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OCHRID. See OHRID.

ODOACER. Ruler of Italy from 476 to 493. He was a barbarian (Skirian or Hunnic) military officer who deposed Romulus Augustulus in 476, a date traditionally seen as the fall of the Roman Empire in the West. Since he acknowledged the overlordship of Zeno, whose recognition he sought, Zeno conferred on him the title of patrikios and allowed him to administer Italy.

The death of Julius Nepos in 480 removed the only possible rival claimant to Odoacer’s power. However, Zeno’s desire to rid Thrace of the Ostrogothic chieftain Theodoric proved to be Odoacer’s undoing. To entice Theodoric to move westward, Zeno offered Italy to Theodoric if he could wrest it from Odoacer. This he did from 489 to 493, after besieging Ravenna for over two years. After Odoacer surrendered Ravenna, Theodoric killed him with his own hand. See also DALMATIA; EXCERPTA VALESIANA.

ODO OF DEUIL. Latin historian of the Second Crusade, who was secretary and chaplain to Louis VII of France, a leader of the Second Crusade. His position gave him access to the inner leadership circle of the Crusade. The religious hostility toward Byzantium that he reports reflects the fear with which Manuel I Komnenos viewed the approach of the French army. Odo’s account is rich in descriptive details about the city of Constantinople and the court of Manuel I. See also FIRST CRUSADE.

OHRID. City in southwestern Macedonia, key position on the Via Egnatia; archbishopric; capital of Bulgaria under Samuel of Bulgaria. Perhaps most importantly, it became a center for the diffusion of Byzantine culture throughout the region. Kliment of Ohrid laid the foundations for this by training a Slavonic-speaking clergy and helping to create a Slavonic literature. The city had several learned archbishops, including Theophylaktos (patriarch from ca. 1090 to ca. 1108), and Demetrios Chomatenos.

Theophylaktos was a student of Michael Psellos and a theologian whose correspondence is an important source of information about the region during the reign of Alexios I Komnenos. The extant literary works of Demetrios Chomatenos are the chief source for the internal history of the Despotate of Epiros (to which Ohrid belonged) during the first half of the 13th century. See also OLD CHURCH SLAVONIC.

OLD CHURCH SLAVONIC. The Slavonic liturgical and literary language. It includes works written in Glagolitic, an alphabet invented by Constantine the Philosopher, whose monastic name was Cyril. It also includes Cyrillic, which may have been invented by Kliment of Ohrid. See also CODEX SUPRASLIENSIS; CZECHIA; MALALAS, JOHN; MISSIONS.

OLEG. Prince of Kiev from 879 to ca. 912; successor of Rurik. He founded Kievan Rus, according to the Russian Primary Chronicle, which mentions a Rus attack on Constantinople in 907. The treaty that resulted in 911 inaugurated regular trade relations with Byzantium. He was succeeded by Igor.

OLGA. Princess of Kiev, wife of Igor, who visited Constantinople in 957 (or 946?), where she was received with great honor by Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos. It is not clear when Olga was actually baptized, though it may have been in Constantinople. In 959, for reasons unclear, she turned her back on Byzantium and requested a German bishop from Otto I. The bishop who was sent quickly returned home when he found a pagan resurgence among the Rus. Not until the reign of Vladimir I was this religious instability resolved (in favor of Byzantium).

OLYBRIUS. See RICIMER.

OLYMPIODOROS OF THEBES. Historian, traveler, and poet. He was the first traveler to have written an account of a personal visit to the Huns, which occurred through an embassy he undertook to the Hunnic King Donatus in 412. Indeed, his account is all that is known about Donatus.

Olympiodoros’s general history (originally covering the years 407–425) survives only in fragments. Fortunately, Philostorgios, Sozomenos, and Zosimos all used his work. It is Olympiodoros who, in one of the surviving fragments of his work, relates the legend that in 410 Alaric received a miraculous warning by a statue that impeded his attempt to cross from Italy to North Africa. See also MIRACLE.

OLYMPIOS. See MARTIN I; senate.

