Download or read book The Argument of Psellos Chronographia written by Anthony Kaldellis and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-10-11 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a philosophical interpretation of Michael Psellos' Chronographia, an acknowledged masterpiece of Byzantine literature. Anthony Kaldellis argues that although the Chronographia contains a fascinating historical narrative; it is really a disguised philosophical work which, if read carefully, reveals Psellos' revolutionary views on politics and religion. Kaldellis exposes the rhetorical techniques with which Psellos veils his unorthodoxy, and demonstrates that the inner message of the text challenges the Church's supremacy over the intellectual and political life of Byzantium. Psellos consciously articulates a secular vision of Imperial politics, and seeks to liberate philosophy from the constraints of Christian theology. The analysis is lucid and should be accessible to anyone with a general knowledge of Byzantine civilization. It should interest all who study the history of ancient and medieval philosophy.
Download or read book Fourteen Byzantine Rulers written by Michael Psellus and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 1979-09-27 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This chronicle of the Byzantine Empire, beginning in 1025, shows a profound understanding of the power politics that characterized the empire and led to its decline.
Download or read book Chronographia written by Michael Psellus and published by . This book was released on 2023-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is a history of the Byzantine emperors during the century leading up to Psellos' own time. It covers the reigns of fourteen emperors and empresses, beginning with the almost 50-year-long reign of Basil II, the "Bulgar-Slayer" (976-1025), and ending some time during the reign of Michael VII Doukas (1071-1078).
Download or read book The Letters of Psellos written by Michael Jeffreys and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Letters of Psellos is the first detailed study of the correspondence of Michael Psellos, a preeminent Byzantine intellectual, politician, and writer. Structured in two parts, it juxtaposes five essays offering detailed historical and literary analyses of selected letters with annotated summaries of the entirety of Psellos' correspondence.
Download or read book The Depiction of Character in the Chronographia of Michael Psellos written by Frederick Lauritzen and published by Brepols Publishers. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Character is the single most important feature of the Chronographia written by Michael Psellos (1018-1081?). It is an historical account of the events at court from the time of Basil II (986-1025) to Michael VII Doukas (1071-1078) with the insight of someone whose career developed within the imperial court and his unsurpassed eye for details of personality was enlightened by his intellectual interests. During his lifetime, Psellos was considered the forefront of philosophical studies in the capital and therefore was named consul of philosophers in 1047 and he credited himself with reintroducing Plato on the cultural scene of Constantinople. It was his attractive manner of speech which led him to remain in the emperor's presence and his rhetorical ability also plays an important role in the Chronographia, especially when he emphasizes or fabricates events to justify his understanding of a person's mind. Many have employed Psellos' Chronographia for its value in shedding light on historic events, itself important, though it often neglects the fact that Psellos' historiography is not based on factual details to explain multiple causes for events, but seeks to attribute blame or merit to the personality of the ruling emperor.
Download or read book The Rise of the Medieval World 500 1300 written by Jana K. Schulman and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2002-05-30 with total page 538 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beginning in 500 with the fusion of classical, Christian, and Germanic cultures and ending in 1300 with a Europe united by a desire for growth, knowledge, and change, this volume provides basic information on the significant cultural figures of the Middle Ages. It includes over 400 people whose contributions in literature, religion, philosophy, education, or politics influenced the development and culture of the Medieval world. While focusing on Western European figures, the book does not neglect those from Byzantium, Baghdad, and the Arab world who also contributed to the politics, religion, and culture of Western Europe. Europe underwent fundamental changes during the Middle Ages. It changed from a preliterate to a literate society. Cities became a vital part of the economy, culture, and social structure. The poor and serfs went to the cities. The devout joined monastic orders. Christianity spread throughout Europe, while a man was born in Mecca who would change the shape of the religious map. Islam spread throughout the Holy Land. Christian piety led to the Crusades. This book provides a convenient guide to those who helped shape these movements and counter-movements during this era that would pave the way for the Renaissance.
