Byzantine Studies

The Byzantine emperor Leo VI (886-912), was not a general or even a soldier, like his predecessors, but a scholar, and it was the religious education he gained under the tutelage of the patriarch Photios that was to distinguish him as an unusual ruler. This book analyses Leo's literary output, focusing on his deployment of ideological principles and religious obligations to distinguish the characteristics of the Christian oikoumene from the Islamic caliphate, primarily in his military manual known as the Taktika. It also examines in depth his 113 legislative Novels, with particular attention to their theological prolegomena, showing how the emperor's religious sensibilities find expression in his reshaping of the legal code to bring it into closer accord with Byzantine canon law. Meredith L. D. Riedel argues that the impact of his religious faith transformed Byzantine cultural identity and influenced his successors, establishing the Macedonian dynasty as a 'golden age' in Byzantium.

In A.D. 843, following the resolution of the Iconoclastic controversy, which had raged throughout the Byzantine Empire for more than a century, the use of icons—images—was triumphantly reinstated in the Orthodox Church. This momentous event inspired much of the art of the following four centuries, which comprises the second great era of Byzantine culture and provides the starting point of this volume. The Glory of Byzantium, and the exhibition that it accompanies, concludes with the demise of the empire's role as a world power, evidenced by the Latin occupation of Constantinople from 1204 to 1261.

This volume is concerned with the history and the social and institutional structures of the Byzantine empire in the period from its revival after the Arab assaults of the 8th century up to its disintegration and dismemberment when Constantinople was sacked by the Crusaders in 1204 (the subject of the final article). A distinctive feature of Nicolas Oikonomides' work is his ability to submit to detailed analysis varied types of source material, literary, legal, epigraphic, artistic and to extract from these the maximum of information. Particular articles deal with the political and ideological significance of works of art, for instance the mosaics of Saint Sophia, with the development of Byzantine legal texts, and with the world of Byzantium's eastern frontier.

This book exposes Michael Attaleiates' engagement with the problem of Byzantine imperial decline some three decades before the Crusades. It suggests that in the History, his account of the empire's eleventh-century drama, Attaleiates creatively appropriates ancient genres and ideas and produces a mature and original critique of contemporary mores that escapes the confines of the dominant political and cultural orthodoxy, seeking solutions to the crisis faced by the Byzantine polity in its distant Roman past. The reader encounters here, in the person of this judge, one of the Empire's most interesting and least studied historians and with him participates in conversations that shaped politics in an era of cataclysmic cultural, economic, social and political change. Book jacket.

Byzantium's Balkan Frontier is the first narrative history in English of the northern Balkans in the tenth to twelfth centuries. Where previous histories have been concerned principally with the medieval history of distinct and autonomous Balkan nations, this study regards Byzantine political authority as a unifying factor in the various lands which formed the empire's frontier in the north and west. It takes as its central concern Byzantine relations with all Slavic and non-Slavic peoples - including the Serbs, Croats, Bulgarians and Hungarians - in and beyond the Balkan Peninsula, and explores in detail imperial responses, first to the migrations of nomadic peoples, and subsequently to the expansion of Latin Christendom. It also examines the changing conception of the frontier in Byzantine thought and literature through the middle Byzantine period.

Mark Whittow presents a clear, up-to-date reassessment of the Byzantine empire during a crucial phase in the history of the Near East. Against a geopolitical background (superbly illustrated with fourteen maps), his book covers the last decade of the Roman empire as a superpower, the catastrophic crisis of the seventh century, and the means whereby the embattled Byzantine empire hung on in Constantinople and Asia Minor until the Abbasid Caliphate's decline opened up new perspectives for Christian power in the Near East. A special feature is Whittow's coverage of Byzantium's neighbors, allies, and enemies in Europe and Asia. He stresses the geographical context of events, often overlooked in other accounts of this period. The origins of Russia, relations with the nomad powers of the steppe world, the competition between Bulgars, Romans, and Slavs in the Balkans, and the frequently ignored region of the Transcaucasus are all given extended treatment. No such wide-ranging work has appeared in English for nearly 30 years, and Whittow's book will be invaluable for all scholars, students, and enthusiasts of medieval history.

This volume deals with relations between the West and Byzantium, from the accession of Otto I the Great in Germany in 962, until the Fourth Crusade when Constantinople was conquered by the Western crusading armies in 1204.The impact which these contacts and confrontations had on both sides is discussed in sections dealing with specific areas (such as the North, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain) as well as in sections dealing with specific aspects of the process: the journey, the attractions of the East, and the idea of autoritates" and "translationes" of various political and intellectual ideas.An extensive index will help readers to find specific topics.The book is illustrated with maps, and with a number of objects betraying Byzantine influence in the West, or Western presence in Byzantium."

This text charts the fractured and violent history of early Rus, covering Slav territories which are not, and do not want to be, part of modern Russia. It explores the development, amongst the diverse peoples of the vast landmass between the Carpathians and the Urals, of a society underpinned by a broadly common culture and eventually a common faith, out of which would emerge the future Russia and its neighbours. The book also describes the emergence of a dominant state centred on Kiev and the coming of Christianity to the Slavs. Finally, it shows how the gradual proliferation of new dynastic centres northwards and westwards shifted the power-base of the region into Russi proper, where it would subsequently stay.

In The Nature and the Image of Princely Power in Kievan Rus', 980-1054, Walter K. Hanak provides a critical analysis of the annalistic and literary record of a newly Christianized state and its impact upon the formulation of princely authority.

