Download or read book Chronographiae quae Theophanis Continuati nomine fertur Liber quo Vita Basilii Imperatoris amplectitur written by Ihor Ševcenko and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2011-12-23 with total page 583 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The life of Emperor Basil I (867–886), the founder of the Macedonian Dynasty, is the only extant secular biography in Byzantine literature; in its importance and as an instance of the genre it is comparable to Einhard’s Vita Caroli Magni. Composed in the circle of scholars around Basil’s grandson Constantine VII Prophyrogennitos and at his instigation as early as 957 and 959, the Vita Basilii is one of the main sources for the cultural and political history of Byzantium and its neighbours in the 9th and 10th centuries. Previous editions (whether from the 17th or 19th centuries) were based on secondary manuscripts; they are not reliable, because of their arbitrary conjectures and a large number of unjustified additions from a parallel source. The present edition is based on Vaticanus gr. 167, the source of all extant manuscripts, and the insertions made by the earlier editors are removed. In producing the new text, the editor also had access to the draft edition he rediscovered which the famous Byzantinist Karl de Boor prepared around 1903.
Download or read book Guide to Byzantine Historical Writing written by Leonora Neville and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-17 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handy reference guide makes it easier to access and understand histories written in Greek between 600 and 1480 CE. Covering classicizing histories that continued ancient Greek traditions of historiography, sweeping, fast-paced 'chronicle' type histories, and dozens of idiosyncratic historical texts, it distills the results of complex, multi-lingual, specialist scholarship into clear explanations of the basic information needed to approach each medieval Greek history. It provides a sound basis for further research on each text by describing what we know about the time of composition, content covered by the history, authorship, extant manuscripts, previous editions and translations, and basic bibliography. Even-handed explanations of scholarly debates give readers the information they need to assess controversies independently. A comprehensive introduction orients students and non-specialists to the traditions and methods of Byzantine historical writing. It will prove an invaluable timesaver for Byzantinists and an essential entry point for classicists, western medievalists, and students.
Download or read book Standing on Holy Ground in the Middle Ages written by Lucy Donkin and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2022-02-15 with total page 526 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Standing on Holy Ground in the Middle Ages illuminates how the floor surface shaped the ways in which people in medieval western Europe and beyond experienced sacred spaces. The ground beneath our feet plays a crucial, yet often overlooked, role in our relationship with the environments we inhabit and the spaces with which we interact. By focusing on this surface as a point of encounter, Lucy Donkin positions it within a series of vertically stacked layers—the earth itself, permanent and temporary floor coverings, and the bodies of the living above ground and the dead beneath—providing new perspectives on how sacred space was defined and decorated, including the veneration of holy footprints, consecration ceremonies, and the demarcation of certain places for particular activities. Using a wide array of visual and textual sources, Standing on Holy Ground in the Middle Ages also details ways in which interaction with this surface shaped people's identities, whether as individuals, office holders, or members of religious communities. Gestures such as trampling and prostration, the repeated employment of specific locations, and burial beneath particular people or actions used the surface to express likeness and difference. From pilgrimage sites in the Holy Land to cathedrals, abbeys, and local parish churches across the Latin West, Donkin frames the ground as a shared surface, both a feature of diverse, distant places and subject to a variety of uses over time—while also offering a model for understanding spatial relationships in other periods, regions, and contexts.
Download or read book The Emperor s House written by Michael Featherstone and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2015-08-31 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Evolving from a patrician domus, the emperor's residence on the Palatine became the centre of the state administration. Elaborate ceremonial regulated access to the imperial family, creating a system of privilege which strengthened the centralised power. Constantine followed the same model in his new capital, under a Christian veneer. The divine attributes of the imperial office were refashioned, with the emperor as God's representative. The palace was an imitation of heaven. Following the loss of the empire in the West and the Near East, the Palace in Constantinople was preserved – subject to the transition from Late Antique to Mediaeval conditions – until the Fourth Crusade, attracting the attention of Visgothic, Lombard, Merovingian, Carolingian, Norman and Muslim rulers. Renaissance princes later drew inspiration for their residences directly from ancient ruins and Roman literature, but there was also contact with the Late Byzantine court. Finally, in the age of Absolutism the palace became again an instrument of power in vast centralised states, with renewed interest in Roman and Byzantine ceremonial. Spanning the broadest chronological and geographical limits of the Roman imperial tradition, from the Principate to the Ottoman empire, the papers in the volume treat various aspects of palace architecture, art and ceremonial.
Download or read book Authority and Control in the Countryside written by Alain Delattre and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-11-26 with total page 612 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Authority and Control in the Countryside looks at the economic, religious, political and cultural instruments that local and regional powers in the late antique to early medieval Mediterranean and Near East used to manage their rural hinterlands.
