Latest Issue of "Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies"

From the latest issue of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies

Alwis, Anne P, Men in pain: masculinity medicine and the Miracles of St. Artemios

The Miracles of St Artemios, which reveal a catalogue of men who are in severe pain and who express their anguish volubly, are analysed to provide two methodological frameworks (anthropological and medical), within which to investigate the masculinity of these ‘ordinary’ Byzantine men.

Nikolaos G. Chrissis, The City and the Cross: the image of Constantinople and the Latin empire in thirteenth-century papal crusading  rhetoric

This paper examines the way papal rhetoric made use of the image and reputation of the city of Constantinople in order to legitimise and incite support for its crusading calls for the defence of the Latin empire after 1204. A number of relevant themes that reflect the city’s temporal and religious importance are explored, such as its wealth, its relics, its imperial past and its patriarchal status as New Rome. The differences of emphasis and occasional omissions of such arguments provide insights as to what was expected to motivate the audience, while also revealing the papacy’s priorities.

Niketas Siniossoglou, Sect and Utopia in shifting empires: Plethon, Elissaios, Bedreddin

This discussion reopens the fi le on Plethon’s purported stay in Ottoman territory in order to trace the origins of the Plethonean belief in sectarianism as a vehicle for attaining utopian sociopolitical ends. In the fi rst part, possible approaches to Plethon’s alleged study with the mysterious mentor Elissaios are considered. In the second part, an argument is presented that in both the changing Ottoman Empire and the disintegrating Byzantine Empire esoteric societies contemporaneously developed a potentially antinomian role. Just like Plethon’s ‘brothers’, the ‘Brethren of Purity’ of al-Bistami, Sheikh Bedreddin and Börklüce Mustafa opted for sectarianism in order to recover a supraconfessional religious law and construe a novel political identity. This indicates the probability of a common nexus between Rumelia, the Peloponnese and the Aegean spanning confessional lines and tilizing sect as the vehicle of utopianism.