OLYMPOS, MOUNT. One of the great monastic holy mountains of Byzantium, along with Mount Athos, Latros, Meteora, the Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai, and Wondrous Mountain. Located in Bithynia, its numerous monasteries included those on Mount Olympos itself and those within the mountain’s larger environs, extending from Prousa to the Sea of Marmara. Some of the monasteries of the region (e.g., at Atroa, Medikion, and Pelekete) were renowned for their resistance to Iconoclasm. Around 764, for example, Michael Lachanodrakon burned down the monastery of Pelekete, torturing and killing some of the monks who were noted for their resistance to Iconoclasm.

The region produced numerous saints, including Euthymios the Younger, the patriarch Methodios, Peter of Atroa, Plato of Sakkoudion, and Theodore of Stoudios. It was also a place that received high officials forced out of office, such as Michael Psellos, who became a monk there at the end of his career. See also MONASTICISM.

OMURTAG. Khan of Bulgaria from 814 to 831. His relations with Byzantium were peaceful, in marked contrast to those of his father, Krum. He concluded with Leo V a 30-year peace treaty, preserved in a proto-Bulgarian inscription (e.g., in an inscription in Turkic runes such as those that usually predate the mass introduction of Christianity in 864).

Omurtag’s aid to Michael II in 823, when the khan forced Thomas the Slav to lift his siege of Constantinople, was decisive in ending Thomas’s rebellion. Peaceful relations served to increase Byzantine cultural influence in Bulgaria during his reign. At his capital, Pliska, he created a palace with a throne room that must have rivaled the audience halls of emperors in Constantinople.

ON THE THEMES. See DE THEMATIBUS.

OPSIKION. One of the chief themes of Asia Minor created in the seventh century, perhaps as early as 626 was to provide Herakleios with an elite army to support his war against Persia. In 715 it revolted against Anastasios II and placed Theodosios III on the throne. It supported the revolt of Artabasdos in 742. In the eighth century two new themes, the Optimatoi and Boukellarion were carved out of Opsikion, whose command center was shifted from Ankyra to Nicaea. Part of the reason for this may have been to make revolts by thematic commanders more difficult. See also PAPHLAGONIA.

OPTIMATOI. Theme in northwest Asia Minor carved out of Opsikion in the eighth century, with its command center at Nikomedeia. The soldiers of this theme supplied and looked after the pack animals that carried the baggage of imperial tagmata from Constantinople, when the latter went out on campaign.

ORANT. Also orans (Latin for “praying”), referring to the manner in which early Christians prayed: standing with upright, open palms at shoulder height. This is illustrated frequently in pre-Iconoclastic art. After the eighth century the position of proskynesis became the normative form of prayer depicted in art.

ORHAN. Ottoman sultan from 1326 to 1362; son of Osman, the sultan who first established the Ottomans on European soil. Orhan’s conquest of Prousa in 1328, Nicaea in 1331, and Nikomedeia in 1337 helped the Ottomans consolidate their domain in northwest Asia Minor. It also entangled them, in the process, in the internal affairs of Byzantium.

In 1346 Orhan married Theodora Kantakouzene, daughter of John VI Kantakouzenos, who called on Orhan’s help several times in the civil war that punctuated John VI’s reign. As a result, Orhan and his son Suleyman Pasha were able to establish an Ottoman base in Europe at Gallipoli in 1354, which Orhan then used to expand into Thrace.

ORIBASIOS. Physician and friend of Julian “The Apostate.” He followed Julian to Gaul in 355 and was with him when he was killed in Persia in 363. Oribasios’s personal memoir of Julian has not survived, but it was used in the history of Eunapios of Sardis, who also wrote a brief biography of Orobasios. A summary of Galen by Oribasios was much relied on by subsequent Byzantine and Arab physicians. See also MEDICINE.

ORIGEN. Controversial Alexandrian theologian. His ideas, some of them as basic to Christian theology as that of homoousios, continued to have a powerful impact on Christian thinkers for centuries after his death in 254. Among those ideas for which he was attacked was his belief in the preexistence of souls.

Origen wrote some 2,000 works, most of which have not survived. His Contra Celsus (Against Celsus) is the chief source for the writing of Celsus, early Christianity’s greatest critic. Nevertheless, his work was deemed suspected of heresy. As late as 543 Justinian I issued an edict, supported by the Patriarch Menas, condemning Origen. See also CHRIST, THEOLOGY OF; DOROTHEOS OF GAZA; EVAGRIOS PONTIKOS; JEROME; PAGANISM; PORPHYRY.

