Conclusion
We in see Nikon's writings a prefiguration of later Byzantine/Orthodox attiÂtudes to Ottoman rule, as an attempt to preserve a Christian Orthodox identity even when ruled by Muslims.
Unlike secular jurists, who set too much store in the preservation of the pristine state of Late Roman law to adapt it to contemÂporaneous circumstances, or to Byzantine emperors, who could accommodate non-Orthodox Christians and Muslims via the granting of special privileges or the negotiation of commercial treaties, Nikon, and we might presume many Orthodox clergy and monks living in border regions, were forced to deal with Islam amidst the collapse in imperial authority over the second half of the eleventh century. It is telling that earnest attempts to deal with Muslims and the ways Orthodox Christians could interact with them were made in ByzanÂtine canon, rather than secular, law.Indeed, the Byzantine secular legal tradition in general, particularly after the eleventh century, became subsumed within or fused with (depending on your point of view) Orthodox canon law. The most popular type of legal collection became the so-called Nomokanon, a collection both of church rules (kanones) as well as civil laws (nomoi). Theodore Balsamon (d. ca. 1200), the famed ByzÂantine canonist and titular patriarch of Antioch, could inform his patriarchal colleague Mark of Alexandria that Orthodox believers in his patriarchate, since they were after all Romans (Rhomaioi), should only use the Basilika, the aforeÂmentioned Hellenised redaction of Justinianic law, as their legal code, even though it was apparently not available in Egypt at the time. Imperial Roman law thereby became the law of the Orthodox Church and therefore, after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, a body of imperial law without an empire.
In this chapter I have attempted to explain what might be called the Great Elephant-in-the-Room paradox of Byzantine law: namely, why Muslims were never even mentioned in Byzantine secular law, even though one does find limited treatment of them in canon law. This contrasts with Christian nonÂOrthodox, whose status was, at least in the case of the Syrian Orthodox, disÂcussed by secular jurists. The explanations offered here are hardly definitive, and will hopefully invite further discussion and debate.