ABSTRACT
Above all else the people we call Byzantines prized orthodoxy, correct doctrine, correct thinking, which they—and we—generally think of in a theological context. But there was another kind of orthodoxy, political orthodoxy, as some have termed it. 1 This involves correct thinking about the civil and institutional life of the empire, the whole imperial ideology. These orthodoxies, inseparable and sacred as they were, found expression in ways that were also sacred for the Byzantines. Theological orthodoxy found its expression largely in the divine liturgy and was there made known to the faithful. Political orthodoxy, in turn, was articulated by a literary elite and communicated to the citizens of the empire through rhetoric.