OROSIUS, PAUL. Fifth-century Latin historian who wrote History against the Pagans, a work that begins with Creation and ends in 417. It was much influenced by Augustine’s view (in his City of God) that the decline of Rome did not result from neglecting the traditional Roman gods. In the medieval West the work achieved considerable popularity as a world history. See also EXCERPTA VALESIANA; PAGANISM.

ORPHANOTROPHOS. See JOHN THE ORPHANOTROPHOS; PHILANTHROPY.

ORTHODOXY. Greek for “right belief,” referring to matters of Christian faith and doctrine, the core of which is defined in the Ecumenical Councils of the church. Beliefs and practices condemned by accepted church councils are considered heresy. The Byzantine and western churches were frequently suspicious of each other’s Orthodoxy, indeed were intermittently schismatic down to the final church schism of 1054, so that today the term is used to refer to the doctrines and liturgy of the eastern churches whose roots lie in the Byzantine church.

Orthodoxy survived the fall of Constantinople in 1453 to become Byzantium’s living legacy. It is an active force in lands that formerly comprised Byzantium, as well as in Slavic lands proselytized by Byzantium. Byzantine art and church architecture cannot be understood without a basic understanding of Orthodoxy. See also ALEXIOS I KOMNENOS; GREGORY OF NAZIANZOS; GREGORY OF NYSSA; MELKITES; SCHISM; SERDICA.

OSMAN. Founder of the Turkish Dynasty of the Ottomans and its first sultan from 1288 to 1326. It was Osman whose victory over Byzantine forces in 1302 at the Battle of Bapheus established his small emirate in western Asia Minor as the nucleus of the future Ottoman Empire. His son Orhan greatly expanded the emirate. See also TURKOMANS.

OSTROGOTHS. Major division of the Goths who settled north of the Black Sea until the Huns drove them westward (ca. 375) and subjugated them in Pannonia. Only the death of Attila in 453 loosened the Huns’ hold over the Ostrogoths, who found employment as Byzantine foederati.

In 488 Zeno persuaded the Ostrogothic king Theodoric the Great to invade Italy and depose Odoacer. After Odoacer’s death (493) an Ostrogothic kingdom was established in Italy with its capital at Ravenna. Though an untutored Arian, Theodoric respected Roman civilization, tolerated Orthodoxy, and allowed the bureaucracy to function without interference. After Theodoric’s death in 526 his daughter Amalasuntha put herself under the protection of Justinian I.

Amalasuntha’s murder in 535 was the excuse Justinian I used to invade Italy that same year. The war dragged on until 552 when Narses defeated Totila. However, the Byzantine victory over the Ostrogoths proved hollow. Three years after Justinian’s death (565), another Germanic tribe, the Lombards, entered Italy and quickly subdued much of it. See also BARBARIANS; DALMATIA; ISTRIA.

OTHON DE LA ROCHE. French duke of Athens and Thebes from 1205 to 1225. He was a young Burgundian knight who was granted Athens and Thebes by Boniface of Montferrat. When he retired to his native Burgundy in 1225, he left his domain to his nephew Guy I de la Roche. Under Guy I and his successors the Duchy of Athens and Thebes became prosperous and increasingly French in its institutions. The duchy was conquered by the Catalan Grand Company in 1311. See also FRANCE.

OTRANTO. Coastal city in southernmost Apulia, located on the Strait of Otranto where the Ionian Sea meets the Adriatic Sea. It served as an entrance to Italy and a place to cross to Avlon in Epiros.

Belisarios landed troops there in 544 during the war with the Ostrogoths. The Lombards seized it in the early eighth century, but it was recaptured by a Byzantine army in 758. The Normans under Robert Guiscard conquered it in 1068. The city’s most famous medieval citizen was writer and diplomat Nicholas of Otranto. The cross-in-square church of St. Pietro stands today as a reminder of Otranto’s long Byzantine occupation.

