Byzantine News

Some interesting articles: PATRICK ANDRIST: Literary distance and complexity in late antique and early Byzantine Greek dialogues Adversus Iudaeos PÉTER TÓTH: New wine in old wineskin: Byzantine reuses of the apocryphal revelation dialogue   FLORIN LEONTE: Dramatisation and narrative in late Byzantine dialogues:Manuel II Palaiologos’s On Marriage and Mazaris’ Journey to Hades   NIELS GAUL: Embedded dialogues and dialogical voices in Palaiologan prose and verse   From the editors (Niels Gaul and Averil Cameron): Dialogues and Debates from Late Antiquity to Late Byzantium offers the first overall discussion of the literary and philosophical dialogue tradition in Greek from imperial Rome to the end of the Byzantine empire and beyond. Sixteen case studies combine theoretical approaches with in-depth analysis and include comparisons with the neighbouring Syriac, Georgian, Armenian and Latin traditions. Following an introduction and a discussion of Plutarch...

Often simply called the Holy Mountain, Mount Athos was the most famous center of Byzantine monasticism and remains the spiritual heart of the Orthodox Church today. This volume presents the Lives of Euthymios the Younger, Athanasios of Athos, Maximos the Hutburner, Niphon of Athos, and Philotheos. These five holy men lived on Mount Athos at different times from its early years as a monastic locale in the ninth century to the last decades of the Byzantine period in the early fifteenth century. All five were celebrated for asceticism, clairvoyance, and, in most cases, the ability to perform miracles; Euthymios and Athanasios were also famed as founders of monasteries. Holy Men of Mount Athos illuminates both the history and the varieties of monastic practice on Athos, individually by hermits as well as communally in large monasteries. The Lives also demonstrate the diversity of hagiographic composition and provide important glimpses of Byzantine social and political history.All t...

N. Wilson: Symeon Metaphrastes’ revision of the hagiographic corpus, undertaken with the encouragement of the emperor, was a remarkable enterprise which required substantial resources and organisational skills. Michael Psellus in his encomium of Symeon gives a famous description of Symeon and his team at work See more here

Dumbarton Oaks and the HILL MUSEUM & MANUSCRIPT LIBRARY (HMML) announce a new four-week intensive introduction to Syriac language and paleography, July 10 to August 6, 2016. The program, sponsored and funded by Dumbarton Oaks, will be hosted at HMML, located on the campus of Saint John's University, Collegeville, Minnesota. The summer school will include a long weekend in Washington, DC, to visit Dumbarton Oaks and other institutions in the area to learn more about their resources for Byzantine and Eastern Christian studies. Approximately ten places will be available to doctoral students and recent PhDs, including including early-career faculty members, who can demonstrate the value of Syriac for their teaching and research. All costs apart from travel to and from Saint John's University (nearest airport: Minneapolis-St Paul) will be covered by Dumbarton Oaks, including the weekend in Washington, DC. Mornings will be devoted to Syriac language instruction by Prof. Sc...

I loved philology and wrote a Greek grammar. My students loved me too and so, I learned Latin. I traveled in Europe for many years and understood that Byzantium is not alone . (Manuel Chrysoloras, diplomat and teacher)

New texts have been added recently to the TLG. Here is the list: 0087 Aelius HERODIANUS et Pseudo-HERODIANUS Rhet. et Gramm. (2 works) 1312 DIDYMUS Gramm. (1 work) 2006 SYNESIUS Phil. (1 work) 2602 TIMAEUS Sophista Gramm. (1 work) 2705 NICETAS DAVID Phil., Scr. Eccl. et Gramm. (11 works) 2709 Joannes MAUROPUS Poeta et Rhet. (2 works) 2718 Manuel PHILES Scr. Eccl., Scr. Rerum Nat. et Poeta (1 work) 2742 APOPHTHEGMATA Gnom. et Eccl. (1 work) 2815 JOANNES Scholasticus Theol. (1 work) 2892 MAXIMUS CONFESSOR Theol. (1 work) 3003 Alexius I COMNENUS Imperator Poeta (3 works) 3005 ANDREAS Cretensis Poeta et Scr. Eccl. (3 works) 3024 Constantinus STILBES Poeta et Rhet. (1 work) 3074 Constantinus MANASSES Poeta et Hist. (2 works) 3076 METROPHANES Scr. Eccl. et Poeta (1 work) 3086 NICEPHORUS I Theol., Scr. Eccl. et Hist. (3 works) 3092 Nicephorus BLEMMYDES Phil. et Theol. (5 works) 3099 Nicetas STETHATUS Theol. et Hagiogr. (1 work) 3141 Georgius ACROPOLITES Hist. (1 work) 3159 BARLAAM Ca...

