Byzantine Studies

Scholars have made conflicting claims for Byzantine hospitals as medical institutions and as the forebears of the modern hospital. In this study is the first systematic examination of the evidence of the xenôn texts, or Xenonika, on which all such claims must in part rest. These texts, compiled broadly between the ninth and thirteenth centuries, are also transcribed or edited, with the exception　of the combined texts of Romanos and Theophilos that, the study proposes, were originally a single manual and teaching work for doctors, probably based on xenôn practice. A schema of their combined chapter headings sets out the unified structure of this text. A short handlist briefly describes the principal manuscripts referred to throughout the study. The introduction briefly examines our evidence for the xenônes from the early centuries of the East Roman Empire to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Chapter 3 examines the texts in xenon medical practice and compares them to some other medical manuals and remedy texts of the Late period and to their structures. The xenôn-ascribed texts are discussed one by one in chapters 4-8; the concluding chapter 9 draw together the common, as well as the divergent, aspects of each text and looks to the comparative evidence for hospital medical practice of the time in the West.

It is a great pleasure to see this work published, making available some of the most refreshing studies on Byzantine philosophy available, together in one volume. The 24 essays collected here treat diverse topics, from ontology to questions of iconicity, from historically oriented studies to nuanced philosophical observations on Proclus, Christian Neoplatonism, Aquinas and Gregory Palamas, from Leontius of Byzantium to John Philoponus and Nicolas Cabasilas and his sacramental synthesis, from anthropology or hierarchies of beings of Gregory of Nyssa and Dionysius the Areopagite to Christology after Chalcedon, from John of Damascus on genus and species to Scholarios and Pletho. Each of them is characterized by meticulous scholarship and great insight, clarity of thought and expression.

St Theodore the Studite's Defence of the Icons provides an investigation of the icon-theology of St Theodore the Studite, mainly as it is presented in his three refutations of the iconoclasts, the Antirrhetici tres adversus iconomachos. Torstein Theodor Tollefsen explores Theodore's"philosophy of images", namely his doctrine of images and his arguments that justify the legitimacy of images in general and of Christ in particular. Tollefsen offers a historical, theological, and philosophical exploration of Theodore's doctrine of images and his arguments justifying the legitimacyof images and of Christ. In addition to the main elements of Theodore's defence of the icon, like the Christological issue, the relation between image and prototype, the question of veneration, his explanation of why we may say of an image that "this is Christ", and his innovative thinking on therepresentative character of the icon, the book has an introduction that places Theodore in the history of Byzantine philosophy: he has some knowledge of traditional logical topics and is able to utilize argumentative forms in countering his iconoclast opponents. The volume also provides an appendixwhich shows that the making of images is somehow natural given the character of Christianity as a religion.

Weird, decadent, degenerate, racially mixed, superstitious, theocratic, effeminate, and even hyper-literate, Byzantium has long been regarded by many as one big curiosity. According to Voltaire, it represented "a worthless collection of miracles, a disgrace for the human mind" for Hegel it was"a disgusting picture of imbecility."A Cabinet of Byzantine Curiosities will reinforce these old prejudices, while also stimulating a deeper interest among readers in one of history's most interesting civilizations. Many of the zanier tales and trivia that are collected here revolve around the political and religious life of Byzantium.Thus, stories of saints, relics, and their miracles - from the hilarious to the revolting - abound. Byzantine bureaucracy (whence the adjective "Byzantine"), court scandals, and elaborate penal code are world famous. And what would Byzantium be without its eunuchs, whose ambiguous gender producedodd and risible outcomes in different contexts? The book also contains sections on daily life that are equally eye-opening, including food (from aphrodisiacs to fermented fish sauce), games such as polo and acrobatics, and obnoxious views of foreigners and others (e.g., Germans, Catholics, Arabs,dwarves). But lest we overlook Byzantium's more honorable contributions to civilization, also included are some of the marvels of Byzantine science and technology, from the military (flamethrowers and hand grenades) to the theatrical "elevator" thrones, roaring mechanical lions) and medical(catheters and cures, some bizarre). This vast assortment of historical anomaly and absurdity sheds vital light on one of history's most obscure and orthodox empires.

