Authority in Byzantine Provincial Society, 950-1100
Authority in Byzantine Provincial Society, 950-1100

Author: Leonora Neville

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2004-08-19

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 9780521838658

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The imperial government over the central provinces of the Byzantine Empire was sovereign and, at the same time, apathetic, dealing effectively with a narrow set of objectives, chiefly collecting revenue and maintaining imperial sovereignty. Outside of these spheres, action needed to be solicited from imperial officials, leaving vast opportunities for local people to act independently without legal stricture or fear of imperial involvement. In the absence of imperial intervention provincial households competed with each other for control over community decisions. The emperors exercised just enough strength at the right times to prevent the leaders of important households in the core provinces from becoming rulers themselves. Membership in a successful household, wealth, capacity for effective violence and access to the imperial court were key factors that allowed one to act with authority. This book examines in detail the mechanisms provincial households used to acquire and dispute authority.

The Byzantine Aristocracy and its Military Function
The Byzantine Aristocracy and its Military Function

Author: Jean-Claude Cheynet

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-05-31

Total Pages: 394

ISBN-13: 1000939057

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The first four studies in this volume by Jean-Claude Cheynet, specially translated from French for publication here, present a broad-ranging analysis of the Byzantine aristocracy of the 8th-12th centuries. Along with the other articles in the first part, they examine the evolution of aristocratic families and the composition of this group, the relative importance of landholding and public office, the notion of 'civilian' and 'military' families, and patterns of inheritance. In the second part, the focus is on the Byzantine army, with studies looking both at the position of aristocrats within it, and more generally at the effectiveness of the army itself, notably in the campaigns in Asia Minor against the Arabs and the Turks.

Approaches to the Byzantine Family
Approaches to the Byzantine Family

Author: Leslie Brubaker

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-08

Total Pages: 446

ISBN-13: 1317180011

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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.

The Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine Hagiography
The Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine Hagiography

Author: Stephanos Efthymiadis

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-02-25

Total Pages: 578

ISBN-13: 1351393278

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For an entire millennium, Byzantine hagiography, inspired by the veneration of many saints, exhibited literary dynamism and a capacity to vary its basic forms. The subgenres into which it branched out after its remarkable start in the fourth century underwent alternating phases of development and decline that were intertwined with changes in the political, social and literary spheres. The selection of saintly heroes, an interest in depicting social landscapes, and the modulation of linguistic and stylistic registers captured the voice of homo byzantinus down to the end of the empire in the fifteenth century. The seventeen chapters in this companion form the sequel to those in volume I which dealt with the periods and regions of Byzantine hagiography, and complete the first comprehensive survey ever produced in this field. The book is the work of an international group of experts in the field and is addressed to both a broader public and the scholarly community of Byzantinists, medievalists, historians of religion and theorists of narrative. It highlights the literary dimension and the research potential of a representative number of texts, not only those appreciated by the Byzantines themselves but those which modern readers rank high due to their literary quality or historical relevance.

The Medieval World
The Medieval World

Author: Peter Linehan

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-02-01

Total Pages: 1023

ISBN-13: 1351592289

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Ranging from Connacht to Constantinople and from Tynemouth to Timbuktu, the forty-four contributors to The Medieval World seek to bring the Middle Ages to life, offering definitive appraisals of the distinctive features of the period. This second edition includes six additional chapters, covering the Byzantine empire, illuminated manuscripts, the 'ésprit laïque' of the late middle ages, saints and martyrs, the papal chancery and scholastic thought. Chapters are arranged thematically within four parts: 1. Identities, Selves and Others 2. Beliefs, Social Values and Symbolic Order 3. Power and Power Structures 4. Elites, Organisations and Groups The Medieval World presents the reader with an authoritative account of original scholarship across the medieval millennium and provides essential reading for all students of the subject.

