“In the Name of Father, Son and Holy Sea”: The Ambiguous Relationship between Amalfitans and Byzantines

Between the eighth and eleventh centuries, the Duchy of Amalfi occupied an ambiguous position between Byzantium and Latin Christendom. Once politically attached to Constantinople yet entangled in Papal, Lombard, and Arab networks, Amalfi exemplified the coexistence of multiple, and sometimes contradictory, identities. This paper explores the ways in which Amalfitans cultivated a double-tongued rhetoric that mirrored their liminal status. Drawing on documentary, sigillographic, and material evidence, it argues that Amalfitan elites strategically manipulated Byzantine symbols and language to express both loyalty and independence. Charters that invoke imperial authority while omitting the emperor’s name and churches and monasteries whose decoration emulates the Byzantine style reveal a conscious engagement with ambiguity as a political and devotional tool. Through this prism, the “Holy Sea” becomes more than a pun: it encapsulates the sacred and spatial liminality through which Amalfi articulated its relationship with Byzantium. The sea bound Amalfi to the empire through trade, faith, and a shared ritual vocabulary, yet it also provided the medium for reinterpretation and self-definition. By reading Amalfi’s hybridity as a form of deliberate ambivalence rather than passive syncretism, this paper situates the duchy within a broader Byzantine Mediterranean of negotiated meanings, where ambiguity was not a sign of weakness, but a means of survival, creativity, and belonging.