You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
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.
Volume 9 mainly contains lectures from the 8th International Symposium on Byzantine Sigillography in October 2003, in Berlin. Besides the iconography of seals, much emphasis was placed on questions of Byzantine administration. Further, selected collections are presented, as well as a large number of new finds and new acquisitions.
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.
The volume – whose chapters originated at panels at the International Byzantine Congress in Belgrade and at the IMC in Leeds – seeks to offer an introduction into various aspects of social and geographical mobility, and the intrinsic relationship between the two, as well as into the microstructures of social action in the Byzantine world during the high and late Middle Ages. Based on a balanced approach to the role of personal agency and social structure, the authors of the individual chapters seek to clarify how and why various kinds of people mobilized to either change place and/or social position, or to form groups whose actions shaped social reality both at the imperial centre and the provincial periphery.
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...
Byzantium was a strange entity--a relic of classical antiquity which survived deep into the Middle Ages. Drawing on a lifetime's work in the field of Byzantine studies, James Howard-Johnston aims to explain Byzantium's longevity, first as a state geared to fighting a two-centuries long guerrilla war of defence, then as an increasingly confident regional power. It is only by analysing its economic, social, and institutional structures that this strange medieval afterlife of the rump of the Roman empire can be understood. This collection of linked essays outlines the fundamental features of Byzantium, with a focus on the seventh to eleventh centuries. The essays delve below the agitated surfac...
This volume records and illustrates the minting of silver pennies in Winchester between the reigns of Alfred the Great and Henry III. Five and a half thousand survive in museums and collections all over the world. Sought out and photographed (some 3200 coins in 6400 images detailing both sides), they have been minutely catalogued for this volume.
The eastern frontier of Byzantium and the interaction of the peoples that lived along it are the themes of this book. With a focus on the ninth to thirteenth centuries and dealing with both art history and history, the essays provide reconsiderations of Byzantine policy on its eastern borders, new interpretations and new materials on Byzantine relations with the Georgians, Armenians and Seljuqs, as well as studies on the writing of history among these peoples. Presenting research from Russia and Georgia as well as Europe and the USA, the contributors stress the interaction and interdependence of all the peoples along this frontier zone, and consider the different ways in which the political and cultural power of Byzantium was appropriated. They provide important comparative evidence for the relationship between local and Byzantine cultures, and open up new avenues for research into the history of eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus. The volume arises from the thirty-third Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies held at the University of Warwick in March 1999.
Chrysovalantis Kyriacou examines how memories of the pre-Christian past, Christian militarism, power struggles, and ethnoreligious encounters have left their long-term imprint on Cypriot culture. One of the most impressive examples of this phenomenon is the preservation and transformative adaptation of Byzantine heroic themes, motifs, and symbols in Cypriot folk songs. By combining a variety of written sources and archaeological material in his interdisciplinary examination, the author reconstructs the image of the Byzantine warrior hero in the songs, recovering the mentalities of overshadowed social protagonists and stressing the role of subaltern communities as active agents in the shaping of history.
Stephen I, Hungary's first Christian king (reigned 997-1038) has been celebrated as the founder of the Hungarian state and church. Despite the scarcity of medieval sources, and consequent limitations on historical knowledge, he has had a central importance in narratives of Hungarian history and national identity. This book argues that instead of conceptualizing modern political medievalism separately as an 'abuse' of history, we must investigate history's very fabric, because cultural memory is woven into the production of the medieval sources. Medieval myth-making served as a firm basis for centuries of further elaboration and reinterpretation, both in historiography and in political legiti...