkovo Monastery which houses the remains of Gregory Pakourianos.

Gregory's origins are a matter for scholarly dispute.[5][6] He is believed to have hailed from the region of Tao or Tayk, which had been ruled by Georgian Bagratids of kouropalatate of Iberia, later annexed by the Byzantines to the theme of Iberia in 1001. According to Anna Comnena Gregory was "descended from a noble Armenian family."[7] According to N. Aleksidze, the only source that indicates his Armenian origin is Anna Comnena who was only three years old when Gregory died.[8] The 12-century Armenian chronicler Matthew of Edessa, wrote that he was of vrats, or "Georgian," origin, though here he was likely referring to Pakourianos' being part of the Georgian Orthodox Church rather than necessarily being an ethnic Georgian.[9] Gregory himself proclaimed that he belonged to "the glorious people of the Iberians" and insisted his monks to know the Georgian language.[10] Under Byzantine suzerainty, the population of Upper Tao identified itself as 'Georgian'. The élite of Tao (Basil Bagratisdze, P'eris Jojikisdze, Abas and Grigol Bakurianisdze) regarded Georgia as 'our country' and strove for its spiritual, cultural and political prosperity. Thus, he, like other representatives of the elite from the Tao region, considered Georgia his homeland and strove for its spiritual, cultural and political prosperity.[11]

Taking into account all the evidence available on Pakourianos, the scholar Nina G. Garsoïan proposed that "the most likely explanation is that [the Pakourian family] belonged to the mixed Armeno-Iberian Chalcedonian aristocracy, which dwelt in the border district of Tayk/Tao."[12]

Anna Comnena described Pakourianos as having a tiny frame but being a mighty warrior.[13]

Byzantine service

Since 1060 Gregory served in Byzantine army. In 1064 he had achieved a significant position among the Byzantine military aristocracy, but failed at defending Ani against the Seljuk leader Alp Arslan,[12] King Bagrat IV of Georgia and Albanian King Goridzhan in the same year.[14] Since 1071 he was appointed as a Strategos (governor) of the theme of Iberia. As the Seljuk advance forced the Byzantines to evacuate the eastern Anatolian fortresses and the theme of Iberia, Gregory ceded control over Kars and Tao to King George II of Georgia in 1074. This did not help, however, to stem the Turkish advance and the area became a battleground of the Georgian-Seljuk wars.[15]

Afterwards he served under Michael VII Doukas (c.1071–78) and Nikephoros III Botaneiates (c.1078–81) in various responsible positions on both the eastern and the western frontiers of the empire. Later Gregory was involved in a coup that removed Nikephoros III. The new Emperor, Alexios I Komnenos, appointed him "megas domestikos of All the West" and gave him many more properties in the Balkans. He possessed numerous estates in various parts of the Byzantine Empire and was afforded a variety of privileges by the emperor, including exemption from certain taxes. In 1081, he commanded the left flank against the Normans at the Battle of Dyrrachium. A year later he evicted the Normans from Moglena. He died in 1086 fighting the Pechenegs at the battle of Beliatoba, charging so vigorously he crashed into a tree.

Gregory was also known as a noted patron and promoter of Christian culture. He together with his brother Abas (Apasios) made, in 1074, a significant donation to the Eastern Orthodox Holy Monastery of Iviron on Mount Athos and commissioned the regulations (typikon) for this foundation. He signed the Greek version of the Typikon in Armenian.[16][17][18] He also signed his name in Georgian and Armenian characters rather than Greek.[19] It is assumed that Pakourianos did not know Greek.[20]

Gregory Pakourianos and his brother Abas were buried in a bone-vault house near the Bachkovo Monastery. The portraits of the two brothers are painted on the north wall of the bone-vault house.

