W

walid I, Al-. Umayyad Caliph from 705 to 715. His father was Abd al-Malik, who built the Dome of the Rock. During his reign Muslim forces crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and commenced to conquer Spain from the Visigoths. Walid I built the mosque at Damascus, one of the most notable examples of early Islamic architecture. He also built the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. See also AMASEIA; ARABS; ISLAM.

WALLACHIA. Region north of the Danube in modern Romania. The principality of Wallachia, founded ca. 1290, established close relations with Serbia and Bulgaria in the 14th century.

Wallachia’s support of attempts to oppose the Ottomans ended in disastrous defeats at the Battle of Kosovo Polje in 1389, Nikopolis in 1396, and Varna in 1444, and Wallachia was forced to pay tribute to the Ottomans. After the demise of Byzantium, Vlad IV “the Impaler” (reigned 1448, 1456–1462, 1476); the historical Dracula, briefly restored Wallachia’s independence.

WAR. The church followed the pacifism of Jesus until Constantine I the Great embraced Christianity. With the aid of the cross and labarum, Constantine emerged victorious in battles against Maxentius and Licinius. In the Life of Constantine (Vita Constantini), Eusebios of Caesarea views Constantine as the new Moses, aiding God’s new Chosen People. Under subsequent Christian emperors this view was developed further, and the emperor was seen as God’s earthly representative who defended the church and Christian territory.

Nevertheless, the church continued to condemn war and demand (following the advice of Basil the Great) that soldiers who killed in battle do not receive the Eucharist for three years. The war Herakleios waged against Persia to regain the True Cross was conducted with religious fervor. However, that war was an exception and bore no resemblance to the holy war of Islam and to that of the western Crusades.

Despite the church’s view of war as a necessary evil, Byzantium continued to study war in manuals called strategika and Taktika. It maintained an army and navy, defended its cities with massive fortifications and, when necessary, conducted offensive warfare with ruthlessness, as Basil II did against Bulgaria. In 1014 Basil II surrounded the army of Samuel of Bulgaria, taking 14,000 prisoners. He sent them back to Samuel in groups of a hundred, each group led by a single soldier with one eye. In Byzantium, tension always existed between the constraints on war articulated by the church, and the reality of war.

WATCH. See VIGLA.

WHITE HUNS. See EPHTHALITES; HUNS.

WILLIAM I. King of Sicily from 1154 to 1166. In 1156 he defeated the forces that Manuel I Komnenos sent the previous year to reconquer southern Italy. The peace settlement of 1158 required Manuel I’s recognition of William I as king.

WILLIAM I CHAMPLITTE. Prince of Achaia (of the Principality of Achaia, or Morea) from 1205 to 1208. With the permission of Boniface of Montferrat, and with the aid of Geoffrey I Villehardouin, he began the conquest of the Morea in 1205. The resulting Principality of Achaia survived until 1430.

WILLIAM II. King of Sicily from 1166 to 1189. In 1167, threatened by Frederick I Barbarossa, he obtained protection from Manuel I Komnenos through a marriage alliance; in return, Manuel was recognized overlord of Italy. However, these negotiations failed. In August 1185, taking advantage of the Byzantine weakness created by Andronikos I Komnenos’s reign of terror, William II attacked Dyrrachion and Thessalonike. Dyrrachion surrendered, but Thessalonike resisted. The Norman forces cruelly sacked it.

William II allied himself with Isaac Komnenos, self-proclaimed emperor of Cyprus, dispatching his admiral (and ex-pirate) Margaritone to defeat a fleet sent by Isaac II Angelos to recover the island. The lasting monument of William II’s reign is the magnificent Cathedral of Monreale, decorated by Byzantine mosaicists. William II was buried there in 1189. See also MOSAIC; NORMANS; ROGER II; SILK.

WILLIAM II VILLEHARDOUIN. Prince of Achaia (of the Principality of Achaia, or Morea) from 1246 to 1278. He was the son of Geoffrey I Villehardouin and successor of his brother Geoffrey II Villehardouin. He appears prominently in the Chronicle of the Morea, which describes his success in extending the boundaries of the Frankish Morea to include Monemvasia. Today the castles he built at Maina and Mistra remain impressive, though ruinous. However, his good fortune was wrecked when he was captured at the Battle of Pelagonia in 1259. In return for his freedom he was forced to become a vassal of Michael VIII Palaiologos. See also CHARLES I OF ANJOU.

WILLIAM OF APULIA. Historian who wrote Gesta Roberti Wiscardi, the most valuable single source for the career of Robert Guiscard. His account of the rise of the Normans in Apulia, and of their seizure of the remainder of southern Italy, is much more detailed than any other historical source. His account overlaps with that of Anna Komnene’s Alexiad with respect to Robert’s war with Alexios I Komnenos. See also HISTORY.

WILLIAM OF TYRE. Greatest of the Crusader historians and among the greatest historians of the Middle Ages. He was Amalric I’s ambassador to Manuel I Komnenos in 1168, subsequently archbishop of Tyre, and chancellor of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem.

