Redeeming Byzantine Epistolography

Abstract

The Russian scholar V.A. Smetanin, whose work during the 1970s and 1980s dealt exclusively with Byzantine epistolography, would clearly like to think of himself as an ‘epistolologist', occupied in the specialised field of Byzantine ‘epistolology'. Epistolology is an auxiliary discipline within history, according to Smetanin, which encompasses both theoretical and practical concerns. Its theoretical interests are to work out methods for, (a¹) drawing boundaries between letters and other historical documents, (b¹) dating letters on the basis of their epistolological markings (epistolologicheskich priznakov), and (c¹) understanding the introduction and assimilation of correspondence into learned discourse. On its practical side, epistolology aims to solve problems of, (a²) the immediate components (nepocredstvennoe vychlenenie) of correspondence, (b²) its architectonics, and finally (c²), the introduction and assimilation of the epistolographic legacy into learned discourse. Smetanin opens a middle road within epistolology, too, in effect a series of ‘steps’ (stupenich) which converge on both theory and practice. Thus the so-called ?oχωρισι (a³) takes in the question of the distinguishing features of epistolography, ?ρo? λευσι(b³) works out its manner or conduct and ??ρμoσι (c³) studies its function or use.     

试论拜占庭的拓殖运动

7—9世纪拜占庭的农业拓殖运动,是中世纪世界引人注目的历史现象。在实行军屯和民屯的政策方面,拜占庭继承了罗马共和到帝制时代的历史传统,但与罗马时期以开疆拓土为目标的外张性拓殖相比,拜占庭拓殖的主要目的是守护边疆、强化政府管理机制。拓殖政策的实行,使得巴尔干和小亚细亚半岛上的新来者将其蛮荒时代的社会和生产结构方面的因素糅进拜占庭的社会生活当中,促进了中世纪东地中海各不同起源的民族之间的融合,促进了一个堪称为东方基督教文化圈的东地中海文明共同体的形成。     

Two Byzantine craftsmen in fifteenth-century London

It is generally thought, largely on the basis of a letter of Cardinal Bessarion, that, by the 1440s, the Byzantine Empire had been completely overtaken by the West in all spheres of technical expertise. This idea is challenged the evidence of some documents the Public Record Office in London which show that, between at least 1441 and 1483, two gold wire drawers from Constantinople, named Andronicus and Alexius Effomatos, lived and worked in the English capital. It is argued that these craftsmen were welcomed because they specialised in making gold thread of a type which had long been manufactured in Byzantium but was superior in strength and economy to that produced in England. Indeed, since the earliest evidence for native English production of this type of gold thread dates from the period of their residence in London, there is at least the possibility that they actually introduced their craft into England, reversing the relative balance of technology as it is usually portrayed.     

拜占庭的“展示”研究

本文是2006年伦敦第21届世界拜占庭大会开幕式上的主题发言。从公开、自觉的夸示,世俗生活模式的展示和教俗势力所禁止的习俗表现等3个方面阐释了拜占庭帝国在历史上和现实中“展示”（display）自己的方式,并指出,21世纪拜占庭研究者的任务就是探寻拜占庭文明对其周边世界的影响,将其“展示”于天下。     

Two Byzantine craftsmen in fifteenth-century London

It is generally thought, largely on the basis of a letter of Cardinal Bessarion, that, by the 1440s, the Byzantine Empire had been completely overtaken by the West in all spheres of technical expertise. This idea is challenged the evidence of some documents the Public Record Office in London which show that, between at least 1441 and 1483, two gold wire drawers from Constantinople, named Andronicus and Alexius Effomatos, lived and worked in the English capital. It is argued that these craftsmen were welcomed because they specialised in making gold thread of a type which had long been manufactured in Byzantium but was superior in strength and economy to that produced in England. Indeed, since the earliest evidence for native English production of this type of gold thread dates from the period of their residence in London, there is at least the possibility that they actually introduced their craft into England, reversing the relative balance of technology as it is usually portrayed.     

唐代拜占庭帝国遣使中国考略

唐代中国典籍在"拂菻"名义下保留了拜占庭向中国遣使的记载。"拂菻"一名来自Rum一词,经由中介语言如亚美尼亚语、波斯语进入汉文典籍。643年的遣使可能是拜占庭帝国著名的皇帝希拉克略所策划,而由其他人实施,目的是想联合唐朝共同抗击新兴的阿拉伯势力的进攻。在阿拉伯势力征服伊朗高原后,其他各次遣使主要经由活跃在中亚的景教徒来完成。     

Byzantine Planning: Site Management in Istanbul

Abstract

A new site management plan for Istanbul’s Historic Peninsula was approved in late 2011. In this paper, we examine its institutional setting, preparation process, and contents from organizational and administrative perspectives. The result of a participatory process, the plan is professional, logically consistent, and effectively identifies challenges facing cultural heritage. The heart of the plan is a complex architecture of Objectives, Strategies, and Actions that are integrated into forty-nine Project Packages. Surprisingly, however, the plan specifies neither concrete activities nor financial resource­s. Moreover, cultural heritage is consistently downplayed: rather than substantive interventions at monuments or museums, attention is focused on managerial and urban planning buzzwords (coordination, capacity-building, participation, awareness-raising, marketing). This arose from the preparation process, which was participatory but nonetheless dominated by urban planners and government agencies. The case suggests the potential risks of the uncritical application of managerial and urban planning tools to cultural heritage.     

