Dreams, Memory and Imagination in Byzantium
Dreams, Memory and Imagination in Byzantium

Author: Bronwen Neil

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2018-08-20

Total Pages: 362

ISBN-13: 9004375716

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This collection of studies on Dreams, Memory and Imagination in Byzantium covers four main themes: the place of dreams, imagination and memory in the Byzantine philosophical tradition; the political uses of prophetic dreams and visions in imperial contexts; the appearance and manipulation of dreams and memory in Byzantine poetry and histories, and changing commemorations of the saints over time in art, epigraphy and literature. These studies reveal the distinctive and important roles of memory, imagination and dreams in the Byzantine court, the proto-Orthodox church and broader society from Constantinople to Syria and beyond. This volume of Byzantina Australiensia brings together the work of senior and early career scholars from Australia, Greece, Israel, Italy, Japan, New Zealand and the United States.

Dreams and Divination from Byzantium to Baghdad, 400-1000 CE
Dreams and Divination from Byzantium to Baghdad, 400-1000 CE

Author: Bronwen Neil

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2021-01-14

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 0198871147

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Why did dreams matter to Jews, Byzantine Christians, and Muslims in the first millennium? Bronwen Neil shows how the three faiths took the pagan practice of divining the future from dreams and melded it with their own scriptural traditions to produce a novel and rich culture of dream interpretation.

Prognostication in the Medieval World
Prognostication in the Medieval World

Author: Matthias Heiduk

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2020-11-09

Total Pages: 1042

ISBN-13: 3110499770

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Two opposing views of the future in the Middle Ages dominate recent historical scholarship. According to one opinion, medieval societies were expecting the near end of the world and therefore had no concept of the future. According to the other opinion, the expectation of the near end created a drive to change the world for the better and thus for innovation. Close inspection of the history of prognostication reveals the continuous attempts and multifold methods to recognize and interpret God’s will, the prodigies of nature, and the patterns of time. That proves, on the one hand, the constant human uncertainty facing the contingencies of the future. On the other hand, it demonstrates the firm believe during the Middle Ages in a future which could be shaped and even manipulated. The handbook provides the first overview of current historical research on medieval prognostication. It considers the entangled influences and transmissions between Christian, Jewish, Islamic, and non-monotheistic societies during the period from a wide range of perspectives. An international team of 63 renowned authors from about a dozen different academic disciplines contributed to this comprehensive overview.

Managing Emotion in Byzantium
Managing Emotion in Byzantium

Author: Margaret Mullett

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-09-30

Total Pages: 528

ISBN-13: 1351358499

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Byzantinists entered the study of emotion with Henry Maguire’s ground-breaking article on sorrow, published in 1977. Since then, classicists and western medievalists have developed new ways of understanding how emotional communities work and where the ancients’ concepts of emotion differ from our own, and Byzantinists have begun to consider emotions other than sorrow. It is time to look at what is distinctive about Byzantine emotion. This volume is the first to look at the constellation of Byzantine emotions. Originating at an international colloquium at Dumbarton Oaks, these papers address issues such as power, gender, rhetoric, or asceticism in Byzantine society through the lens of a single emotion or cluster of emotions. Contributors focus not only on the construction of emotions with respect to perception and cognition but also explore how emotions were communicated and exchanged across broad (multi)linguistic, political and social boundaries. Priorities are twofold: to arrive at an understanding of what the Byzantines thought of as emotions and to comprehend how theory shaped their appraisal of reality. Managing Emotion in Byzantium will appeal to researchers and students alike interested in Byzantine perceptions of emotion, Byzantine Culture, and medieval perceptions of emotion.

Julian the Apostate in Byzantine Culture
Julian the Apostate in Byzantine Culture

Author: Stefano Trovato

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-07-15

Total Pages: 374

ISBN-13: 1000618080

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Julian, the last pagan emperor of the Roman empire, died in war in 363. In the Byzantine (that is, the Eastern Roman) empire, the figure of Julian aroused conflicting reactions: antipathy towards his apostasy but also admiration for his accomplishments, particularly as an author writing in Greek. Julian died young, and his attempt to reinstate paganism was a failure, but, paradoxically, his brief and unsuccessful policy resonated for centuries. This book analyses Julian from the perspectives of Byzantine Culture. The history of his posthumous fortune reveals differences in cultural perspectives and it is most intriguing with regard to the Eastern Roman empire which survived for almost a millennium after the fall of the Western empire. Byzantine culture viewed Julian in multiple ways, first as the legitimate emperor of the enduring Roman empire; second as the author of works written in Greek and handed down for generations in the language that scholars, the Church, and the state administration all continued to use; and third as an open enemy of Christianity. Julian the Apostate in Byzantine Culture will appeal to researchers and students alike in Byzantine perspectives on Julian, Greco-Roman Paganism, and the Later Roman Empire, as well as those interested in Byzantine Historiography.

