Byzantine Things in the World

Byzantine Things in the World

Author: Charles Barber

Publisher: Menil Foundation

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780300191783

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"Published in conjunction with the exhibition 'Byzantine Things in the World' curated by Glenn Peers, the Menil Collection, Houston, May 3, 2013-August 18, 2013"--Colophon.


Animism, Materiality, and Museums

Animism, Materiality, and Museums

Author: Glenn Peers

Publisher:

Published: 2021-01-31

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 9781942401735

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Written in response to an exhibition the author curated at The Menil Collection in 2013, these essays challenge us to find novel ways to explore Byzantine art. They marshal diverse disciplines - modern art, environmental theory, anthropology - to argue that Byzantine culture formed a special kind of Christian animism. While foreign to our world, that animism holds important lessons for our own relations to the world. Mutual probings of subject and art, of past and present, arise in these essays - some new and some previously published - opening up new explanations that will interest art historians, museum professionals, and anyone interested in how art makes and remakes the world.


Byzantine Art

Byzantine Art

Author: Robin Cormack

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 0198778791

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A beautifully illustrated, new edition of the best single-volume guide to Byzantine art, providing an introduction to the whole period and range of styles.


The Lost World of Byzantium

The Lost World of Byzantium

Author: Jonathan Harris

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2015-08-15

Total Pages: 293

ISBN-13: 0300216092

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The acclaimed author of Byzantium and the Crusades “offers a fresh take on this fabled but hidden civilization” across 11 centuries of history (Colin Wells, author of Sailing from Byzantium). For more than a millennium, the Byzantine Empire presided over the juncture between East and West, as well as the transition from the classical to the modern world. Rather than recounting the standard chronology of emperors and battles, leading Byzantium scholar Jonathan Harris focuses each chapter of this engaging history on a succession of archetypal figures, families, places, and events. Harris’s introduction presents a civilization rich in contrasts, combining orthodox Christianity with paganism, and classical Greek learning with Roman power. Though frequently assailed by numerous armies, Byzantium survived by dint of its unorthodox foreign policy. Over time, its sumptuous art and architecture flourished, helping to establish a deep sense of Byzantine identity in its people. Synthesizing a wealth of sources to cover all major aspects of the empire’s social, political, military, religious, cultural, and artistic history, Harris’s study illuminates the heart of Byzantine civilization and explores its remarkable and lasting influence on the modern world.


Byzantium and Islam

Byzantium and Islam

Author: Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.)

Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 1588394573

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This magnificent volume explores the epochal transformations and unexpected continuities in the Byzantine Empire from the 7th to the 9th century. At the beginning of the 7th century, the Empire's southern provinces, the vibrant, diverse areas of North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean, were at the crossroads of exchanges reaching from Spain to China. These regions experienced historic upheavals when their Christian and Jewish communities encountered the emerging Islamic world, and by the 9th century, an unprecedented cross- fertilization of cultures had taken place. This extraordinary age is brought vividly to life in insightful contributions by leading international scholars, accompanied by sumptuous illustrations of the period's most notable arts and artifacts. Resplendent images of authority, religion, and trade—embodied in precious metals, brilliant textiles, fine ivories, elaborate mosaics, manuscripts, and icons, many of them never before published— highlight the dynamic dialogue between the rich array of Byzantine styles and the newly forming Islamic aesthetic. With its masterful exploration of two centuries that would shape the emerging medieval world, this illuminating publication provides a unique interpretation of a period that still resonates today.


The Emperor in the Byzantine World

The Emperor in the Byzantine World

Author: Shaun Tougher

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-03-15

Total Pages: 646

ISBN-13: 0429590466

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The subject of the emperor in the Byzantine world may seem likely to be a well-studied topic but there is no book devoted to the emperor in general covering the span of the Byzantine empire. Of course there are studies on individual emperors, dynasties and aspects of the imperial office/role, but there remains no equivalent to Fergus Millar’s The Emperor in the Roman World (from which the proposed volume takes inspiration for its title and scope). The oddity of a lack of a general study of the Byzantine emperor is compounded by the fact that a series of books devoted to Byzantine empresses was published in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Thus it is appropriate to turn the spotlight on the emperor. Themes covered by the contributions include: questions of dynasty and imperial families; the imperial court and the emperor’s men; imperial duties and the emperor as ruler; imperial literature (the emperor as subject and author); and the material emperor, including imperial images and spaces. The volume fills a need in the field and the market, and also brings new and cutting-edge approaches to the study of the Byzantine emperor. Although the volume cannot hope to be a comprehensive treatment of the emperor in the Byzantine world it aims to cover a broad chronological and thematic span and to play a vital part in setting the agenda for future work. The subject of the Byzantine emperor has also an obvious relevance for historians working on rulership in other cultures and periods.