A new book by I. Nilsson (Uppsala) on the literature of the 12th c.: This study uses Byzantine novels as a window onto the twelfth-century literary world, concentrating in particular on the function of narrative techniques and structures. More general questions such as the relationship between form and content, reality and fiction, gender and the individual are also addressed. Click here for more details

More than 70 texts have been recently to the TLG. These new additions include authors like Blemmydes, Gregoras, Chrysoloras, Barlaam, Photius, or Symeon of Thessaloniki. 0651 ANTONINUS LIBERALIS Myth. (2 works) 0733 CASSIUS Iatrosophista Med. (1 work) 1375 EVANGELIUM THOMAE Apocryph. et Evangel. (1 work) 1451 JOSEPHUS ET ASENETH Hagiogr., Pseudepigr. et Narr. Fict. (1 work) 2598 PROCOPIUS Scr. Eccl. et Rhet. (1 work) 2819 LEONTIUS Theol. (2 works) 2938 GERMANUS II Scr. Eccl. (3 works) 3019 CHRISTOPHORUS Mytilenaeus Poeta (1 work) 3054 JOANNES IV (vel V) Oxeïtes Scr. Eccl. (2 works) 3092 Nicephorus BLEMMYDES Phil. et Theol. (1 work) 3099 Nicetas STETHATUS Theol. et Hagiogr. (2 works) 3142 Georgius PACHYMERES Hist., Philol. et Scr. Eccl. (4 works) 3159 BARLAAM Calabrius Epist., Theol. et Math. (2 works) 3169 Joannes VI CANTACUZENUS (1 work) 3191 Theodorus METOCHITES Polyhist. et Phil. (1 work) 3197 Demetrius CYDONES Philol., Theol. et Transl. (6 works) 3202 Georgius GEMISTUS Phil. ...

Medieval Greek romances were a very popular genre in Byzantium. P. Roilos' groundbreaking volume on the topic is now available online. Here is a passage from the conclusions: Through their multilayered responses to the past and their present, the Komnenian novels mediate first between antiquity and the Middle Ages and, second, between the Middle Ages and modernity. Due to its inherent discursive plasticity, the genre of the novel offered the Komnenian writers a dynamic literary medium for the exploration of a number of ideological and conceptual tensions ensuing from originally antithetical but often ultimately complementary conceptual and cultural categories. No doubt these tensions marked Byzantine culture from its initial formation to its final exhaustion. However, all these opposing forces reached their acme in the twelfth century: Hellenism and Christianity, antiquity and “modernity,” tradition and experimentation, secular and sacred, “high” and “low,” pleasure and asce...

A very interesting lecture by Stratis Papaioannou (Brown) at the American School of Classical Studies, Athens (October 2014). Byzantine literature remains relatively exotic for modern readers, unlike its predecessor, Classical literature, or commensurate aspects of Byzantine culture, such as visual art.This lecture ventures a comprehensive view of Byzantine literature by examining notions and practices of authorship. Though neither classical nor medieval Greek have a single word that corresponds exactly to our “authorship,” Byzantine rhetoric and manuscript book culture reveal an intricate web of meanings for what an author is. Vacillating between authenticity and creative impersonation, Byzantine authors signal modernity. You can watch the lecture here.

