Byzantine Studies

Discover how ordinary people lived during the Middle Ages in the eastern Mediterranean in this unparalleled exploration of life in the Byzantine Empire. Learn how the subjects of the Byzantine Empire kept track of time with sundials and water clocks. Witness a typical wedding and all of the traditions followed by the bride, groom, and guests. Find out how the Byzantines kept up their appearance, covering everything from skincare to dental care. Learn the rules of games that children played, and explore everything in the city of Constantinople, from tourist attractions to city administration and defense strategies. Learn about sports entertainment at the Hippodrome as well as theaters and other festivals. Compare city life to that of the country, military, and monastery. Understand Byzantine humor, education system, and musical instruments. Ideal for high school students and undergraduates. Even general readers can explore the world of the Byzantine Empire in this comprehensive study that covers everything from clothing styles to typical city life. Rautman discusses not only general issues of everyday life in the Byzantine Empire, but also probes into very specific topics. Questions such as Who were some writers during the Byzantine Empire? as well as, How did people brush their teeth? are answered in this extensive study. Topics include Byzantine worldviews, how their society and economy flourished, and how families were structured. Rautman also looks at the city of Constantinople (modern Istanbul), as well as other cities and towns and the countryside. Other topics include life in the military and monastery, artistic life, and education beliefs. Also included are a list of Byzantine rulers, a list of Byzantine and contemporaneous writers, and a glossary. This all-inclusive study is essential to all high school, academic, and public library reference shelves.

Gemüse aller Art zählen seit jeher zu den wichtigsten Nahrungsmitteln des Menschen. Die ganzjährige Versorgung einer Großstadt mit frischem Gemüse stellt heute normalerweise kein Problem dar. Doch wie gestaltet sich eine ausgewogene und umfassende Versorgung mit Nahrungsmitteln für die Metropolen der Spätantike und des Mittelalters, zu Zeiten vorindustrieller Bedingungen von Produktion, Transport und Verteilung also? In der vorliegenden Untersuchung erarbeitet Johannes Koder auf der Basis byzantinischer und mittelalterlicher Quellen und der topopgraphischen Situation deas Fallbeispiel Konstantinopel, der Kaiserresidenz und Weltstadt am Bosporus, mit mehreren hunderttausend Einwohnern im 6. Jahrhundert. Dabei geht es um: Anbauflächen und Gemüsearten wann der Markt über welche Gemüse verfügte wie das Produkt zum Konsumenten kam und auf welche Art er es zubereitete

The study of the family is one of the major lacunas in Byzantine Studies. Angeliki Laiou remarked in 1989 that 'the study of the Byzantine family is still in its infancy', and this assertion remains true today. The present volume addresses this lacuna. It comprises 19 chapters written by international experts in the field which take a variety of approaches to the study of the Byzantine family, and embrace a chronological span from the later Roman to the late Byzantine empire. The context is established by chapters focusing on the Roman roots of the Byzantine family, the Christianisation of the family, and the nature of the family in contemporaneous cultures (the late antique west and the Islamic east). Key methodological approaches to the Byzantine family are highlighted and discussed, in particular prosopographical and life course approaches. The contribution of hagiography to the understanding of the Byzantine family is analysed by several authors; other chapters on the family and children in art and on the archaeology of the Middle Byzantine house explore the material evidence that can shed light on the Byzantine family. Overall, the diversity of families that existed in Byzantium (blood, fictive, metaphorical) is emphasised, and chapters consider the specific cases of ascetic, monastic, aristocratic and peasant families, as well as the imperial family, which is illuminated by the comparative case of a Caliphal family. The volume is topped and tailed by a Preface and an Afterword by the editors, which address the state of the field and consider the way ahead. Thus the volume is vital in putting the subject of the Byzantine Family in sharp focus and setting the research agenda for the future.

Eight articles from a 2006 conference are included in this volume which covers issues related to childhood during the Byzantine Empire. Topics covered include law, procreation, death, patterns of breastfeeding, & material culture.

The various phases of life and their manifestations in theory and social reality constitute a well-established area of research in the fields of western medieval studies and ancient history. In this respect the Byzantine East has been widely neglected. This volume will focus on the Byzantine experience of adolescence, which may be defined as the biological transition from childhood to adulthood as well as the social and psychological experience of leaving the care of parents, guardians and family groups and the gradual integration into adult society. The contributions gathered therein treat seven subtopics that correspond to crucial questions in the current research on adolescence: the legal status of adolescents; the mechanisms of transition from childhood to adolescence; the socialisation and gradual integration into adult society; adolescents in Byzantine art; psychological aspects of adolescence from medieval to modern times; illnesses of adolescents; adolescents in the western medieval world.The focus is on the Middle and Late Byzantine Period, where historical, hagiographical,legal and medical sources offer rich material for an investigation of these aspects. The book contributes to a better understanding of all these questions and to show future trajectories for research.