OTTO I THE GREAT. King of Germany from 936 until 962, the year he was crowned western emperor by Pope John XII. By that time Otto’s troops had control of much of Italy and had attacked Byzantine Bari. Several centuries later, the coronation would be seen as the foundation of the Holy Roman Empire (962–1806), but to contemporaries it appeared as a revival of Charlemagne’s empire and title. Nikephoros II Phokas demanded that Otto I renounce the title. Otto responded by sending Liutprand of Cremona to Constantinople in 968 to negotiate. The embassy failed, and the problem was left for John I Tzimiskes to resolve in 972, with the betrothal of princess Theophano to Otto II.

OTTO II. See THEOPHANO.

OTTO III. German king from 983, and western emperor from 996 to 1002; son of Otto II and Theophano. Theophano ensured that he was instilled with a profound respect for Byzantine civilization. His dream was to create a revival of the ancient Roman Empire (Renovatio Imperii Romanorum), to which end he sought to make Rome, where he was crowned western emperor, his capital. He adopted Byzantine court ceremonial and titles, and he called himself Imperator Romanorum. He continued his predecessor’s policy of asserting his supremacy over the papacy by rejecting the Donation of Constantine. During the last years of his reign he had the support of his tutor Gerbert, whose installation as Pope Sylvester II (999–1003) he arranged.

Amid dreaming of renovatio the reality of death intervened. At age 22 he died suddenly, while negotiating for a Byzantine bride. See also GERMANY.

OTTOMANS. Turkish Dynasty founded by Osman, son of Ertoghrul. Osman established a small emirate ca. 1282 around Eskishehir (Byzantine Dorylaion), amid the crumbling Seljuk state. From there he raided into Bithynia, defeating a Byzantine army at the Battle of Bapheus in 1302.

Orhan captured Prousa in 1326, Nicaea in 1331, and Nikomedeia in 1337. It was Orhan, responding to requests from John VI Kantakouzenos, who introduced Ottoman troops to European soil during the civil war of 1341–1347. In 1354 Orhan made Gallipoli a base of operations for expansion into Thrace. Their subsequent ejection from Gallipoli in 1366 by Amadeo VI of Savoy proved only temporary.

A decade later, Murad I possessed it again, this time for good. Adrianople fell in 1369 and became the Ottoman capital in 1377. Thessalonike surrendered in 1387, and after the Battle of Kosovo Polje in 1389 the Ottomans made Serbia a vassal state. The defeat of the Crusader army by Bayezid I at Nikopolis in 1396 further demonstrated the weakness of western arms against Ottoman armies strengthened with Janissaries. In Asia Minor Bayezid I’s attack on Saruhan and other Turkish emirates was reversed by his capture by Timur at the Battle of Ankara in 1402.

From 1402 to 1413 the Ottoman state collapsed into civil war between the sons of Bayezid I, Musa and Suleyman Celebi. Not until the reign of Murad II, son of Mehmed I, did Ottoman expansion resume. Thessalonike was captured for the second time in 1430, much of Serbia was annexed by 1439, and at Varna in 1444 another Crusader army was annihilated.

It was left to Mehmed II to conquer Constantinople in 1453 and transfer the Ottoman capital there from Adrianople. Mehmed II conquered the last Byzantine outposts of Mistra in 1460 and Trebizond in 1461, by which time the Ottomans had established themselves as a powerful empire extending into Eastern Europe. See also CHIOS; DEMETRIOS PALAIOLOGOS; DOUKAS; EPHESUS; EUBOEA; SANUDO TORSELLO, MARINO; SELYMBRIA; WALLACHIA.

OTTO OF FREISING. Latin chronicler of the Second Crusade, also bishop of Freising in Germany and half-brother of Conrad III. Otto led a main contingent of the Crusader army that marched south through Asia Minor to Attaleia on the Aegean coast. His Gesta Frederici (The Deeds of Frederick), commissioned by Frederick I Barbarossa, Otto’s uncle, is an important eyewitness account of the Second Crusade, in addition to the comments it provides on Byzantine affairs during the reigns of John II Komnenos and Manuel I Komnenos, for example, the marriage of Bertha of Sulzbach and Manuel I. See also CRUSADES; PAMPHYLIA.

OURANOS, NIKEPHOROS. See PRAECEPTA MILITARIA; SAMUEL OF BULGARIA.