In December, Dumbarton Oaks Research Center for Byzantine Studies will host a new colloquium on Byzantine emotions and passions. Byzantinists were early into the field of the study of emotion with Henry Maguire’s ground-breaking article on sorrow, published in 1977. But 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. It is time perhaps to celebrate Maguire’s work, but also to look at what is distinctive about Byzantine emotion. We should like to encourage speakers to focus on a single emotion and to use it as a vantage point to investigate central aspects of the Byzantine worldview. We want to look at emotions as both cognitive and relational processes. Our focus is not only the construction of emotions with respect to perception and cognition; we are also interested in how emotions were communicated and exchanged across broad (multi)linguistic, p...

Medieval Greek florilegia, collections of wise sayings, compendia, and excerpts, all in a dynamic library that make their study easier. The SAWS Dynamic Library contains five main groups of texts. Elvira Wakelnig and colleagues in Vienna have made available two collections, Gnomological Material in Arabic and in Arabic-Spanish transmission, and Arabic Philosophical Compendia and Excerpts of Arabic and Latin Philosophical Texts; these include, among others, transcriptions of two abridgements of the Ṣiwān al-ḥikma, Ps.-ʿĀmirī’s Kitāb al-Saʿāda, the first editions of three unpublished Arabic compilations of philosophical material, together with further excerpts from relevant texts, from Greek sources and from the Spanish Bocados di Oro whch drew on this tradition. Apophthegmata et gnomae secundum alphabetum comprises the first full edition of an important tradition of Greek gnomologia, arranged in alphabetical order, and edited from 16 manuscripts by Denis Searby and colleagues in Up...

An article by M. Hinterberger (Cyprus) on vernacular Byzantine language: Since Antiquity the Byzantines had inherited the usage of classicizing Greek for a wide range of literary genres. In particular, for all kinds of rhetorical texts ancient and late antique authors served as models. Higher education aimed at providing a thorough familiarity with these models, firstly in order to understand them and secondly in order to compose texts by imitating the models. Since the range of recommended patterns extends from Homer to George of Pisidia (i.e. texts from the 8th c. B.C. to the 7th c. A.D.) and since authors were inevitably influenced, to a greater or lesser degree, by their everyday language, in most cases the textual product was a peculiar mixture with a specific Byzantine character, which however – and this has to be stressed – does not mean chaotic or arbitrary. The majority of less literary types of text however (such as theological treatises, hagiography, popular narrati...

Harvard's Center for Hellenic Studies has recently published online A. Cameron's volume on Dialoguing in Late Antiquity. A passage from the Introduction : This book is about a particular form of writing by Christians in late antiquity, sometimes referred to as “the philosophical dialogue”—although by no means all the dialogues in question can be regarded as philosophical. The subject is central to the much wider question of the development of a specifically Christian rhetoric, especially in Perelman’s sense in which “the realm of rhetoric” constitutes “the entire universe of argumentative discourse,” [1] for Christian writers did indeed use the dialogue form as part of their argumentative endeavor. Click here to read the book

A new volume on middle Byzantine poetry was recently published at Oxford University Press: Writing and Reading Byzantine Secular Poetry, 1025-1081 , by Floris Bernard. Here is the abstract: In the mid eleventh century, secular poetry attained a hitherto unseen degree of wit, vividness, and personal involvement, chiefly exemplified in the poetry of Christophoros Mitylenaios, Ioannes Mauropous, and Michael Psellos. This book examines the various social occasions, opportunities, and constraints that motivated and influenced the reading and writing of poetic texts. It critically reconsiders modern assumptions about poetry, focusing instead on Byzantine conceptions of the role of poetry in society. By providing a detailed account of the various media through which poetry was presented to its readers, and by tracing the initial circulation of poems, it takes an interest in the Byzantine reader and his/her reading habits and strategies, addressing aspects of performance and visual re...