The Excerpta project instigated by the Byzantine emperor Constantine VII turned the enormously rich experience offered by Greek historiography into a body of excerpts distributed across fifty-three distinct thematic collections. In this, the first sustained analysis, András Németh moves from viewing the Excerpta only as a collection of textual fragments to focusing on its dependence from and impact on the surrounding Byzantine culture in the tenth century. He introduces the concept of appropriation and also uses it to study some other key texts created under the Excerpta's influence (De thematibus, De administrando imperio and De ceremoniis). Unlike world chronicles, the Excerpta ignored the chronological dimension of history and fostered the biographical turn in Byzantine historiography. By exploring theoretical questions such as classification and retrieval of historical information and the relationship between knowledge and political power, this book provides powerful new ways for exploring the Excerpta in Byzantine studies and beyond.

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 empires 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 emperors 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.

In the second half of the tenth century, Byzantium embarked on a series of spectacular conquests: first in the southeast against the Arabs, then in Bulgaria, and finally in the Georgian and Armenian lands. By the early eleventh century, the empire was the most powerful state in theMediterranean. It was also expanding economically, demographically, and, in time, intellectually as well. Yet this imperial project came to a crashing collapse fifty years later, when political disunity, fiscal mismanagement, and defeat at the hands of the Seljuks in the east and the Normans in thewest brought an end to Byzantine hegemony. By 1081, not only was its dominance of southern Italy, the Balkans, Caucasus, and northern Mesopotamia over but Byzantium's very existence was threatened.How did this dramatic transformation happen? Based on a close examination of the relevant sources, this history - the first of its kind in over a century - offers a new reconstruction of the key events and crucial reigns as well as a different model for understanding imperial politics and wars, bothcivil and foreign. In addition to providing a badly needed narrative of this critical period of Byzantine history, Streams of Gold, Rivers of Blood offers new interpretations of key topics relevant to the medieval era. The narrative unfolds in three parts: the first covers the years 955-1025, aperiod of imperial conquest and consolidation of authority under the great emperor Basil "the Bulgar-Slayer." The second (1025-1059) examines the dispersal of centralized authority in Constantinople as well as the emergence of new foreign enemies (Pechenegs, Seljuks, and Normans). The last sectionchronicles the spectacular collapse of the empire during the second half of the eleventh century, concluding with a look at the First Crusade and its consequences for Byzantine relations with the powers of Western Europe. This briskly paced and thoroughly investigated narrative vividly brings tolife one of the most exciting and transformative eras of medieval history.

The reign of Basil II (976-1025), the longest of any Byzantine emperor, has long been considered as a 'golden age', in which his greatest achievement was the annexation of Bulgaria. This, we have been told, was achieved through a long and bloody war of attrition which won Basil the grisly epithet Voulgartoktonos, 'the Bulgar-slayer'. In this 2003 study Paul Stephenson argues that neither of these beliefs is true. Instead, Basil fought far more sporadically in the Balkans and his reputation as 'Bulgar-slayer' was created only a century and a half later. Thereafter the 'Bulgar-slayer' was periodically to play a galvanizing role for the Byzantines, returning to centre-stage as Greeks struggled to establish a modern nation state. As Byzantium was embraced as the Greek past by scholars and politicians, the 'Bulgar-slayer' became an icon in the struggle for Macedonia (1904-1908) and the Balkan Wars (1912-1913).

This is the first book-length study in English of the Byzantine emperor Basil II. Basil II, later known as 'Bulgar-slayer', is famous for his military conquests and his brutal intimidation of domestic foes. Catherine Holmes considers the problems Basil faced in governing a large, multi-ethnicempire, which stretched from southern Italy to Mesopotamia. Her close focus on the surviving historical narratives, above all the Synopsis Historion of John Skylitzes, reveals a Byzantium governed as much by persuasion as coercion. This book will appeal to those interested in Byzantium before theCrusades, the governance of pre-modern empires, and the methodology of writing early medieval political history.

In this masterful synthesis, Charalambos Bouras draws together material and textual evidence for Athens in the Middle Byzantine period, from the mid-tenth century to 1204, when it was conquered by Crusaders. What emerges from his meticulous investigation is an urban fabric surprisingly makeshift in its domestic sector yet exuberantly creative in its ecclesiastical architecture. Rather than viewing the city as a mere shadow of its ancient past, Bouras demonstrates how Athens remained an important city of the Byzantine Empire as the seat of a metropolitan, home to local aristocracy, and pilgrimage destination for those who came to worship at the Christian Parthenon. Byzantine Athens explores the relationship of the Byzantine infrastructure to earlier configurations, shedding light on the water supply, industrial facilities, streets and fortifications of medieval Athens, and exploring the evidence for the form and typology of Byzantine houses. Thanks to Bouras's indefatigable study of all available archaeological reports the first part of the book offers an overall picture of the Middle Byzantine city. The second part presents a fully documented and illustrated catalogue of nearly 40 churches, including synthetic treatments of their typology and morphology set in the wider Byzantine architectural context. Finally, Bouras joins his unrivalled knowledge of the surviving remains and exhaustive scrutiny of the relevant scholarship to offer a historical interpretation of the Athenian monuments. Byzantine Athens is a unique achievement that will remain an invaluable compendium of our knowledge of one of the most complex, yet relatively unknown, Byzantine cities.