This scrupulously researched and abundantly illustrated book includes 315 drawings based on renderings by artists of the period to achieve utmost accuracy and authenticity.
Included are elaborate examples of Aegean costume, Doric and Ionic styles of dress for women, Greek and Roman armor, graceful and intricately arranged Roman togas, the tunica — roomy, wide-sleeved apparel; and the pallium, a cloak-like garment. Ornate vestments of the Eastern Orthodox Church and Byzantine costumes are carefully described and portrayed, as are styles of hairdressing, jewelry, and other decorative elements.
An excellent reference for the history classroom, the volume also includes instructions and flat patterns showing the cut of sample garments, making it easy for costume designers to reproduce period apparel. This book will be valuable as well to costume historians and art students interested in the development of representative art.

Among the controversial issues in America today is the debate over how best to care for abandoned and neglected children. Largely absent from the debate, however, is any discussion of past practices. In this book, historian Timothy Miller argues that it is necessary to look at the history of orphanages, of their successes and failures, and of their complex roles as social institutions for unwanted and homeless children. In The Orphans of Byzantium, Miller provides a perceptive and original study of the evolution of orphanages in the Byzantine Empire. Contrary to popular belief and even expert opinion, medieval child-welfare systems were sophisticated, especially in the Byzantine world. Combining ancient Roman legal institutions with Christian concepts of charity, the Byzantine Empire evolved a child-welfare system that tried either to select foster parents for homeless children or to place them in group homes that could provide food, shelter, and education. Miller discusses how successive Byzantine emperors tried to improve Roman regulations to provide greater security for orphans, and notes that they achieved their greatest success when they widened the pool of potential guardians by allowing women relatives to accept the duties of guardianship. After a thorough discussion of each element of the Byzantine child care system, the book closes by showing how Byzantine orphanages provided models for later Western group homes, especially in Italy. From these renaissance orphan asylums evolved the system of modern European and American religious orphanages until the foster care movement emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century. Miller's study of these systems can provide useful models for reforming the troubled child-welfare system today. Timothy S. Miller is Professor of History at Salisbury University in Maryland. He has written or edited numerous books and articles on the Byzantine Empire, including The Birth of the Hospital in the Byzantine Empire and Peace and War in Byzantium. Praise for the book: "A very important contribution to Byzantine social and family history. . . . Like his other works, The Orphans of Byzantium commends Professor Miller as an indefatigable researcher and leading social historian of the Byzantine era. [This] is an original book, extensively researched, well documented, and readable, of value to students and teachers of Byzantine civilization, and the history of philanthropy and welfare. . . . Dr. Miller deserves congratulations and our gratitude for making another major contribution to Byzantine studies."--Demetrios J. Constantelos, Catholic Historical Review "Timothy Miller has become an expert on the Byzantine Empire's system of social welfare, and here he provides an exhaustive study at a millennium of Byzantine care of orphans. . . . Miller's work is, by any gauge, thorough, and while there is not a plethora of evidence on this topic, readers can be sure that Miller has carefully analysed what there is."--Daniel Boice, Catholic Library Wolrd "What should a morally responsible society do with orphans? Ignore and thus condone possible slavery, certain neglect, probable death? Encourage adoption? Institutionalize and therefore confine and marginalize? In this handsomely produced text, established Byzantine historian Miller (Salisbury Univ.) explicitly addresses a perennial issue of social policy by investigating and assessing the strategies that the classical and Byzantine worlds employed for abandoned or neglected children. Miller competently reviews the Hellenistic and Roman legalities and realities that Byzantine church, state, and private society sought to improve, then informatively describes the importance of the orphanage as institution (religiously or privately controlled); the sometimes effective encouragement (notably, by giving female kin greate

