Memoirs,confessions and apologies: the last chapter of Byzantine autobiography

Abstract

Two issues are addressed here: the status of Byzantine autobiography and the state of Byzantine literary culture in its last years. Autobiographical information was mostly a device used at all levels of Byzantine literature for immediacy, emphasis and to suggest personal involvement. It continued to function in this way in the last years of Byzantium, but there was also a degree of experimentation, as it extended its range into satire and comedy and, in the hands of Theodore Agallianos evolved from the rhetoric of apologia into fully-fledged autobiography.     

BYZANTINE AND UMAYYAD PERIOD POTTERY AT BARSINIA (2006 SEASON OF EXCAVATION)

Abstract

Until recent pottery studies of the ancient Classical and Early Islamic rural sites in northern Jordan were of less interest to archaeologists. This article focuses on the Byzantine and Umayyad period pottery that has been discovered during the first season of excavation at Barsinia in the north-western part of Jordan. Fifty-two indicative pottery sherds were sorted according to their date and function into two main groups: the early Byzantine pottery (fourth–sixth centuries) and the Late Byzantine–Umayyad pottery (sixth–eighth centuries). Since Barsinia is one of the small rural archaeological sites, and such sites were rarely mentioned in ancient literary sources, the study of material remains at such locations is essential for elucidating regional development and trade. It also sheds more light on the relation between the site and the surroundings through the comparative study of the pottery objects.     

Peasant Names in Fourteenth-Century Macedonia

Abstract

The historian who is engaged in the study of Byzantine social history is faced with a problem common to pre-industrial societies, or societies in which the majority of the population is both exploited and illiterate. The sources, written as they are by an upper class and largely for an upper class, give relatively abundant information about a small segment of the population, leaving us in darkness about the rest of society. In Byzantine history this is particularly true about the peasantry, which has left us only a very few sources of its own, and rather uninspiring ones at that. The Byzantine upper class wrote its own history, but the Byzantine peasants did not, thus making the task of the modern historian more difficult. Despite these problems, work has been done on both the urban and the rural population of the Empire, and more will probably be done as monastic archives become available. The study of the Byzantine peasantry is of primary importance. For if we are to understand Byzantine society, we must study and understand what happened in the countryside. After all, the Byzantine economy rested on agriculture, and the social relations which determined the fate of the state were, primarily, the social relations prevalent in the countryside.     

'Political' personae: the poem from prison of Michael Glykas: Byzantine literature between fact and fiction

Abstract

Byzantine vernacular literature, much of it in verse, has long been seen as material for Quellenforschung into the historical or social conditions of its time. Following the precepts for literary history set down by such pioneers of Byzantine studies as Karl Krumbacher, the study of these texts has concentrated on authors rather than on the texts themselves as autonomous objects of historical study, whose form and content should guide our understanding of their original intention and reception by Byzantine audiences. The 'Poem from Prison' by Michael Glykas illustrates both the shortcomings of the focus on authors and the alternative potential for renewed engagement with Byzantine texts as objects of imagination and creativity.     

A Byzantine hagiographical parody: Life of Mary the Younger

Abstract

In this paper, it is argued that The Life of Mary the Younger, an anonymous Byzantine text of the eleventh century, has a conscious intertextual dialogue with the oldest Byzantine Life venerating a holy woman, the Life of Macrina written by her brother, Gregory of Nyssa, between 380 and 383. The intertextual relation between these two female Lives takes the form of parody. Following Linda Hutcheon's theory of parody, this article shows how the anonymous hagiographer of Mary reworks Gregory's authoritative text to create a new work, a parody in terms of postmodern literary criticism, whose aim was to criticise old and contemporary customs, conventions and ideologies. In other words, the present article approaches and decodes the literariness, the function and ideology of Mary's Life in the light of Macrina's Life.     

Photius,Phlegon, and Virgil

Abstract

In his Bibliotheca, codex 97, Photius passes under review the Compilation of Olympic Victors and Chronicles by Phlegon of Tralles, a freedman of Hadrian. This work was dedicated by Phlegon to an imperial official, P. Aelius Alcibiades. Neither the official nor the book are mentioned in the Historia Augusta or the extant Byzantine epitomes of Dio Cassius, or indeed in any literary source. The name Aelius, however, might have helped the HA to create one of its many bogus sources, to wit Aelius Maurus, a supposed freedman of Phlegon himself and supplier of an anecdote about Septimius Severus on his deathbed.     

