Byzantine Dress - Court Dress

Court Dress

Court life "passed in a sort of ballet", with precise ceremonies prescribed for every occasion, to show that "Imperial power could be exercised in harmony and order", and "the Empire could thus reflect the motion of the Universe as it was made by the Creator", according to the Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, who wrote a Book of Ceremonies describing in enormous detail the annual round of the Court. Special forms of dress for many classes of people on particular occasions are set down; at the name-day dinner for the Emperor or Empress various groups of high officials performed ceremonial "dances", one group wearing " a blue and white garment, with short sleeves, and gold bands, and rings on their ankles. In their hands they hold what are called phengia". The second group do just the same, but wearing "a garment of green and red, split, with gold bands". These colours were the marks of the old chariot racing factions, the four now merged to just the Blues and the Greens, and incorporated into the official hierarchy. Various tactica, treatises on administrative structure, court protocol and precedence, give details of the costumes worn by different office-holders. According to pseudo-Kodinos, the distinctive colour of the Sebastokrator was blue; his ceremonial costume included blue shoes embroidered with eagles on a red field, a red tunic (chlamys), and a diadem (stephanos) in red and gold. As in the Versailles of Louis XIV, elaborate dress and court ritual probably were at least partly an attempt to smother and distract from political tensions.

However this ceremonial way of life came under stress as the military crisis deepened, and never revived after the interlude of the Western Emperors following the capture of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204; in the late period a French visitor was shocked to see the Empress riding in the street with fewer attendants and less ceremony than a Queen of France would have had.