This book covers a subject that has never previously been addressed, and yet it is both a fascinating and a provocative one: the representation of children in Byzantium. The visual material is extensive, intriguing and striking, and the historical context is crucially important to our understanding of Byzantine culture, social history and artistic output. The imagery explored is drawn from the fourth to the fifteenth centuries and encompasses media from manuscripts to mosaics and enamel. Part of the allure of this subject is that people do not associate childhood with Byzantium. Ernst Gombrich commented, 'who could find it easy, after a visit to Ravenna and its solemn mosaics, to think of noisy children in Byzantium?'. However, in Byzantium, patrons of art were often young, such as emperors who acceded to the throne as teenagers, and makers of art, sculptors, mosaicists, painters often began their training at an early age. How did this affect the creation, promotion and production of art? The study questions the definitions and perceptions of childhood, focusing on topics such as the family, saintly children and those associated with imperial power. Cecily Hennessy demonstrates that children are featured often in visual imagery and in key locations, indicating that they played a central role in Byzantine life, something which has previously been overlooked or ignored. In tackling this new subject she reveals important aspects of childhood, youth, and by extension adulthood in Byzantine society and raises issues that are also applicable to the present and to other historical contexts.

A magnificent huge illustrated volume, describing in detail the daily life in the Eastern Roman Empire.

This study explores the development of ancient festival culture in the Greek East of the Roman Empire, paying particular attention to the fundamental religious changes that occurred. After analysing how Greek city festivals developed in the first two Imperial centuries, it concentrates on the major Roman festivals that were adopted in the Eastern cities and traces their history up to the time of Justinian and beyond. It addresses several key questions for the religious history of later antiquity: who were the actors behind these adoptions? How did the closed religious communities, Jews and pre-Constantinian Christians, articulate their resistance? How did these festivals change when the empire converted to Christianity? Why did emperors not yield to the long-standing pressure of the Church to abolish them? And finally, how did these very popular festivals - despite their pagan tradition - influence the form of the newly developed Christian liturgy?

In recent decades there has been an increasing interest in the study of food and drink in the ancient, Mediaeval and Byzantine worlds and of their supply and consumption. This volume presents selected papers from the biennial conference of the Australian Association for Byzantine Studies, which was held at the University of Adelaide, 11-12 July 2003. The theme was food and drink in Byzantium. Published selectively in the present volume, the papers of the conference are augmented by contributions from international scholars. While some papers address the use of food directly (children's diet, fasting) or tangentially (in love spells), or discuss philosophical approaches towards food (vegetarianism), other papers in this volume examine the topic from another perspective: the role and perception of food and drink - and their consumption - in society. Yet others examine issues of supply (military logistics) and the role it played in shaping Byzantium. This volume will appeal to readers interested in the history of food, in late antique and Byzantine society, in Byzantine rhetoric, in magic in late antiquity and in the Jews in early Byzantium.

For centuries the food and culinary delights of the Byzantine empire - centred on Constantinople - have captivated the west, although it appeared that very little information had been passed down to us. Andrew Dalby's Tastes of Byzantium now reveals in astonishing detail, for the first time, what was eaten in the court of the Eastern Roman Empire - and how it was cooked. Fusing the spices of the Romans with the seafood and simple local food of the Aegean and Greek world, the cuisine of the Byzantines was unique and a precursor to much of the food of modern Turkey and Greece. Bringing this vanished cuisine to life in vivid and sensual detail, Dalby describes the sights and smells of Constantinople and its marketplaces, relates travellers' tales and paints a comprehensive picture of the recipes and customs of the empire and their relationship to health and the seasons, love and medicine. For food-lovers and historians alike,  Tastes of Byzantium is both essential and riveting - an extraordinary illumination of everyday life in the Byzantine world.

Baharatın öyküsü insanlık tarihiyle iç içe. Dünyanın öte yanındaki tatlar ve kokular, zor, yavaş, pahalı ve tehlikeli bir yolculuktan sonra yemeklerimize katılır, kutlamalarımızı şenlendirir. Antikçağlardan beri dünya pazarlarında eşsiz bir yeri olan baharat, yiyecek ve içkilere, sağlığa, parfümlere, dinsel hayata, büyülere ve törenlere damgasını vurdu. Bazı coğrafi keşiflerin temel güdüsü, Batı dünyasında baharata duyulan açlıktı. Baharat zenginliğe, fetihlere ve hatta soykırımlara yol açtı. Sömürgeci güçler onun için savaştı, ticaretini kontrol etmek amacıyla insanları köleleştirdi ve öldürdü. Ama Tehlikeli Tatlar sadece baharatın arkasında yatan dramı ele alan bir kitap değil; çeşitli kültürlerde baharatla ilgili söylencelerin, inanışların anlatıldığı, dilbilimsel bir dedektiflikle baharat adlarının izinin de sürüldüğü bir kitap. Tehlikeli Tatlar’da tarçın, karabiber, safran, zencefil gibi dünyada ticareti yapılmaya devam edilen, eski kentlerin baharat çarşılarında benzersiz kokularını etrafa saçan baharat çeşitleri; dârü’l-fülfül, cennet biberi, kebâbe gibi bir zamanlar dünya çapında önemliyken günümüzde neredeyse unutulmuş olanları; bugünlerde çok yaygın ve çok sıradan olduklarından artık kimsenin baharat yerine koymadığı ürünleri bulacak, artık yok oldukları için bir zamanlar yiyeceklere kattıkları tadı asla bilemeyeceğimiz silphium’un başına gelenlere şaşacaksınız. Sadece bu kadar da değil, bu kitapta adını duyduğunuz veya duymadığınız bir çok baharat türü kol geziyor: Sandalağacı, pelesenk, tarçın, sadiç, misk, karanfil, küçükhindistancevizi, besbâse, kâfur, aselbent, esmeramber, ödağacı, havlıcan, ravent, meyan kökü, ginseng, yıldız anason, zerdeçal, cedvar, zarumba, amomum, kakule, şeytantersi, damla sakızı, akgünlük, mürr, kişniş, kimyon, anason, nanahan, çörekotu, hardal, haşhaş, ayıfındığı reçinesi, vanilya, biber çeşitleri, koka!. Öyküleri, nasıl kullanıldıkları, karışımları ve bazı yemek tarifleri bu resmi geçide eşlik ediyor.