Sailing from Byzantium

Sailing from Byzantium

Author: Colin Wells

Publisher: Bantam

Published: 2008-12-10

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 0553901710

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A gripping intellectual adventure story, Sailing from Byzantium sweeps you from the deserts of Arabia to the dark forests of northern Russia, from the colorful towns of Renaissance Italy to the final moments of a millennial city under siege…. Byzantium: the successor of Greece and Rome, this magnificent empire bridged the ancient and modern worlds for more than a thousand years. Without Byzantium, the works of Homer and Herodotus, Plato and Aristotle, Sophocles and Aeschylus, would never have survived. Yet very few of us have any idea of the enormous debt we owe them. The story of Byzantium is a real-life adventure of electrifying ideas, high drama, colorful characters, and inspiring feats of daring. In Sailing from Byzantium, Colin Wells tells of the missionaries, mystics, philosophers, and artists who against great odds and often at peril of their own lives spread Greek ideas to the Italians, the Arabs, and the Slavs. Their heroic efforts inspired the Renaissance, the golden age of Islamic learning, and Russian Orthodox Christianity, which came complete with a new alphabet, architecture, and one of the world’s greatest artistic traditions. The story’s central reference point is an arcane squabble called the Hesychast controversy that pitted humanist scholars led by the brilliant, acerbic intellectual Barlaam against the powerful monks of Mount Athos led by the stern Gregory Palamas, who denounced “pagan” rationalism in favor of Christian mysticism. Within a few decades, the light of Byzantium would be extinguished forever by the invading Turks, but not before the humanists found a safe haven for Greek literature. The controversy of rationalism versus faith would continue to be argued by some of history’s greatest minds. Fast-paced, compulsively readable, and filled with fascinating insights, Sailing from Byzantium is one of the great historical dramas–the gripping story of how the flame of civilization was saved and passed on.


The Empire That Would Not Die

The Empire That Would Not Die

Author: John Haldon

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2016-04-29

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 0674088778

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Introduction: Goldilocks in Byzantium 1. The Challenge: A Framework for Collapse 2. Beliefs, Narratives, and the Moral Universe 3. Identities, Divisions, and Solidarities 4. Elites and Interests 5. Regional Variation and Resistance 6. Some Environmental Factors 7. Organization, Cohesion, and Survival A Conclusion.


Byzantine Monuments of Istanbul

Byzantine Monuments of Istanbul

Author: John Freely

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2009-11-16

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780521179058

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This book is about the Byzantine monuments of Istanbul, most notably, Haghia Sophia. The remains of the land and sea walls, the Hippodrome, imperial palaces, commemorative columns, reservoirs and cisterns, an aqueduct, a triumphal archway, a fortified port, and twenty churches are also described in chronological order in the context of their times. These "monuments" are viewed in relationship to the political, religious, social, economic, intellectual and artistic developments of the Byzantine dynasties.


Byzantium and the Crusades

Byzantium and the Crusades

Author: Jonathan Harris

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2014-09-25

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 1780937369

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This new edition of Byzantium and the Crusades provides a fully-revised and updated version of Jonathan Harris's landmark text in the field of Byzantine and crusader history. The book offers a chronological exploration of Byzantium and the outlook of its rulers during the time of the Crusades. It argues that one of the main keys to Byzantine interaction with Western Europe, the Crusades and the crusader states can be found in the nature of the Byzantine Empire and the ideology which underpinned it, rather than in any generalised hostility between the peoples. Taking recent scholarship into account, this new edition includes an updated notes section and bibliography, as well as significant additions to the text: - New material on the role of religious differences after 1100 - A detailed discussion of economic, social and religious changes that took place in 12th-century Byzantine relations with the west - In-depth coverage of Byzantium and the Crusades during the 13th century - New maps, illustrations, genealogical tables and a timeline of key dates Byzantium and the Crusades is an important contribution to the historiography by a major scholar in the field that should be read by anyone interested in Byzantine and crusader history.