The Treatment of Byzantine Place-Names

Abstract

The anonymus author of An Historical Curiosity, One Hundred and Forty-One Ways of spelling Birmingham (London 1880) unaccountably complicated things by listing his spellings in neither alphabetical nor chronological order. But he may also have been revolutionary in treating all spellings with equal respect, as names in their own right, rather than variants of ‘Birmingham’, the authorised version which happens to be a poor reflection of what people actually call the place. His treatment was in mind when I indexed the toponyms in David Winfield's and my Dumbarton Oaks Study of The Byzanting Monuments and Topography of the Pontos – alphabetically, not chronologically. In doing so, I was surprised to find how little theoretical discussion there has been on how to treat Byzantine place-names, or what happens when they are transferred from memory to written record (and back again). We can learn from Western medievalists.     

Byzantine History in late Ottoman Turkish Historiography

Abstract

The present Short Note is intended as a brief introduction to a subject which is part of a wider research project on Greek (ancient, Byzantine, and modern) as well as Roman history and culture as described and discussed in Ottoman literature, particularly in late Ottoman historiography. As an attempt to familiarise the reader with, at this stage, no more than a few aspects of the subject in question, the following sketch does not pretend to be exhaustive. It is hoped, however, that it will provide a general idea of the context, as well as of the relevant sources, some of which will be described in more detail. Our note is, in addition, intended to arouse interest, particularly from the point of view of Byzantine and modern Greek studies, and to invite comments.     

A Greek Lexicon of the middle Byzantine period

Abstract

Greek lexicography of the Byzantine period is a thorny subject, indeed an almost thankless task, if efforts end merely in a collection of inaccessible and unpublished handwritten' material. I would like to call to mind the case of Emmanuel Miller in the last century, who showed a continuous interest in lexicography, pouring out new Greek words in the notes to his editions on every occasion. However, those notes are nothing but feeble shadows of his vast collection left to the Bibliotheque Nationale de Paris about ninety years ago. When I inspected this mass of more than 40,000 small slips, I was considerably taken aback, in view of the fact that this collection as well as every other similar to it (for instance the 10,000 Athesaurista gathered by Pezopoulos) are practically of no use for Byzantine studies, since they have never been published.     

Roman and Byzantine Settlements in the Region of West Irbid

Abstract

It was always clear that for practical reasons any new region-based study of the Roman and Byzantine periods in north-western Jordan would have to rely on existing evidence from archaeological surveys and excavations. The concentration of previous archaeological survey work in parts of the region of West Irbid in Jordan, and especially the surveys made by N. Glueck in the 1940s and S. Mittmann in the 1960s, made this area especially attractive for archaeologists. In this paper, the aim was to analyze the results of the West Irbid survey, particularly of the Roman and Byzantine periods, made during September 2005. The information gathered was of great help, enabling the classifi cation of sites into groups according to the nature of occupation, and analyzing the discovered architectural remains to provide a broader context for interpretation of the nature of Roman and Byzantine settlements in the surveyed region.     

Orality and the reception of late Byzantine vernacular literature

Abstract

The starting point for this paper is the belief that orality has to be understood in a wider sense than is given to the term by the oral-formulaic theory of Milman Parry and Albert Lord. This is the more important when the field of study is medieval or modern Greece, societies far removed from what Walter Ong (1982: 31–75) has termed the ‘primary orality’ of a culture from which writing is absent. The oral formulaic theory, although excellent as a tool for the analysis of materials actually transcribed from oral performance, has come to be seen in the last fifteen years or so as an unwieldy and often unreliable yardstick for assessing the interaction of oral and written types of discourse. The insistence of the theory that for a text to be considered oral, the three processes of composition, performance and transmission should be simultaneous, imposes a definition of orality which is unjustifiably restrictive, and despite the well-intentioned efforts of Albert Lord and others to address the problem of the ‘transitional’ text, the method of analysis developed through close study of one particular oral tradition in Yugoslavia has proved disappointingly inflexible in its attempt to account for texts which are neither, according to its own definitions, truly oral nor fully literary (cf. Beaton 1987).