Byzantine Studies

Clinging to a rugged hillside in the lush valley of Sparta lies Mistra, one of the most dramatically beautiful Byzantine cities in Greece, a place steeped in history, myth, and romance. Following the Frankish conquest of the Peloponnese in the thirteenth century, William II of Villehardouin built a great castle on a hill near Sparta that later came to be known as Mistra. Ten years later, in a battle in northern Greece, Villehardouin was defeated and captured by the Byzantine emperor. The terms for his release included giving Mistra to the Byzantine Greeks. Under their rule, the city flourished and developed into a center of learning and the arts and was a focal point for the cultural development of Europe. Sir Steven Runciman, one of the most distinguished historians of the Byzantine period, traveled to Mistra on numerous occasions and became enchanted with the place. Now published in paperback for the first time, Lost Capital of Byzantium tells the story of this once-great city--its rise and fall and its place in the history of the Peloponnese and the Byzantine empire.

This companion to the two-volume Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library edition and translation of The Histories by Laonikos Chalkokondyles is the first book-length investigation of an author who has been poorly studied. Providing biographical and intellectual context for Laonikos, Anthony Kaldellis shows how the author synthesized his classical models to fashion his own distinctive voice and persona as a historian. Indebted to his teacher Plethon for his global outlook, Laonikos was one of the first historians to write with a pluralist's sympathy for non-Greek ethnic groups, including Islamic ones. His was the first secular and neutral account of Islam written in Greek. Kaldellis deeply explores the ethnic dynamics that explicitly and implicitly undergird the Histories, which recount the rise of the Ottoman empire and the decline of the Byzantine empire, all in the context of expanding western power. Writing at once in antique and contemporary modes, Laonikos transformed "barbarian" oral traditions into a classicizing historiography that was both Greek and Ottoman in outlook. Showing that he was instrumental in shifting the self-definition of his people from Roman to the Western category of "Greek," Kaldellis provides a stimulating account of the momentous transformations of the mid-fifteenth century.

This volume brings together ten studies on the political, religious and socioeconomic interaction between the rising Ottoman empire and declining Byzantine state in the last decades of the fourteenth century. They focus on key but under-explored episodes of that encounter, particularly in connection with Murad I, Bayezid I, and Manuel II Palaiologos. Included is an assessment of the contemporary significance of Manuel II's Dialogue With A Persian, recently brought to global prominence and controversy by Pope Benedict XVI in his 2006 lecture in Regensburg, and a previously unpublished analysis of Manuel's Epistolary Discourse to Kabasilas.

Bowman presents the sources with a critical historical introduction for the rediscovery of Balkan and Aegean Jewry from the Fourth Crusade to the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople. The book traces the fortunes of Greek Jews, their contact with co-religionists from Spain, Italy, the Crimea and their interaction with the variegated local populations and endemic conquerors of the region. From the beginning of the 13th century to the 16th century with special chapters on intellectual life, rabbinic interests, mysticism, Greek culture and the social and economic dimensio

"Bir imparatorluğun bir başka imparatorluğun halefi olması -bu durumda Bizans İmparatorluğu'nun çöküşü ve onun Osmanlı İmparatorluğu tarafından ikame edilmesi- eğer tek taraflı incelenirse, doğru incelenmesi mümkün olmayan bir olgudur. Tarihçi, o dönemde yaşayan insanların siyasi gelişmeleri, keza ekonomik ve demografik değişmeleri nasıl değerlendirdiğini incelemelidir. Bu araştırma, bir tarihçi yazılı tanıklıkları, yani o dönemin insanlarının -Bizanslılar ve Osmanlılar- bize bıraktıkları kaynakları analiz ettiği takdirde mümkün olabilir. Melek Delilbaşı, bütün bu kaynaklara nüfuz etmek için büyük uğraş vermiştir."
Elizabeth Zachariadou

