ABSTRACT
In most pre-industrial societies formidable practical obstacles face those aspiring to paramount authority over other persons well beyond their own immediate district or kin-group. Courts serve to bring focus and cohesion to polities whose paramount rulers rely on the essentially voluntary cooperation of the magnates and others who matter at grass-roots. The recriminations which a few jibes at their respective pretensions could unleash are exemplified by the celebrated exchange between Basil and Emperor Louis; Wickham 1998. What is less well appreciated, because seldom fully articulated, is a sense of affinity between the courts of East and West, overriding their indubitable rivalries. The contrast between East and West is not wholly illusory, but it is important to remember that the concept of the ruler as converter of peoples, guardian of the Church and even, in some sense, high priest, was not exclusive to Byzantium.
