The miracles of 626 CE: understanding ecclesiastical responses to violent crisis and political instability

<p dir="ltr">In 626 CE, a decades-long war between the Sasanian Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire came to a climax. At the peak of this crisis, an Avar army besieged the Roman capital of Kōnstantinoupolis. The capital was particularly vulnerable because the Roman monarch Hērakleios was away on a risky campaign, leaving the city under the control of his underage heir and a fractious regency council. Yet, the city survived the siege, and two years later Hērakleios returned in triumph. Two significant primary sources, written before the end of the war, survive: a sermon by Theodōros Synkellos and a heroic poem by Geōrgios Pisidēs. These sources cover the events of the siege and function as evidence for the Church’s response to violent crisis. Both prioritise divine intervention over human agency in their accounts of the victorious battle. Via an interdisciplinary methodology, this thesis closely analyses these two sources, contextualising them within their literary traditions and their political and geographical landscapes. This analysis suggests that the authors of both texts were in the employ of Sergios, the patriarchēs of Kōnstantinoupolis’s church, and that they represent two facets of a concerted effort to increase church authority over imperial authority in the years of Hērakleios’s absence, an effort that was abandoned after Hērakleios’s safe return in 628 CE.</p>