At the beginning of the thirteenth century Byzantium was still one of the most influential states in the eastern Mediterranean, possessing two-thirds of the Balkans and almost half of Asia Minor. After the capture of Constantinople in 1204 during the Fourth Crusade, the most prominent andsuccessful of the Greek rump states was the Empire of Nicaea, which managed to re-capture the city in 1261 and restore Byzantium. The Nicaean Empire, like Byzantium of the Komnenoi and Angeloi of the twelfth century, went on to gain dominant influence over the Seljukid Sultanate of Rum in the 1250s.However, the decline of the Seljuk power, the continuing migration of Turks from the east, and what effectively amounted to a lack of Mongol interest in western Anatolia, allowed the creation of powerful Turkish nomadic confederations in the frontier regions facing Byzantium. By 1304, the nomadicTurks had broken Byzantium's eastern defences; the Empire lost its Asian territories forever, and Constantinople became the most eastern outpost of Byzantium. At the beginning of the fourteenth century the Empire was a tiny, second-ranking Balkan state, whose lands were often disputed between theBulgarians, the Serbs, and the Franks.Using Greek, Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman sources, Byzantium and the Turks in the Thirteenth Century presents a new interpretation of the Nicaean Empire and highlights the evidence for its wealth and power. It explains the importance of the relations between the Byzantines and the Seljuks and theMongols, revealing how the Byzantines adapted to the new and complex situation that emerged in the second half of the thirteenth century. Finally, it turns to the Empire's Anatolian frontiers and the emergence of the Turkish confederations, the biggest challenge that the Byzantines faced in thethirteenth century.

Byzantium and Venice: 1204-1453, a selection of articles by the late Julian Chrysostomides, focuses on Byzantium after the Fourth Crusade and its relationship with Venice, particularly in the late Palaeologan period. Seven of the articles deal with aspects of Veneto-Byzantine interactions in the Peloponnese, while the remainder concentrate on the political and commercial ties between Byzantines and Venetians. The essays draw upon Julian Chrysostomides' unrivalled knowledge of the relevant Venetian documents.

The studies included in the present collection by Elizabeth Zachariadou are concerned with the long period of transition from the Byzantine Empire to its successor, the Ottoman Empire. Among the themes covered are the processes of settlement and state-formation amongst the nomadic and often superficially islamized Turks who invaded Asia Minor, and the interactions between them and the conquered Christian population, including not infrequent intermarriage. Other studies focus on how the Greek Orthodox inhabitants of the old Byzantine territories became centred around their ecclesiastical authorities and the patriarchate, and accommodated themselves to their new masters, offering particular services notably in economic life and foreign relations, and channelling their energies into such fruitful areas as trade and shipping.

Constantine XI Palaiologos was the last Christian Emperor of Constantinople and Byzantium. In 1453, when Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks, he was last seen fighting at the city walls, but the actual circumstances of his death have remained surrounded in myth. In the years that followed it was said that he was not dead but sleeping - the 'immortal emperor' turned to marble, who would one day be awakened by an angel and drive the Turks out of his city and empire. Donald Nicol's book tells the gripping story of Constantine's life and death, and ends with an intriguing account of claims by reputed descendants of his family - some remarkably recent - to be heirs to the Byzantine throne.

The fourteen essays in Viewing the Morea focus on the late medieval Morea (Peloponnese), beginning with the bold attempt of Western knights to establish a kingdom on foreign soil. Reinserted into this tale of Crusader foundation are the large numbers of Orthodox villagers who shared the region and created their own narrative of an eternal and sacred empire generated by the pains of loss and the hopes of refoundation. Layered upon the historical and physical topography of the region are the traces of the Venetians, whose "right eye," Modon, was located at the peninsula's southwestern tip. How these groups interacted and how they asserted identity is at the center of inquiry in these essays. Also at the core of this study is the understanding of place and memory--the recollection of the ancient history of the Peloponnese, the architectural and cartographic marking of its mountains and valleys, the re-creation of distant capitals on its land, and the refashioning of the Morea for a Renaissance audience. The authors look at the Morea and its people in the broadest possible manner and with careful attention to written and material evidence, historiography, economic networks, and the making--or retelling--of myths.

The Pontos and its empire of Trebizond (1204–1461) embraced the distinctive Black Sea coastlands, mountains, and pastures of northeastern Anatolia. The importance of this unusual study is twofold. First, it places the material remains of the medieval peoples of the Pontos in their historical and environmental setting through a sequence of local histories. Second, it is a field record—usually the first and all too often the last—of over three hundred sites and monuments examined by the authors since 1957. They include walled cities, painted churches, cave monasteries, and perilous castles, all of which are covered in extensive photographic documentation with additional plans, maps, drawings, bibliographies, and indices.

This is a detailed analysis of Byzantine political attitudes towards the Ottomans and western Europeans during the critical last century of Byzantium. The book covers three major regions of the Byzantine Empire - Thessalonike, Constantinople, and the Morea - where the political orientations of aristocrats, merchants, the urban populace, peasants, and members of ecclesiastical and monastic circles are examined against the background of social and economic conditions. Through its particular focus on the political and religious dispositions of individuals, families and social groups, the book offers an original view of late Byzantine politics and society that is not found in conventional narratives. Drawing on a wide range of Byzantine, western and Ottoman sources, it authoritatively illustrates how late Byzantium was drawn into an Ottoman system in spite of the westward-looking orientation of the majority of its ruling elite.