Download or read book Brill s Companion to the Reception of Plutarch written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-10-07 with total page 721 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Plutarch offers the first comprehensive analysis of Plutarch’s rich reception history from the high Roman Empire, Late Antiquity and Byzantium to the Renaissance, Enlightenment, and the modern era, across various cultures in Europe, America, North Africa, and the Middle East.
Download or read book Byzantinum in the Year 1000 written by Paul Magdalino and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2003 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One thousand years ago, the Byzantine Empire was reaching the height of its revival as a medieval state. The ten contributions to this volume by scholars from six European countries re-assess key aspects of the empire's politics and culture in the long reign of the emperor Basil II, whose name has come to symbolise the greatness of Byzantium in the age before the crusades. The first five chapters deal with international diplomacy, the emperor's power, and government in Asia Minor and the frontier provinces of the Balkans and southern Italy. The second half of the volume covers aspects of law, history-writing, poetry and hagiography, and concludes with a discussion of Byzantine attitudes to the Millennium.
Download or read book Power and Subversion in Byzantium written by Michael Saxby and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-08 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume addresses a theme of special significance for Byzantine studies. Byzantium has traditionally been deemed a civilisation which deferred to authority and set special store by orthodoxy, canon and proper order. Since 1982 when the distinguished Russian Byzantinist Alexander Kazhdan wrote that 'the history of Byzantine intellectual opposition has yet to be written', scholars have increasingly highlighted cases of subversion of 'correct practice' and 'correct belief' in Byzantium. This innovative scholarly effort has produced important results, although it has been hampered by the lack of dialogue across the disciplines of Byzantine studies. The 43rd Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies in 2010 drew together historians, art historians, and scholars of literature, religion and philosophy, who discussed shared and discipline-specific approaches to the theme of subversion. The present volume presents a selection of the papers delivered at the symposium enriched with specially commissioned contributions. Most papers deal with the period after the eleventh century, although early Byzantium is not ignored. Theoretical questions about the nature, articulation and limits of subversion are addressed within the frameworks of individual disciplines and in a larger context. The volume comes at a timely junction in the development of Byzantine studies, as interest in subversion and nonconformity in general has been rising steadily in the field.
Download or read book Reading Proclus and the Book of Causes Volume 2 written by Dragos Calma and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-10-20 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reading Proclus and the Book of Causes, published in three volumes, is a fresh, comprehensive understanding of the history of Neoplatonism from the 9th to the 16th century. The impact of the Elements of Theology and the Book of Causes is reconsidered on the basis of newly discovered manuscripts and evidences. This second volume revises widely accepted hypotheses about the reception of the Proclus’ text in Byzantium and the Caucasus, and about the context that made possible the composition of the Book of Causes and its translations into Latin and Hebrew. The contributions offer a unique, comparative perspective on the various ways a pagan author was acculturated to the Abrahamic traditions.
Download or read book Serving Byzantium s Emperors written by Dimitris Krallis and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-01-31 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a microhistory of eleventh-century Byzantium, built around the biography of the state official Michael Attaleiates. Dimitris Krallis presents Byzantium as a cohesive, ever-evolving, dynamic, Roman political community, built on traditions of Roman governance and Hellenic culture. In the eleventh century, Byzantium faced a crisis as it navigated a shifting international environment of feudal polities, merchant republics, steppe migrations, and a rapidly transforming Islamic world. Attaleiates’ life, from provincial birth to Constantinopolitan death, and career, as a member of an ancient empire’s officialdom, raise questions of identity, family, education, governance, elite culture, Romanness, Hellenism, science and skepticism, as well as political ideology during this period. The life and work of Attaleiates is used as a prism through which to examine important questions about a long-lived medieval polity that is usually studied as exotic and distinct from both the European and the Near Eastern historical experience.