The Byzantine World War
The Byzantine World War

Author: Nick Holmes

Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd

Published: 2019-05-14

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 1789017580

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The Crusades shook the world. But why did they happen? Their origins are revealed in a new light. As part of a medieval world war that stretched from Asia to Europe. At its centre was an ancient empire – Byzantium. Told for the first time as a single, linked narrative are three great events that changed history: the fall of Byzantium in the eleventh century, the epic campaign of the First Crusade and the origins of modern Turkey. Nick Holmes not only presents the First Crusade in a wider global context but he also puts forwards new interpretations of the original sources, suggesting that its success was in fact largely accidental, and that the central role of Byzantium in the Crusades has been underestimated.

The Byzantines
The Byzantines

Author: Averil Cameron

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2009-02-04

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 1405178248

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Winner of the 2006 John D. Criticos Prize This book introduces the reader to the complex history, ethnicity, and identity of the Byzantines. This volume brings Byzantium – often misconstrued as a vanished successor to the classical world – to the forefront of European history Deconstructs stereotypes surrounding Byzantium Beautifully illustrated with photographs and maps

The Byzantine Republic
The Byzantine Republic

Author: Anthony Kaldellis

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2015-02-02

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 0674967402

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Although Byzantium is known to history as the Eastern Roman Empire, scholars have long claimed that this Greek Christian theocracy bore little resemblance to Rome. Here, in a revolutionary model of Byzantine politics and society, Anthony Kaldellis reconnects Byzantium to its Roman roots, arguing that from the fifth to the twelfth centuries CE the Eastern Roman Empire was essentially a republic, with power exercised on behalf of the people and sometimes by them too. The Byzantine Republic recovers for the historical record a less autocratic, more populist Byzantium whose Greek-speaking citizens considered themselves as fully Roman as their Latin-speaking “ancestors.” Kaldellis shows that the idea of Byzantium as a rigid imperial theocracy is a misleading construct of Western historians since the Enlightenment. With court proclamations often draped in Christian rhetoric, the notion of divine kingship emerged as a way to disguise the inherent vulnerability of each regime. The legitimacy of the emperors was not predicated on an absolute right to the throne but on the popularity of individual emperors, whose grip on power was tenuous despite the stability of the imperial institution itself. Kaldellis examines the overlooked Byzantine concept of the polity, along with the complex relationship of emperors to the law and the ways they bolstered their popular acceptance and avoided challenges. The rebellions that periodically rocked the empire were not aberrations, he shows, but an essential part of the functioning of the republican monarchy.

Guide to Byzantine Historical Writing
Guide to Byzantine Historical Writing

Author: Leonora Neville

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-05-17

Total Pages: 335

ISBN-13: 1107039983

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Makes the study of medieval Greek historical writing accessible by providing fundamental orientation and information.

Brother-making in Late Antiquity and Byzantium
Brother-making in Late Antiquity and Byzantium

Author: Claudia Rapp

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 0195389336

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Among medieval Christian societies, Byzantium is unique in preserving an ecclesiastical ritual of adelphopoiesis, which pronounces two men, not related by birth, as brothers for life. It has its origin as a spiritual blessing in the monastic world of late antiquity, and it becomes a popular social networking strategy among lay people from the ninth century onwards, even finding application in recent times. Located at the intersection of religion and society, brother-making exemplifies how social practice can become ritualized and subsequently subjected to attempts of ecclesiastical and legal control. Controversially, adelphopoiesis was at the center of a modern debate about the existence of same-sex unions in medieval Europe. This book, the first ever comprehensive history of this unique feature of Byzantine life, argues persuasively that the ecclesiastical ritual to bless a relationship between two men bears no resemblance to marriage. Wide-ranging in its use of sources, from a complete census of the manuscripts containing the ritual of adelphopoiesis to the literature and archaeology of early monasticism, and from the works of hagiographers, historiographers, and legal experts in Byzantium to comparative material in the Latin West and the Slavic world, Brother-Making in Late Antiquity and Byzantium examines the fascinating religious and social features of the ritual, shedding light on little known aspects of Byzantine society.