This book tells the extraordinary story of Theodore II Laskaris, an emperor who ruled over the Byzantine state of Nicaea established in Asia Minor after the fall of Constantinople to the crusaders in 1204. Theodore Laskaris was a man of literary talent and keen intellect. His action-filled life, youthful mentality, anxiety about communal identity (Anatolian, Roman, and Hellenic), ambitious reforms cut short by an early death, and thoughts and feelings are all reconstructed on the basis of his rich and varied writings. His original philosophy, also explored here, led him to a critique of scholasticism in the West, a mathematically inspired theology, and a political vision of Hellenism. A personal biography, a ruler's biography, and an intellectual biography, this highly illustrated book opens a vista onto the eastern Mediterranean, Anatolia, and the Balkans in the thirteenth century, as seen from the vantage point of a key political actor and commentator.

Constantine XI's last moments in life, as he stood before the walls of Constantinople in 1453, have bestowed a heroic status on him. This book produces a more balanced portrait of an intriguing individual: the last emperor of Constantinople. To be sure, the last of the Greek Caesars was a fascinating figure, not so much because he was a great statesman, as he was not, and not because of his military prowess, as he was neither a notable tactician nor a soldier of exceptional merit. This monarch may have formulated grandiose plans but his hopes and ambitions were ultimately doomed, because he failed to inspire his own subjects, who did not rally to his cause. Constantine lacked the skills to create, restore, or maintain harmony in his troubled realm. In addition, he was ineffective on the diplomatic front, as he proved unable to stimulate Latin Christendom to mount an expedition and come to the aid of south-eastern Orthodox Europe. Yet in sharp contrast to his numerous shortcomings, his military defeats, and the various disappointments during his reign, posterity still fondly remembers the last Constantine.

This volume offers a unique collection of essays analysing the artistic achievements of Mediterranean centres linked to the Byzantine Empire between 1261, when the Palaiologan dynasty re-conquered Constantinople, and the decades after 1453 when the Ottomans took the city, marking the end of the Empire. These centuries were characterised by the rising of socio-political elites, in regions such as Crete, Italy, Laconia, Serbia, Trebizond, that, while sharing cultural and artistic values influenced by the Byzantine Empire, were also developing innovative and original visual and cultural standards. The comparative and interdisciplinary framework offered by this volume aims to challenge established ideas concerning the late Byzantine period such as decline, renewal, and innovation. By examining specific case studies of cultural production from within and outside Byzantium, the essays in this volume highlight the intrinsic innovative nature of the socio-cultural identities active in the late Medieval and early Modern Mediterranean vis-à-vis the rhetorical assumption of the cultural contraction of the Empire.

Trebizond, that "long-anticipated city of the Komnenians with its soft and melodious name" to quote Jakob Fallmerayer, has long lured scholars, attracted by its unique combination of Byzantine familiarity and Anatolian foreignness. From 1204 to 1461 the city was at the heart of an empire that proudly proclaimed its inheritance of Byzantine power, but simultaneously stood apart from it; a "Greek Emirate" surrounded by Turkish and Caucasian states. Focusing on the church of Hagia Sophia in Trebizond, with its unusual architecture, unique sculptural decoration and extraordinary wall paintings, Byzantium's Other Empire: Trebizond reveals the ways in which these tensions were expressed in public in the monuments of the empire. It draws extensively on the photograph and drawing archives of David and June Winfield, held in the Conway Library at the Courtauld Institute of Art. The Winfields restored the church from 1959-1963, in a project masterminded by David Talbot Rice. Here, Talbot Rice's photographs from 1929, as well as those of other early scholars who visited Trabzon, notably Gabriel Millet in 1893 and Fyodor Uspenskii in 1916-1917 are presented. These scholars recorded the city, its palaces, churches and monasteries. They provide glimpses of a lost empire and of the city of Trebizond which has been transformed in the decades since their visits. This volume also includes the first published translation into English of the fourteenth-century chronicle of Michael Panaretos.

