ABSTRACT
The sense of ‘significant others’, takes us into the sphere of ideology, court life and diplomatic exchanges – the role played by those whose sheer exoticism served to illustrate the empire’s worldwide reach and its ability to subsume alien-looking styles of clothing, artistic motifs, manners and martial prowess within its order, and to orchestrate them in court culture and ceremonies. Alexios I Komnenos’ relations with western monks make a fitting conclusion, for they seem in a class apart from the ‘significant others’ whom previous emperors had maintained, thus constituting the ‘step-change’ mentioned earlier. Alexios maintained at court a floating population of Latin ‘significant others’, some of them monks, some laymen but already closely linked with monasteries or themselves contemplating tonsure: there was steady circulation of individuals between Constantinople and the West.