This volume brings together a group of scholars to consider the rituals of eating together in the Byzantine world, the material culture of Byzantine food and wine consumption, and the transport and exchange of agricultural products. The contributors present food in nearly every conceivable guise, ranging from its rhetorical uses - food as a metaphor for redemption; food as politics; eating as a vice, abstinence as a virtue - to more practical applications such as the preparation of food, processing it, preserving it, and selling it abroad. We learn how the Byzantines viewed their diet, and how others - including, surprisingly, the Chinese - viewed it. Some consider the protocols of eating in a monastery, of dining in the palace, or of roughing it on a picnic or military campaign; others examine what serving dishes and utensils were in use in the dining room and how this changed over time. Throughout, the terminology of eating - and especially some of the more problematic terms - is explored. The chapters expand on papers presented at the 37th Annual Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, held at the University of Birmingham under the auspices of the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies, in honour of Professor A.A.M. Bryer, a fitting tribute for the man who first told the world about Byzantine agricultural implements.

This book brings to life an impressively broad array of performances in the Eastern Mediterranean. It covers many traditional types of performance, including singers, dancers, storytellers, street performers, clowns, preachers, shadow-puppeteers, fireworks displays, and semi-theatrical performances in folk and other celebrations. It explores performance of the secular as well as of the sacred in its many forms, including Sunni, Shiite, Sufi, and Alevi Muslims; Sephardic Jews and those in the Holy Land; and Armenian, Greek, and European Catholic Christians. The book focuses on the Medieval and Early Modern periods, including the Early Ottoman. Some papers reach backward into Late Antiquity, while others demonstrate continuity with the modern Eastern Mediterranean world. The articles discuss evidence for performers and performance coming from archival sources, architectural and manuscript images, musical notation, historical and ethnographic accounts, literary works, and oral tradition. Across the broad range of issues, chronology, and geography, certain fundamental topics are central: concepts of drama and theatricality; varied definitions of 'performance' and related terms; the sacred and the profane, and their frequent intersection; and complex relations between oral and written traditions.

This volume examines the occurrence of secular contemporary artefacts (realia) in Middle and Late Byzantine religious painting. It explores the potential of Byzantine art as a source of information on material culture and inquires into the semiotic function of realia in religious pictorial contexts. The first part of the book comprises five case studies dedicated to imperial, official, aristocratic, and military dress, furniture, furnishings, and implements. The creative processes that led to the introduction of realia into religious iconography are discussed in the commentary. The book conveys a wealth of information especially on Byzantine dress and provides valuable new insights into the workings of Byzantine art. It is an original and thorough investigation of a fascinating, yet surprisingly little-studied subject.

This volume deals with the history, topography and monuments of Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire and one of the greatest urban centers ever known, throughout Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. It contains 21 papers that emanate from an international workshop which was held at Istanbul in 1999.Divided into eight sections, the collection addresses a variety of interconnected topics, ranging from topography to ritual and ideology, archaeology, religious and secular architecture, patronage, commercial life, social organization, womens roles, communities, urban development and planning.Partly drawing on new archaeological and textual evidence, partly directing new questions to or reinterpreting previously available sources, the papers presented here fill important gaps in our knowledge of Constantinople and enhance our conception of the city as both a physical and social entity.