His History of Deeds Done beyond the Sea, in Latin, is important for events of his own lifetime (ca. 1130–1186), especially for the Second Crusade, and for relations between the Crusader states and Byzantium. For the First Crusade he relied chiefly on Albert of Aachen, in addition to other works (e.g., Fulcher of Chartres). His history and continuations of it are included in the Estoire d’Eracles.

WINE. Wine was a staple of the Byzantine diet, necessitating a great deal of trade, as demonstrated by the cargo of wine amphorae in the seventh-century Yassi Ada shipwreck. Transportation was relatively easy because wine was produced chiefly on the islands and coastline of the Aegean Sea, also in Cyprus.

Many monasteries produced and exported wine, including the monasteries on Mount Athos and Patmos, which exported wine to Constantinople in the 12th century. The wine trade was regulated by the state, which included both wholesale shipments and smaller retail purchases, for example, at taverns where it was sold in smaller quantities using measures with official seals. See also NAVIGATION; POTTERY.

WOMEN. Women in Byzantium were typically found in the home and garden, which they were expected to maintain, along with minding their children. Some women worked outside the home, especially in markets selling food. Fewer in number were artisans, such as weavers, bakers, cooks, and washerwomen.

Less respectable work could be found in bathhouses and inns, and as dancers, actresses, and prostitutes. These last professions produced only occasional opportunities for change of status, but this did happen, and when it did it was noted. Justinian I’s empress Theodora was a former actress and courtesan; Pelagia the Harlot was admired for her repentance and saintliness, but also remembered as a former actress and courtesan of Antioch.

Daughters were brought up learning household skills and were taught to admire the Virgin Mary. Women dressed conservatively and wore veils in public. In the countryside most women (like most men) were illiterate. Cities, on the other hand, occasionally produced famous writers like Hypatia and Anna Komnene. Byzantium was generally a man’s world, and the men of the church reinforced this with a view of women as inferior to men and, thus, more open to the wiles of the devil (and to witchcraft).

Generally speaking, women needed men for protection. Widows, for example, were often weak and powerless and in need of charity. However, there were exceptions, including widows who inherited wealth, which the law protected. The most obvious example of this is the wealthy widow Danelis, who promoted the future emperor Basil I. Aristocratic women like Anna Dalassene occasionally exercised enormous influence at court, even overt power. Other aristocratic women achieved independence by embracing the monastic life as an avenue to saintliness. The power of personal holiness was available to women as well as men. Witness the role played by the two empresses, Irene and Theophilos’s wife Theodora, who restored images to veneration.

Byzantine empresses did lead somewhat restricted lives, for they had their own quarters in the Great Palace, and they had defined ceremonial roles in certain events. They also had to raise children like their counterparts elsewhere. Nevertheless, Byzantium produced a number of powerful empresses. Most famous (or notorious, in the eyes of the historian Prokopios of Caesarea) of empresses, in this regard, was Justinian I’s wife, the empress Theodora. Her power derived from her imperial consort, to be sure, but he seems to have allowed her complete freedom. Other circumstances, most obviously that of regency, allowed empresses considerable power. On the other hand, women in the imperial family could be used as pawns in marriage alliances, as when Anna, the sister of Basil II, married Vladimir I, Prince of Kiev.

Overall, the exceptional women of Byzantium, however rare, left enduring marks on Byzantium. And what other society in the Middle Ages produced an empress Theodora, or, perhaps more significantly, a historian like Anna Komnene? See also AGNES OF FRANCE; ANNA OF SAVOY; ARIADNE; AUGUSTA; BRIDE SHOW; DIPLOMACY; EUDOKIA INGERINA; EUDOKIA MAKREMBOLITISSA; EUDOXIA; EUPHROSYNE DOUKAINA KAMATERA; FAUSTA; GALLA PLACIDIA; GYNAIKEION; IRENE DOUKAINA; IRENE-YOLANDA OF MONTFERRAT; KASSIA; MARIA OF ALANIA; MARTINA; MARY OF EGYPT; SIMONIS; SOPHIA PALAIOLOGINA; THEODORA (CO-EMPEROR WITH ZOE); THEOPHANO (FIRST WIFE OF LEO VI); THEOPHANO (MARRIED OTTO II); THEOPHANO (WIFE OF ROMANOS II); VERINA; ZOE; ZOE KARBONOPSINA.

WONDROUS MOUNTAIN. Pilgrimage site located southwest of Antioch, above the Orontes River, where Symeon the Stylite the Younger sat on a column from 541 until his death in 592. Soon the huge flow of pilgrims demanded a church, inns, a monastery, and various service buildings.

Symeon spent half a century healing the sick, praying with the faithful who thronged there to see him, and offering advice and admonitions, in the same manner as his earlier namesake, Symeon the Stylite the Elder. The monks managed the complex, while producing pilgrim tokens of clay and lead, each with an impressed image of Symeon, and much prized by pilgrims. See also ASCETICISM; PILGRIM FLASK; SAINT; STYLITE.