Download or read book Greek East and Latin West written by Andrew Louth and published by St Vladimir's Seminary Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This volume gives an account of the Church in the period from the end of the Sixth Ecumenical Synod in 681 to the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. Although "Greek East" and "Latin West" are becoming distinct entities during this expanse of time, the author treats them in parallel, observing the points at which their destinies coincide or conflict. The author notes developments within the whole of the Church rather than striving simply, or even primarily, to explain the eventual schism between Eastern and Western Christendom. Coveriing events both unique to each part (the Iconoclastic controversy in the East and the rise of the Carolingian Empire in the West) and common to each part (monastic reform, renaissance, and mission) the author skillfully portrays two Christian civilizations that share much in common yet become increasingly incomprehensible to one another. Despite curious synchronisms between East and West, the author demonstrates how two paths diverged from a once common route, and how eventually Byzantine Orthodoxy defined the Greek East over and against the Latin West in theological, religious, cultural, and political terms." -- Provided by publisher.
Download or read book Dreams Memory and Imagination in Byzantium written by Bronwen Neil and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-08-20 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of studies on Dreams, Memory and Imagination in Byzantium reveals the distinctive and important roles of memory, imagination and dreams in the Byzantine court, the proto-Orthodox church and broader society from Constantinople to Syria and beyond
Download or read book Basil II and the Governance of Empire 976 1025 written by Catherine Holmes and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2005 with total page 640 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Basil's Byzantium is revealed as a state where the rhetoric of imperial authority became reality through the astute manipulation of force and persuasion."--Jacket.
Download or read book Conjunctions of Mind Soul and Body from Plato to the Enlightenment written by Danijela Kambaskovic and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-09-25 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the nexus between the corporeal, emotional, spiritual and intellectual aspects of human life as represented in the writing of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Authors from different fields examine not only the question of the body and soul (or body and mind) but also how this question fits into a broader framework in the medieval and early modern period. Concepts such as gender and society, morality, sexuality, theological precepts and medical knowledge are a part of this broader framework. This discussion of ideas draws from over two thousand years of Western thought: from Plato in the fifth century BC and the fourth century Byzantine dialogues on the soul, to the philosophical and medical writings of the early 1700s. There are four sections to this book: each section is based on where the authors have found a conjunction between the body and mind/soul. The work begins with a section on text and self-perception, which focuses on creative output from the period. The second conjunction is human emotions which are described in their social contexts. The third is sex, where the human body and mind are traditionally believed to meet. The fourth section, Material Souls, engages with bodies and other material aspects of existence perceived, studied or utilised as material signs of emotional and spiritual activity.
Download or read book Byzantine Perspectives on Neoplatonism written by Sergei Mariev and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2017-03-20 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Byzantine intellectuals not only had direct access to Neoplatonic sources in the original language but also, at times, showed a particular interest in them. During the Early Byzantine period Platonism significantly contributed to the development of Christian doctrines and, paradoxically, remained a rival world view that was perceived by many Christian thinkers as a serious threat to their own intellectual identity. This problematic relationship was to become even more complex during the following centuries. Byzantine authors made numerous attempts to harmonize Neoplatonic doctrines with Christianity as well as to criticize, refute and even condemn them. The papers assembled in this volume discuss a number of specific questions and concerns that drew the interest of Byzantine scholars in different periods towards Neoplatonic sources in an attempt to identify and explore the central issues in the reception of Neoplatonic texts during the Byzantine era. This is the first volume of the sub-series "Byzantinisches Archiv - Series Philosophica", which will be dedicated to the rapidly growing field of research in Byzantine philosophical texts.
Download or read book Christian Muslim Relations A Bibliographical History Volume 3 1050 1200 written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2011-03-21 with total page 818 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christian-Muslim Relations, a Bibliographical History 3 (CMR3) is a history of all the works on Christian-Muslim relations from 1050 to 1200. It comprises introductory essays and over one hundred entries containing descriptions, assessments and comprehensive bibliographical details of individual works.