Byzantine philosophy is an almost unexplored field. Being regarded either as mere scholars or as primarily religious thinkers, Byzantine philosophers, for the most part, have not been studied on their own philosophical merit, and their works have hardly been scrutinized as works of philosophy. Thus, although distinguished scholars in the past have tried to reconstruct the intellectual life of the Byzantine period, there is no question that we still lack even thebeginnings of a systematic understanding of the philosophy of the Byzantines.Byzantine Philosophy and its Ancient Sources is conceived as a concerted attempt in this direction. It examines the attitude the Byzantines took towards the ancient philosophical tradition and the specific ancient sources which they relied upon to form their theories. But did the Byzantines merely copy ancient philosophers or interpret them the way they already had been interpreted in late antiquity? Does Byzantine philosophy as a whole lack a distinctive character which differentiatesit from the previous periods in the history of philosophy?Eleven scholars, representing different disciplines from philosophy and history to classics and medieval studies, approach these questions by thoroughly investigating particular topics which give us some insight as to the directions in which we should look for possible answers. These topics range, in modern terms, from philosophy of language, theory of knowledge, and logic, to political philosophy, ethics, natural philosophy, and metaphysics. The philosophers whose works our contributors studybelong to all periods from the beginnings of Byzantine culture in the fourth century to the demise of the Byzantine Empire in the fifteenth century.

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.

This volume represents the first attempt to examine occult sciences as a distinct category of Byzantine intellectual culture. It is concerned with both the reality and the image of the occult sciences in Byzantium, and seeks, above all, to represent them in their social and cultural context as a historical phenomenon.

The eleven essays demonstrate that Byzantium was not marginal to the scientific culture of the Middle Ages, and that the occult sciences were not marginal to the learned culture of the medieval Byzantine world.

Although the actual dreaming experience of the Byzantines lies beyond our reach, the remarkable number of dream narratives in the surviving sources of the period attests to the cardinal function of dreams as vehicles of meaning, and thus affords modern scholars access to the wider cultural fabric of symbolic representations of the Byzantine world. Whether recounting real or invented dreams, the narratives serve various purposes, such as political and religious agendas, personal aspirations or simply an author's display of literary skill. It is only in recent years that Byzantine dreaming has attracted scholarly attention, and important publications have suggested the way in which Byzantines reshaped ancient interpretative models and applied new perceptions to the functions of dreams. This book - the first collection of studies on Byzantine dreams to be published - aims to demonstrate further the importance of closely examining dreams in Byzantium in their wider historical and cultural, as well as narrative, context. Linked by this common thread, the essays offer insights into the function of dreams in hagiography, historiography, rhetoric, epistolography, and romance. They explore gender and erotic aspects of dreams; they examine cross-cultural facets of dreaming, provide new readings, and contextualize specific cases; they also look at the Greco-Roman background and Islamic influences of Byzantine dreams and their Christianization. The volume provides a broad variety of perspectives, including those of psychoanalysis and anthropology.

This book analyses the process of development of Byzantine thought, which carries original solutions to fundamental philosophical questions and an original understanding of the world and humanity. The author defines the contents and characteristics of Byzantine philosophy, discusses the most important factors of its development as well as the role of Greco-Roman world and the place of Christian thinkers in this process. He also takes into consideration the Alexandrian school and the School of Antioch, the relationship between Byzantine philosophy and Greek Patristics and the attempts to restore the Byzantine neptic thought after the fall of Constantinople. The study is based on Byzantine sources, written in Greek.

The famous aphorism of Hippocrates--"life is short, art long"--stands at the heart of this exhibition, which examines the art and practice of healing in Byzantium from Roman times to the late Byzantine period. It traces the concurrent methods of healing-faith, magic, and rational medicine-from the foundations laid by Apollo and Asklepios, healers of antiquity, as well as Hippocrates and Dioscorides, the founders of rational medicine. The fascinating coexistence of a belief in demons as the primary cause of illness and a rational perception of disease, grounded in Hippocratic teachings, come together in the protagonists of the "art of healing"--the physicians, druggists, saints, holy men, and magicians who healed the sick. The daily rituals involved in maintaining and pursuing well-being, protecting against demons, purifying the body and soul offer a glimpse into the daily life of the Byzantines. The exhibition catalogue illustrates the influence of Byzantium's ancient cultural heritage on religious and rational thought as well as contemporary scientific developments and innovations from around the Mediterranean. The catalogue is one of the most updated and extensive publication on the history and art of healing in Byzantium with essays written by the acclaimed academics and with various works, some of them being published for the first time.