A Byzantine Government in Exile Government and Society under the Laskarids of Nicaea (1204-1261)

The interaction between Byzantium and the Latin West was intimately connected to practically all the major events and developments which shaped the medieval world in the High and Late Middle Ages - for example, the rise of the 'papal monarchy', the launch of the Crusades, the expansion of international and longdistance commerce, or the flowering of the Renaissance. This volume explores not only the actual avenues of interaction between the two sides (trade, political and diplomatic contacts, ecclesiastical dialogue, intellectual exchange, armed conflict), but also the image each side had of the other and the way perceptions evolved over this long period in the context of their manifold contact. Twenty-one stimulating papers offer new insights and original research on numerous aspects of this relationship, pooling the expertise of an international group of scholars working on both sides of the Byzantine-Western 'divide', on topics as diverse as identity formation, ideology, court ritual, literary history, military technology and the economy, among others. The particular contribution of the research presented here is the exploration of how cross-cultural relations were shaped by the interplay of the thought-world of the various historical agents and the material circumstances which circumscribed their actions. The volume is primarily aimed at scholars and students interested in the history of Byzantium, the Mediterranean world, and, more widely, intercultural contacts in the Middle Ages. ritual, literary history, military technology and the economy, among others. The particular contribution of the research presented here is the exploration of how cross-cultural relations were shaped by the interplay of the thought-world of the various historical agents and the material circumstances which circumscribed their actions. The volume is primarily aimed at scholars and students interested in the history of Byzantium, the Mediterranean world, and, more widely, intercultural contacts in the Middle Ages.

The Byzantine Empire, fragmented and enfeebled by the Fourth Crusade in 1204, never again recovered its former extent, power and influence. Its greatest revival came when the Byzantines in exile reclaimed their capital city of Constantinople in 1261 and this book narrates the history of this restored empire from 1261 to its conquest by the Ottoman Turks in 1453. First published in 1972, the book has been completely revised, amended, and in part rewritten, with its source references and bibliography updated to take account of scholarly research on this last period of Byzantine history carried out over the past twenty years.

In The Byzantine Turks, 1204-1461 Rustam Shukurov offers an account of the Turkic minority in Late Byzantium including the Nicaean, Palaiologan, and Grand Komnenian empires. The demography of the Byzantine Turks and the legal and cultural aspects of their entrance into Greek society are discussed in detail. Greek and Turkish bilingualism of Byzantine Turks and Tourkophonia among Greeks were distinctive features of Byzantine society of the time. Basing his arguments upon linguistic, social, and cultural evidence found in a wide range of Greek, Latin, and Oriental sources, Rustam Shukurov convincingly demonstrates how Oriental influences on Byzantine life led to crucial transformations in Byzantine mentality, culture, and political life. The study is supplemented with an etymological lexicon of Oriental names and words in Byzantine Greek.

The history of Russia is often considered as if that immense country had always been an isolated continent. However, at the time of its rise as a nation, it was politically a province of the Mongol Empire, whose capital was in Central Asia; and ecclesiastically, it was a dependency of the Orthodox Patriarchate of Constantinople, or Byzantium. This book describes the role of Byzantine (predominantly ecclesiastical) diplomacy in the emergence of Moscow as the capital of Russia in the fourteenth century, and the cultural, religious and political ties which connected the Northern periphery of the Byzantine Orthodox 'Commonwealth' with its centre in Constantinople. After 1370, the religious and monastic revival in Byzantium and the weakening of Mongol power provided an orientation to the policies of the Orthodox church in Russia: towards supra-national unity, spiritual and artistic achievements, and political reconciliation between principalities.

By 1400, the once-mighty Byzantine Empire stood on the verge of destruction. Most of its territories had been lost to the Ottoman Turks, and Constantinople was under close blockade. Against all odds, Byzantium lingered on for another fifty years until 1453, when the Ottomans dramatically toppled the capital’s walls. During this bleak and uncertain time, ordinary Byzantines faced difficult decisions to protect their livelihoods and families against the death throes of their homeland. In this evocative and moving book, Jonathan Harris explores individual stories of diplomatic maneuverings, covert defiance, and sheer luck against a backdrop of major historical currents and offers a new perspective on the real reasons behind the fall of this extraordinarily fascinating empire.

This classic account shows how the fall of Constantinople in May 1453, after a siege of several weeks, came as a bitter shock to Western Christendom. The city's plight had been neglected, and negligible help was sent in this crisis. To the Turks, victory not only brought a new imperial capital, but guaranteed that their empire would last. To the Greeks, the conquest meant the end of the civilisation of Byzantium, and led to the exodus of scholars stimulating the tremendous expansion of Greek studies in the European Renaissance.

The vibrant culture of Byzantium influenced the artistic traditions of neighboring cultures in Western Europe and the Islamic East well into the modern era.  The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 2004 exhibition catalogue Byzantium: Faith and Power, 1261-1557 was among the first to focus on the art of the empire’s final two centuries and its exceptional heritage. This collection of essays by international scholars continues to expand on this area of study, exploring critical issues of politics, trade, religion, and culture that helped shape the last centuries of the empire as well as the rise of the early modern age. By taking different and innovative approaches to the period, the authors arrive at a more complete portrait of Byzantium and its artistic legacy.  Included are essays by Hans Belting, Professor Emeritus of Art History and Media Studies, Staatliche Hochschule f#65533;r Gestaltung Karlsruhe, and Honorary Professor, University of Heidelberg, and Thomas F. Mathews, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.