Notes

  1. ^ Georgian: გრიგოლ ბაკურიანის-ძე, Grigol Bakurianis-dze; Greek: Γρηγόριος Πακουριανός, Gregorios Pakourianos; Armenian: Գրիգոր Բակուրեան, Grigor Bakurean; Bulgarian: Григорий Бакуриани

References

  1. ^ Typikon of Gregory Pakourianos for the Monastery of the Mother of God Petritzonitissa in Bachkovo "Pages 1--57 from Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents". Archived from the original on 2009-02-26. Retrieved 2010-04-19..
  2. ^ Asdracha Catherine, La région des Rhodopes aux XIIIe et XIVe siècles: étude de géographie historique. Athen: Verlag der Byzantinisch-Neugriechischen Jahrbücher, 1976, pp. 74-75.
  3. ^ (in Russian) Arutjunova-Fidanjan, Viada, ed., Tipik Grigoriia Pakuriana [The Typikon of Gregorius Pacurianus]. Yerevan, 1978, pp. 134-135, 249.
  4. ^ Asdracha Catherine, La région des Rhodopes aux XIIIe et XIVe siècles, pp. 74–75.
  5. ^ Kazhdan, Alexander. "The Armenians in the Byzantine Ruling Class Predominantly in the Ninth through Twelfth Centuries" in Medieval Armenian Culture, University of Pennsylvania Armenian Texts and Studies 6, eds. Thomas Samuelian and Michael Stone. Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1983, pp. 443-444.
  6. ^ Garsoïan, Nina G. "The Problem of Armenian Integration into the Byzantine Empire" in Studies on the Internal Diaspora of the Byzantine Empire. Hélène Ahrweiler and Angeliki E. Laiou (eds.). Washington D.C.: Harvard University Press, 1998, pp. 88-89, notes 138-140.
  7. ^ Anna Comnena. The Alexiad. Translated by Elizabeth Dawes. London: Routledge, Kegan, Paul, 1928, p. 51.
  8. ^ Nikoloz Aleksidze. The Narrative of the Caucasian Schism: Memory and Forgetting in Medieval Caucasia, Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium. Louvain: Peeters, 2018, pp. 162-163
  9. ^ On this, see Matthew of Edessa (1991). Matteos Urhayetsi: Zhamanakagrutyun [The Chronicle of Matthew of Edessa] (in Armenian). Ed. Hrach Bartikyan. Yerevan: Yerevan State University Press. pp. 160, 500, note 226.
  10. ^ Browning, Robert. The Byzantine Empire, p. 126, The Catholic University of America Press, 1992
  11. ^ Eastern approaches to Byzantium : papers from the Thirty-third Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, University of Warwick, Coventry, March 1999. Antony Eastmond, Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies. Aldershot: Ashgate/Variorum. 2001. ISBN 0-7546-0322-9. OCLC 45338066.((cite book)): CS1 maint: others (link)
  12. ^ a b Garsoïan, Nina G. (1991). "Pakourianos". In Kazhdan, Alexander (ed.). The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. Vol. 3. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. p. 1553. ISBN 0-19-504652-8.
  13. ^ Anna Comnena, The Alexiad, translated by E.R.A. Sewter, London: Penguin Books, 1969, p. 81.
  14. ^ (in Russian) Abaza, Viktor. История Армении. Saint Petersburg, 1888, p. 83.
  15. ^ Edwards (1988), pp. 138-140
  16. ^ Typikon of Gregory Pakourianos for the Monastery of the Mother of God Petritzonitissa in Bachkovo. Page 54, paragraph 71. "Pages 1--57 from Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents". Archived from the original on 2009-02-26. Retrieved 2010-04-19.
  17. ^ Paul Lemerle. Le Monde Byzantin. Cinq études sur le XIe siècle Byzantin. Le Typikon de Grégoire Pakourianos (Décembre 1083). Édition CNRS. Paris, 1977, p. 157.
  18. ^ Arutjunova-Fidanjan, Tipik Grigoriia Pakuriana, p. 120.
  19. ^ Mango, Cyril Alexander. The Oxford History of Byzantium. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 12.
  20. ^ Gautier, P., "Le typikon du sèbaste Grégoire Pacourianos." Revue des Etudes Byzantines 42 (1984), p. 158.

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