Download or read book Mosaics in the Medieval World written by Liz James and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-10-05 with total page 1748 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Liz James offers a comprehensive history of wall mosaics produced in the European and Islamic middle ages. Taking into account a wide range of issues, including style and iconography, technique and material, and function and patronage, she examines mosaics within their historical context. She asks why the mosaic was such a popular medium and considers how mosaics work as historical 'documents' that tell us about attitudes and beliefs in the medieval world. The book is divided into two part. Part I explores the technical aspects of mosaics, including glass production, labour and materials, and costs. In Part II, James provides a chronological history of mosaics, charting the low and high points of mosaic art up until its abrupt end in the late middle ages. Written in a clear and engaging style, her book will serve as an essential resource for scholars and students of medieval mosaics.
Download or read book A Companion to the Patriarchate of Constantinople written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-07-26 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume provides an overview of the development of the Patriarchate of Constantinople as central ecclesiastical institution of the Byzantine Empire from Late Antiquity to the Early Ottoman period (4th to 15th century CE).
Download or read book Between Byzantine Men written by Mark Masterson and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-06-17 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The presence and importance of same-sex desire between men in the Byzantine Empire has been understudied. While John Boswell and others tried to open a conversation about desire between Byzantine men decades ago, the field reverted to emphasis on prohibition and an inability to read the evidence of same-sex desire between men in the sources. Between Byzantine Men: Desire, Homosociality, and Brotherhood in the Medieval Empire challenges and transforms this situation by placing at centre stage Byzantine men's desiring relations with one another. This book foregrounds desire between men in and around the imperial court of the 900s. Analysis of Greek sources (many untranslated until now) and of material culture reveals a situation both more liberal than the medieval West and important for its rite of brother-making (adelphopoiesis), which was a precursor to today’s same-sex marriage. This book transforms our understanding of Byzantine elite men's culture and is an important addition to the history of sex and desire between men. Between Byzantine Men will appeal to scholars and general readers who are interested in Byzantine History, Society, and Culture, the History of Masculinity, and the History of Sexuality.
Download or read book Brother making in Late Antiquity and Byzantium written by Claudia Rapp and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Among medieval Christian societies, Byzantium is unique in preserving an ecclesiastical ritual of adelphopoiesis, which pronounces two men, not related by birth, as brothers for life. It has its origin as a spiritual blessing in the monastic world of late antiquity, and it becomes a popular social networking strategy among lay people from the ninth century onwards, even finding application in recent times. Located at the intersection of religion and society, brother-making exemplifies how social practice can become ritualized and subsequently subjected to attempts of ecclesiastical and legal control. Controversially, adelphopoiesis was at the center of a modern debate about the existence of same-sex unions in medieval Europe. This book, the first ever comprehensive history of this unique feature of Byzantine life, argues persuasively that the ecclesiastical ritual to bless a relationship between two men bears no resemblance to marriage. Wide-ranging in its use of sources, from a complete census of the manuscripts containing the ritual of adelphopoiesis to the literature and archaeology of early monasticism, and from the works of hagiographers, historiographers, and legal experts in Byzantium to comparative material in the Latin West and the Slavic world, Brother-Making in Late Antiquity and Byzantium examines the fascinating religious and social features of the ritual, shedding light on little known aspects of Byzantine society.
Download or read book The Cult of St Anna in Byzantium written by Eirini Panou and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-05-11 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cult of St Anna in Byzantium is the first undertaking in Byzantine research to study the phenomenon of St Anna’s cult from the sixth to the fifteenth centuries. It was prompted by the need to enrich our knowledge of a female saint who had already been studied in the West but remained virtually unknown in Eastern Christendom. It focuses on a figure little-studied in scholarship and examines the formation, establishment and promotion of an apocryphal saint who made her way to the pantheon of Orthodox saints. Visual and material culture, relics and texts track the gradual social and ideological transformation of Byzantium from early Christianity until the fifteenth century. This book not only examines various aspects of early Christian and Byzantine civilisation, but also investigates how the cult of saints greatly influenced cultural changes in order to suit theological, social and political demands. The cult of St Anna influenced many diverse elements of Christian life in Constantinople, including the creation of sacred spaces and the location of haghiasmata (fountains of holy water) in the city; imperial patronage; the social reception of St Anna’s story; and relic narratives. This monograph breaks new ground in explaining how and why Byzantium and the Orthodox Church attributed scriptural authority to a minor figure known only from a non-canonical work.