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.     

Synônê: re-considering a problematic term of middle Byzantine fiscal administration

Abstract

The history of Byzantine fiscal administration, as is well-known, is still an area in which many problems remain to be resolved. In 1880 the Russian Byzantinist V. G. Vassilievsky, one of the first historians to address them seriously, described Byzantine fiscal structures as labyrinthine; other scholars have not disagreed. But as a result of the work of successive generations, we are in a much better position today to understand the fundamental lines of development of late Roman and Byzantine fiscal arrangements, and in particular to follow the evolution of middle and later Byzantine fiscal administrative structures out of the situation that prevailed in the later Roman period, especially from the fifth and sixth centuries. Many problems remain, of course, and in the present contribution I would like to re-examine the term synônê, which has a technical significance in late Roman and Byzantine texts. The exact meaning of the word remains disputed and this has led to conflicting opinions among those who have attempted to interpret its application in the sources. The resolution of some of these questions has important consequences for our understanding of how the state's fiscal structures operated over the period in question.     

Shaping the sacred: light and the experience of worship in middle Byzantine churches

Abstract

Byzantine churches have been extensively studied in terms of their architectural development and in their role as places to display religious art. However there has been less research into one of the most fundamental aspects of the Byzantine ritual experience, illumination. In practical terms, churches had to be illuminated sufficiently for worship to take place. In experiential terms, lighting can be seen as the medium by which the iconographic programmes and liturgical practices were staged and enhanced. This paper considers the archaeological and textual evidence linking physical illumination of buildings with the experience of their sacred function.     

‘Feeling the rhythm of the waves: “castaway rhetoric” in John Eugenikos’ Logos eucharisterios’

Abstract

In September 1438 John Eugenikos decided to quit the council of Ferrara and sail back to Constantinople. Off Italy's Adriatic coast his vessel experienced a terrible shipwreck, whereby many of John's fellow-passengers perished. John decided then to retell his almost deadly experience in a thanks-giving logos, allegedly compiled on the basis of notes written down soon after the shipwreck. The logos stands out as a unique document in the landscape of Byzantine travel literature. This paper offers the first comprehensive literary analysis of Eugenikos’ account, shedding new light on the narrative patterns chosen by the author to recount his own experience and stage his public persona.     

Crossing traditional boundaries: grub to glamour in Byzantine silk weaving

Abstract

Byzantine silk research evokes images of glamour but it is prudent to consider grass roots as well as exotic aspects of this enticing subject: without the grub there would be no glamour. In its fullest sense a study of Byzantine silk weaving entails research on many and varied levels, across a broad range of disciplines. An immense variety of topics require consideration: the production of the silk yarn; the various workshop practices involved in weaving the yarn into silk cloth; the relationship between technique and design; the marketing and the numerous uses of the silks both at home and abroad, and the implications of the distribution of Byzantine silks purely through diplomatic channels.     

‘Der sehleehteste Staat’: Ahmed Midhat Efendi (1844–1913) on Byzantine institutions

Abstract

Just as Karl Marx, in 1842, called the Byzantine empire ‘der schlechteste Staat’, so did Ahmed Midhat Efendi (1844–1913), the protagonist of Ottomanism and at the same time the first Ottoman ‘to make a strong and clear case for the Turkish ancestry of the Ottomans’ (David Kushner), a few decades later. Byzantine history stands, according to Midhat, for the Dark Ages, and the Byzantine empire for corruption, lawlessness, extravagance and frivolity. By contrast, the picture drawn by him of the early Ottomans is one of a community based on high moral values such as decency, concord, obedience and mutual esteem. In his view, the rise of the Ottomans heralds the dawning of the Modern Age. His identification of the Ottomans as the liberators from the Dark Ages of all the peoples previously under Byzantine rule is the central element in his concept of the ‘enlightened and liberating Ottomans,. His Detailed History of Modern Times (Mufassal Tarih-i Kurun-i Cedide), with its section on Byzantine history and institutions, has already been introduced to readers of the last issue of BMGS.     