This book offers a new perspective on the Latin take-over of Byzantine territories after the crusader sack of Constantinople in 1204, arguing that the new rulers very consciously aimed at continuing the Eastern Empire, drawing many Byzantines to their side.

The church of Hagia Sophia in Trebizond, built by the emperor Manuel I Grand Komnenos (1238-63) in the aftermath of the fall of Constantinople to the Fourth Crusade, is the finest surviving Byzantine imperial monument of its period. Art and Identity in Thirteenth-Century Byzantium is the first investigation of the church in more than thirty years, and is extensively illustrated in colour and black-and-white, with many images that have never previously been published. Antony Eastmond examines the architectural, sculptural and painted decorations of the church, placing them in the context of contemporary developments elsewhere in the Byzantine world, in Seljuq Anatolia and among the Caucasian neighbours of Trebizond. Knowledge of this area has been transformed in the last twenty years, following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The new evidence that has emerged enables a radically different interpretation of the church to be reached, and raises questions of cultural interchange on the borders of the Christian and Muslim worlds of eastern Anatolia, the Caucasus and Persia. This study uses the church and its decoration to examine questions of Byzantine identity and imperial ideology in the thirteenth century. This is central to any understanding of the period, as the fall of Constantinople in 1204 divided the Byzantine empire and forced the successor states in Nicaea, Epiros and Trebizond to redefine their concepts of empire in exile. Art is here exploited as significant historical evidence for the nature of imperial power in a contested empire. It is suggested that imperial identity was determined as much by craftsmen and expectations of imperial power as by the emperor's decree; and that this was a credible alternative Byzantine identity to that developed in the empire of Nicaea.

This book traces the diplomatic, cultural and commercial links between Constantinople and Venice from the foundation of the Venetian republic to the fall of the Byzantine Empire. It aims to show how, especially after the Fourth Crusade in 1204, the Venetians came to dominate first the Genoese and thereafter the whole Byzantine economy. At the same time the author points to those important cultural and, above all, political reasons why the relationship between the two states was always inherently unstable.

The district of Epiros in north-western Greece became an independent province following the Fourth Crusade and the dismemberment of the Byzantine Empire by the Latins in 1204. It retained its independence despite the recovery of Constantinople by the Greeks in 1261. Each of its rulers acquired the Byzantine titles of Despot, from which the term Despotate was coined to describe their territory. They preserved their autonomy partly by seeking support from their foreign neighbours in Italy. The fortunes of Epiros were thus affected by the expansionist plans of the Angevin kings of Naples and the commercial interests of Venice. Until 1318 it was governed by direct descendants of its Byzantine founder. Thereafter it was taken over first by the Italian family of Orsini, then conquered by the Serbians, infiltrated by the Albanians, and appropriated by an Italian adventurer, Carlo Tocco. Like the rest of Byzantium and eastern Europe it was ultimately absorbed into the Ottoman Empire in the fifteenth century. The Despotate of Epiros illuminates part of Byzantine history and of the history of Greece in the Middle Ages.

John Cantacuzene reigned as Byzantine emperor in Constantinople from 1347 to 1354. A man of varied talents, as a scholar, soldier, statesman, theologian and monk, he was unique in being the only emperor to narrate the events of his own career. His memoirs form one of the most interesting and literate of all Byzantine histories. Following his abdication in 1354, he lived the last thirty years of his life as a monk, a writer and a grey eminence behind the throne. This book is not a social or political history of the Byzantine Empire in the fourteenth century. It is a biography of a much maligned man who had a hope, however naive, of coming to terms with the emerging Muslim world of Asia and of winning the co-operation of western Christendom without compromising the Orthodox faith of the Byzantine tradition.

The Byzantines lived in a theocratic society. They were less ready than their western contemporaries to draw the line between things spiritual and things temporal, between Church and state. This book explores some of the characteristics of that society in the age of its decline and fall between the thirteenth and the fifteenth centuries. Though irremediably shattered by the effects of the Fourth Crusade in 1204, the Byzantine Empire found the will to reassert itself and to endure for another 250 years. Material recovery was hardly possible, but there was a remarkable reawakening of scholarship and of the spiritual life. The world's debt to some of the late Byzantine scholars is known to classicists and to students of the Italian Renaissance. The contribution of the latter-day saints of Byzantium, the hesychasts and scholars of the spirit, has been less publicized.