Род Акапинов в просопографии византийской провинциальной аристократии (по данным сфрагистики)

Abstract

Summary

N. Alekseienko. The Family of Akapnenoi in the Prosopography of Byzantine Provincial Aristocracy (Through Sygillography)

The data preserved by molybdoboulloi with family names make valuable source for Byzantine prosopography in general and for genealogy of individual aristocratic families or to determine their place in the hierarchy of imperial nobility. The private seal of Theodore Akapnenes is analysed as an example of the above.

Despite of the silence of the written sources, monuments of sigillography draw the portrait of this Byzantine aristocratic family, almost not known in Byzantine historical annals, rather definitely and clearly. Representatives of this family were mostly civil officials of high ranks who did not leave in the capital but were related to provincial centres in the Balkans and Asia Minor. A few of them had connections with thematic institutions in Hellas, Cyprus, Tarsos, and Seleukia, as well as to the management of emperor’s property. Evidently, their family raised in the late tenth and first half of the eleventh century. The absence of any data concerning members of this family from ca. the reign of Alexios Komnenos (1081–1118) evidences that the role and importance of this family declined most likely in the turbulent events of the late eleventh and early twelfth century, so its representatives disappeared from the stage of history.

Key words: History of Byzantium, sigillography, molybdoboulloi, prosopography, Byzantine Provincial Aristocracy.