Le corps du prince dans la Chronographie de Michel Psellos

• Main Author: Corinne Jouanno
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: Presses universitaires de Caen 2003-12-01
• Series: Kentron
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/kentron/1863

According to the norms of imperial ideology, Psellos is prone to depict the appearance of Byzantine emperors in very flattering terms, as if they were heroes of romances. However he clearly pays less attention to the emperors’ good look than to their health problems and to the deterioration diseases may bring about into such and such an emperor’s body: he thus suggests how deeply court ceremonial happens to be undermined by the emperor’s physical decay, which appears to symbolize the decline of the Byzantine state.