This volume discusses the so-called Oneirocriticon of Achmet, the most important Byzantine work on dream interpretation which was written in Greek in the 10th century and has greatly influenced subsequent dreambooks in Byzantine Greek, Medieval Latin, and modern European languages.By comparing the Oneirocriticon with the 2nd-century A.D. dreambook of Artemidoros (translated into Arabic in the 9th century) and five medieval Arabic dreambooks, this study demonstrates that the Oneirocriticon is a Christian Greek adaption of Islamic Arabic material and that the similarities between it and Artemidoros are due to the influence of Artemidoros on the Arabic sources of the Byzantine work. The Oneirocriticons textual tradition, its language, the identities of its author and patron, and its position among other Byzantine translations from Arabic into Greek are also investigated.

Medical historians have traditionally claimed that modern hospitals emerged during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Premodern hospitals, according to many scholars, existed mainly as refuges for the desperately poor and sick, providing patients with little or no medical care. Challenging this view in a compelling survey of hospitals in the East Roman Empire, Timothy Miller traces the birth and development of Byzantine xenones, or hospitals, from their emergence in the fourth century to their decline in the fifteenth century, just prior to the Turkish conquest of Constantinople. These sophisticated medical facilities, he concludes, are the true ancestors of modern hospitals. In a new introduction to this paperback edition, Miller describes the growing scholarship on this subject in recent years.

Daily life and living conditions in the Byzantine world are relatively underexplored subjects, often neglected in comparison with more visible aspects of Byzantine culture, such as works of art. The book is among the few publications on Greek Byzantine populations and helps pioneer a new approach to the subject, opening a window on health status and dietary patterns through the lens of bioarchaeological research. Drawing on a diversity of disciplines (biology, chemistry, archaeology and history), the author focuses on the complex interaction between physiology, culture and the environment in Byzantine populations from Crete in the 7th to 12th centuries. The systematic analysis and interpretation of the mortality profiles, the observed pathological conditions, and of the chemical data, all set in the cultural context of the era, brings new evidence to bear on the reconstruction of living conditions in Byzantine Crete. Individual chapters look at the demographic profiles and mortality patterns of adult and non-adult populations, and study dietary habits and breastfeeding and weaning patterns. In addition, this book provides an indispensable body of primary data for future research in these fields, and so furthers an interdisciplinary approach in tracing the health of the past populations.

Jones, A. An Eleventh-century Manual of Arabo-Byzantine Astronomy. 1987 O. Neugebauer has written an excellent commentary on the anonymous Methods of Computing Various Astronomical Hypotheses". The present volume is intended to complement Neugebauers commentary by supplying a critical edition and translation of the "Methods", along with notes that mostly concern textual problems and the identification of sources in Arabic astronomy, aspects of the work that are less exhaustively treated by Neugebauer.CAB 3 (1987), 199 p. 22x30 cm. - 60.00 EURO, ISBN: 9050630146"

Professor Scarborough brings together here fourteen of his essays on ancient drugs and pharmacy, dealing with aspects of a pharmacology and medical botany that incorporate magic, astrology, and alchemy, as well as the expected theoretical constructs of elements, qualities, and humors. Clinical application of salves for burns was a skill of long standing, as one essay demonstrates, and another suggests Hippocratic pharmacology's sophistication, as does consideration of the herbal lore in Theophrastus' remarkable Enquiry into Plants. A major concern among Greek, Roman, and Byzantine medical practitioners was toxicology and the fundamental collection of data on poisonous plants and animals, and two studies take up snakes, spiders, insects, and related creatures with suggested antidotes in the difficult poems of Nicander of Colophon, while another focuses on Dioscorides' perceptive analysis of the effects of the opium poppy. Aloe in the drug commerce of the early Roman Empire is considered along with the life and career of Criton, a personal physician to Trajan, and some of Galen's pharmacology as reflected in his commentaries on Hippocrates. The collection concludes with two studies that explicate early Byzantine pharmacology and how garden lore in Byzantine times contributed to practical pharmacy.

In The Wandering Throne of Solomon: Objects and Tales of Kingship in the Medieval Mediterranean Allegra Iafrate analyzes the circulation of artifacts and literary traditions related to king Solomon, particularly among Christians, Jews and Muslims, from the 10th to the 13th century. The author shows how written sources and objects of striking visual impact interact and describes the efforts to match the literary echoes of past wonders with new mirabilia. Using the throne of Solomon as a case-study, she evokes a context where Jewish rabbis, Byzantine rulers, Muslim ambassadors, Christian sovereigns and bishops all seem to share a common imagery in art, technology and kingship.