Download or read book Byzantium in the Eleventh Century written by Marc D. Lauxtermann and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-10-18 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The eleventh century in Byzantium is all about being in between, whether this is between Basil II and Alexios Komnenos, between the forces of the Normans, the Pechenegs and the Turks, or between different social groupings, cultural identities and religious persuasions. It is a period of fundamental changes and transformations, both internal and external, but also a period rife with clichés and dominated by the towering presence of Michael Psellos whose usually self-contradictory accounts continue to loom large in the field of Byzantine studies. The essays collected here, which were delivered at the 45th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, explore new avenues of research and offer new perspectives on this transitional period. The book is divided into four thematic clusters: 'The age of Psellos' studies this crucial figure and seeks to situate him in his time; 'Social structures' is concerned with the ways in which the deep structures of Byzantine society and economy responded to change; 'State and Church' offers a set of studies of various political developments in eleventh-century Byzantium; and 'The age of spirituality' offers the voices of those for whom Psellos had little time and little use: monks, religious thinkers and pious laymen.
Download or read book The Paulicians written by Carl Dixon and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-05-16 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a searching challenge to the paradigm of medieval Christian dualism, this study reenvisions the Paulicians as largely conventional Christians engendered by complex socio-religious forces in the borderlands of Armenia and Asia Minor.
Download or read book Dissidence and Persecution in Byzantium written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-09-27 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores different perspectives of dissent and persecution from Constantine to Michael Psellos, the reasons driving dissent and causing persecutions, as well as their perceptions and depictions in the Byzantine literature.
Download or read book Spatialities of Byzantine Culture from the Human Body to the Universe written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-11-14 with total page 705 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Compensating a four-decades shortfall, this collective volume is the first reader in Byzantine spatial studies. It offers a diversity of topics and scientific approaches, articulated by up-to-date interdisciplinary dialogue, and reflects on the future challenges of Byzantine spatial studies.
Download or read book Political Culture in the Latin West Byzantium and the Islamic World c 700 c 1500 written by Catherine Holmes and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-26 with total page 706 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comparative study explores three key cultural and political spheres – the Latin west, Byzantium and the Islamic world from Central Asia to the Atlantic – roughly from the emergence of Islam to the fall of Constantinople. These spheres drew on a shared pool of late antique Mediterranean culture, philosophy and science, and they had monotheism and historical antecedents in common. Yet where exactly political and spiritual power lay, and how it was exercised, differed. This book focuses on power dynamics and resource-allocation among ruling elites; the legitimisation of power and property with the aid of religion; and on rulers' interactions with local elites and societies. Offering the reader route-maps towards navigating each sphere and grasping the fundamentals of its political culture, this set of parallel studies offers a timely and much needed framework for comparing the societies surrounding the medieval Mediterranean.
Download or read book The Routledge Handbook of Gender and Sexuality in Byzantium written by Mati Meyer and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-05-23 with total page 549 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Handbook is the first to consider the interrelated subjects of gender and sexuality in the Eastern Roman Empire from an interdisciplinary perspective. Drawing on both modern theories and Byzantine perceptions, and considering multiple periods and religions (Eastern Orthodox, Islamic, and Jewish), it provides evidentiary textual and visual material support for an analysis of the two linked themes. Broadly, the essays demonstrate that gender and sexual constructs in Byzantium were porous. As a result, they expand our knowledge of not only how sex and gender were conceived and performed but also how ideas and practices shaped Byzantine life. The Routledge Handbook of Gender and Sexuality in Byzantium will be an indispensable guide for students and scholars of late antique and Byzantine religion, history, culture, and art, who will find it a useful critical survey of current scholarship and one that shines new light in their areas of research. The focus on issues of gender and sexuality may also be of interest to individuals concerned with Eastern Mediterranean culture, as well as to the broader public. Chapter 21 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
Download or read book Orthodox Mercantilism written by Alex Feldman and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-04-02 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book demonstrates how the political economy of mercantilism was not simply a Western invention by various cities and kingdoms during the Renaissance, but was the natural by-product of perpetually limited growth rates and rulers’ relentless pursuits of bullion. It contributes to discussions of the economic history surrounding the so-called “Great Divergence” between East and West, which would consequently lend context and credence to differences of economic thought in the world today. Additionally, it seeks to explain present economic thought as tacitly derived from implicit antique paradigms. This book advances fields of research from numismatics and sigillography to historical materialism and historical political economy. Divided into three parts, Orthodox Mercantilism first examines the political theology (the sovereignty) of the œcumene from the early 11th century. Second, it analyzes its peripheral legislation from the customary laws of newly Christianized dynasties up to the Kormčaja Kniga’s adoption (the Nomokanon) by 13th-century Orthodox dynasties across Eastern Europe. Third, it explores how these dynasties (and their own satellite dynasties) hoarded finite bullion to pay for defense, resulting in the 11–14th-century coinless period across Eastern Europe and Western Eurasia. Appealing to students and scholars alike, this book will be of interest to those studying and researching economic and mercantile history, particularly in the context of Byzantine and Eastern European societies.