Meurtre à Byzance: Byzantine murders in modern literature

Abstract

Thus runs the suggestively recurrent theme in a recent novel by Julia Kristeva, the famous psychoanalyst, linguist and semiotician (Meurtre à Byzance. Paris: Fayard, 2004). Kristeva, who immigrated to France from Bulgaria in the 1960s, here seizes the opportunity to set forth problems concerning her own East European and Orthodox background. She does so in a form that to a remarkably high degree mirrors her own work as a scholar: Meurtre à Byzance, with its manifold references to medieval and modern literature, is imbued with intertextuality and polyphony, literary devices which she herself as a theorist has largely helped define. And the complex story is not, as one might expect from the title, a historical detective novel set in a Byzantine milieu, but a romantic yet critical story about contemporary society, our search for origin and meaning, our longing for — as Kristeva puts it — a Byzantium of our own.     

Not new but novel. Notes on the historiography of Byzantine law

Abstract

It is some time since the late Alexander Kazhdan undertook a private crusade under the title ‘Do we need a new history of Byzantine law?’ Of course his answer was in the affirmative. In one sense one would be unable to disagree; in another sense, however, one ought to answer that the history Kazhdan was asking for would not so much be new; rather it would be a novelty, as it had not been written before.     

Les Grecs Pontiques: Diaspora,Identité, Territoires.

Abstract

In recent years there have been significant advances in our understanding of the Byzantine rural economy. While work on such problems as the legal status of the peasantry, the fiscal procedures by which the state extracted revenues from the peasantry and the nature of the fiscal concessions which the state made to landowners remains central to our understanding of the Byzantine social structure, greater attention has been paid recently to the history of settlements, agricultural production and the influence of the climate and environment on the rural economy. Recent work has been greatly facilitated by two developments, the publication of more material from the archives of Mount Athos and the upsurge in intensive surveys and other archaeological work which is already providing us with information about regions for which our documentary material is either inadequate or non-existant. This paper will not attempt a comprehensive discussion of all recent work on the subject, but will focus on some of the most significant problems affecting our understanding of the Byzantine rural economy.     

Prousa/Bursa,a city within the city: chorography,conversion and choreography

Abstract

Narratives on the birth of the Ottoman city of Bursa, the first capital of the Ottomans, known to the Byzantines as Prousa, highlight its early Ottoman identity. Although Bursa represents one of the richest legacies of early Ottoman architecture, the city's urban fabric has suffered from several fires and earthquakes that resulted in heavy restorations and remodellings. The first aim of this paper is to discuss the textual and visual evidence for the built environment in the early fourteenth century and, second, to offer commentary on the Ottoman attitude toward Byzantine architecture in an effort to unearth the Byzantine substrata of Ottoman Bursa. In the service of the latter goal, this article debunks the Ottoman-centric views. With the aid of drawings of Bursa's upper city that predate the 1855 earthquake we may begin to visualize a city far less uniform in character, in which the Byzantine legacy both endured and informed the construction and urban design practices of the ascendant Ottomans.     

Byzantine glass mosaic tesserae: some material considerations

Abstract

Issues about the manufacture of Byzantine mosaics and the implications of these in wider terms relating to social and economic questions about the art form have been little discussed. This paper brings together evidence about Byzantine glass mosaic tesserae gathered from archaeology, glass technology and glass analysis, and synthesizes these into a discussion of three aspects: distribution; manufacture; trade and price. It looks to examine how these different elements can be used to form a more detailed composite picture about the production and distribution of Byzantine mosaics. It also proposes ways in which glass analysis can be used in a more coherent way to extend our understanding of mosaic glass production.     

The Constantinopolitan abbot Dius: his life,cult and hagiographical dossier

Abstract

Although one of the founding fathers of Constantinopolitan monasticism, the Syrian ascetic Dius is hardly ever mentioned in secondary literature. The reason for this unfavourable treatment lies in the scarcity of information available for this saint. His Late Antique Life is lost and can only be studied in Middle Byzantine adaptations, three canones, two synaxaria and an unedited encomium. This article offers a discussion of Dius' biography, the development of his cult and his hagiographical dossier on the basis of the surviving material.     

Diglossia and register variation in Medieval Greek

Abstract

This article recognizes diglossia as a key phenomenon for the interpretation of the existence of different registers in the late Byzantine period (twelfth-fifteenth centuries). The main characteristics of Byzantine diglossia are outlined and associated with language production during this period. Learned and vernacular registers are approached as extreme poles of a linguistic continuum and linguistic variation as a defining characteristic of a diglossic speech community.