Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>The Byzantine phenomenon posed problems of characterization for contemporary observers, as it does for modern commentators. The concept of the Byzantine Commonwealth was coined by Dimitri Obolensky to characterize the medley of societies and polities that came under the aegis of the emperor and were kept in line with the religious rites, doctrine, and norms that the basileus (and the Constantinopolitan patriarchate) propounded. These studies address such basic questions as who the Byzantines thought they were and how they managed to maintain their hegemonial stance for so long. Two sections survey the polities and cultures of Eastern Europe which inspired Obolensky’s vision of a Commonwealth. But other sections go beyond Obolensky’s geographical focus on Eastern Europe to survey three spheres which functioned independently of (one expressly in antithesis to) Byzantium, yet which overlapped and were constantly interacting with it—the Latin west, the Islamic–Christian east, and the world of the steppes. Candidates for membership of the Commonwealth can be found there, too, along with transregional networks that functioned regardless of political borders. Elites were the most conspicuous ‘consumers’ of Byzantine political culture, but interactions went on at lowlier social levels, too. Some polities engaged only briefly, and each drew on Byzantine culturo-religious resources in a different way to serve its elite’s interests. But for all the kaleidoscopic shifts and varieties of East Roman dealings with outsiders, some firm contours emerge, and the elements of continuity and commonality might even bear comparison with another, equally controversial, phenomenon—the British Commonwealth.</jats:p>