Between Byzantine Men
Between Byzantine Men

Author: Mark Masterson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2022-06-17

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 1351135228

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The presence and importance of same-sex desire between men in the Byzantine Empire has been understudied. While John Boswell and others tried to open a conversation about desire between Byzantine men decades ago, the field reverted to emphasis on prohibition and an inability to read the evidence of same-sex desire between men in the sources. Between Byzantine Men: Desire, Homosociality, and Brotherhood in the Medieval Empire challenges and transforms this situation by placing at centre stage Byzantine men's desiring relations with one another. This book foregrounds desire between men in and around the imperial court of the 900s. Analysis of Greek sources (many untranslated until now) and of material culture reveals a situation both more liberal than the medieval West and important for its rite of brother-making (adelphopoiesis), which was a precursor to today’s same-sex marriage. This book transforms our understanding of Byzantine elite men's culture and is an important addition to the history of sex and desire between men. Between Byzantine Men will appeal to scholars and general readers who are interested in Byzantine History, Society, and Culture, the History of Masculinity, and the History of Sexuality.

After the Text
After the Text

Author: Liz James

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-10-31

Total Pages: 533

ISBN-13: 1000468712

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After the Text honours the work of renowned historian Margaret Mullett, who since the 1970s has transformed the study of Byzantine literature. Her work has been influential in demonstrating the strength and variety of Byzantine texts. Byzantium is renowned for its achievements in architecture and the visual arts. Byzantium is renowned for its achievements in architecture and the visual arts. Professor Mullett's perceptive studies, produced over more than 40 years, have shown that the literature of the Byzantine Empire is of equal beauty and interest, ranging, as it does, from high-style poetry and rhetoric in the classical manner through letters to demotic writings such as fables and the lives of saints. The collection of essays in this volume draws further attention to the wealth and diversity of Byzantine texts, by exploring the Greek literature of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages in all its variety. These studies, by going, like Professor Mullett herself, beyond the texts, illustrate the value of Byzantine literature for interpreting Byzantine history and civilisation in all its richness. This book is crucial reading for scholars and students of the Byzantine world, as well as for those interested in literary studies. Chapter 16 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Byzantine Commentaries on Ancient Greek Texts, 12th–15th Centuries
Byzantine Commentaries on Ancient Greek Texts, 12th–15th Centuries

Author: Baukje van den Berg

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2022-09-08

Total Pages: 397

ISBN-13: 1009092782

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This is the first volume to explore the commentaries on ancient texts produced and circulating in Byzantium. It adopts a broad chronological perspective (from the twelfth to the fifteenth century) and examines different types of commentaries on ancient poetry and prose within the context of the study and teaching of grammar, rhetoric, philosophy and science. By discussing the exegetical literature of the Byzantines as embedded in the socio-cultural context of the Komnenian and Palaiologan periods, the book analyses the frameworks and networks of knowledge transfer, patronage and identity building that motivated the Byzantine engagement with the ancient intellectual and literary tradition.

The Routledge Handbook of Gender and Sexuality in Byzantium
The Routledge Handbook of Gender and Sexuality in Byzantium

Author: Mati Meyer

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-05-23

Total Pages: 549

ISBN-13: 1040043453

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This Handbook is the first to consider the interrelated subjects of gender and sexuality in the Eastern Roman Empire from an interdisciplinary perspective. Drawing on both modern theories and Byzantine perceptions, and considering multiple periods and religions (Eastern Orthodox, Islamic, and Jewish), it provides evidentiary textual and visual material support for an analysis of the two linked themes. Broadly, the essays demonstrate that gender and sexual constructs in Byzantium were porous. As a result, they expand our knowledge of not only how sex and gender were conceived and performed but also how ideas and practices shaped Byzantine life. The Routledge Handbook of Gender and Sexuality in Byzantium will be an indispensable guide for students and scholars of late antique and Byzantine religion, history, culture, and art, who will find it a useful critical survey of current scholarship and one that shines new light in their areas of research. The focus on issues of gender and sexuality may also be of interest to individuals concerned with Eastern Mediterranean culture, as well as to the broader public. Chapter 21 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

The Routledge Handbook on Identity in Byzantium
The Routledge Handbook on Identity in Byzantium

Author: Michael Edward Stewart

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2022-03-31

Total Pages: 468

ISBN-13: 0429633408

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This volume is the first to focus solely on how specific individuals and groups in Byzantium and its borderlands were defined and distinguished from other individuals and groups from the mid-fourth to the close of the fifteenth century. It gathers chapters from both established and emerging scholars from a wide range of disciplines across history, art, archaeology, and religion to provide an accurate representation of the state of the field both now and in its immediate future. The handbook is divided into four subtopics that examine concepts of group and specific individual identity which have been chosen to provide methodologically sophisticated and multidisciplinary perspectives on specific categories of group and individual identity. The topics are Imperial Identities; Romanitas in the Late Antique Mediterranean; Macro and Micro Identities: Religious, Regional, and Ethnic Identities, and Internal Others; and Gendered Identities: Literature, Memory, and Self in Early and Middle Byzantium. While no single volume could ever provide a comprehensive vision of identities on the vast variety of peoples within Byzantium over nearly a millennium of its history, this handbook represents a milestone in offering a survey of the vibrant surge of scholarship examining the numerous and oft-times fluctuating codes of identity that shaped and transformed Byzantium and its neighbours during the empire’s long life.