New Byzantine texts have been added on Thesaurus Linguae Graecae platform. Here is the list: 0082 APOLLONIUS DYSCOLUS Gramm. (2 works) 2042 ORIGENES Theol. (1 work) 2873 EUSTRATIUS Presbyter Scr. Eccl. (1 work) 2921 THEODORUS Spudaeus Scr. Eccl. (1 work) 2938 GERMANUS II Scr. Eccl. (2 works) 2944 LEO VI SAPIENS Imperator Phil., Scr. Eccl. et Poeta (1 work) 3077 MICHAEL I CERULARIUS Scr. Eccl. et Theol. (1 work) 3079 Michael ATTALIATES Hist. (1 work) 3092 Nicephorus BLEMMYDES Phil. et Theol. (4 works) 3169 Joannes VI CANTACUZENUS (2 works) 3191 Theodorus METOCHITES Phil. et Polyhist. (2 works) 3197 Demetrius CYDONES Theol., Transl. et Philol. (1 work) 3213 Prochorus CYDONES Theol. et Transl. (1 work) 3217 Nilus CABASILAS Theol. (2 works) 3248 Joannes CYPARISSIOTES Theol. (1 work) 3257 David DISHYPATUS Theol. (1 work) 3345 CALLISTUS I Patriarcha Scr. Eccl. et Orat. (3 works) 3346 Andreas CHRYSOBERGES Theol. (1 work) 4146 Maximus PLANUDES Polyhist...

TLG has recently announced the addition of 93 new texts to its growing collection. 0540    LYSIAS Orat. 037 De caede Eratosthenis 038 Epitaphius 039 Contra Simonem 040 $*PERI TRAU/MATOS E)K PRONOI/AS U(PER OU(= KAI PROS O(N [2A)/DHLON]2& 041 Pro Callia 042 In Andocidem 043 Areopagiticus 044 $*KATHGORI/A PROS TOUS SUNOUSIASTAS KAKOLOGIW=N& 045 Pro milite 046 In Theomnestum 047 In Theomnestum II 048 In Eratosthenem 049 In Agoratum 050 In Alcibiadem 1 051 In Alcibiadem 2 052 Pro Mantitheo 053 $*PROS TO DHMO/SION PERI TW=N *)ERA/TWNOS XRHMA/TWN& 054 $*PERI TH=S DHMEU/SEWS [2TW=N]2 TOU= *NIKI/OU A)DELFOU= E)PI/LOGOS& 055 $*(UPER TW=N *)ARISTOFA/NOUS XRHMA/TWN, PROS TO DHMO/SION& 056 Pro Polystrato 057 $*)APOLOGI/A DWRODOKI/AS A)PARA/SHMOS& 058 $*KATA TW=N SITOPWLW=N& 059 In Pancleonem 060 $*(UPER TOU= A)DUNA/TOU& 061 $*DH/MOU KATALU/SEWS A)POLOGI/A& 062 $*PERI TH=S *EU)A/NDROU DOKIMASI/AS& 063 In Epicratem ...

Review from BMCR In this recent addition to the Variorum Collected Studies Series, Roger Scott grapples with Byzantine historiography and the age of Justinian. The papers contained therein are divided into four broad groupings: (A) Historiography, Chronicle and the Sixth Century; (B) Malalas, Theophanes and the Sixth Century; (C) Malalas, Theophanes and Their Byzantine Past; and (D) Reinterpreting the Fifth and Sixth Centuries. Scott, a Classicist by training, has devoted a good part of his career to the study of early Byzantine chronicles, with a particular emphasis on Malalas and Theophanes.1 Like other volumes in this series, the majority of the papers included were originally published elsewhere. Some of these come from hard to find publications such as Bysantinska Sälskapet Bulletin, a boon for scholars who might otherwise lack access to them. Some of the articles are over forty years old (X). On the other hand, two of the nineteen are published for the first time in this volu...

'Greek Literary Epigram: From the Hellenistic to the Byzantine Era' An international conference to be held at University College London, 11 - 13 September 2013. Recent scholarship has witnessed an escalating interest in the study of Greek literary epigram, which was given further momentum by the discovery and publication of the New Milan Papyrus, attributed to Posidippus of Pella. Considerable progress has been made in our appreciation of the development and features of the genre and its exponents in the Hellenistic period. However, intense scholarly focus on Hellenistic epigram has led to an under-appreciation of the later epigrammatic material, from the Roman to the Byzantine period. The aim of this international conference is to investigate the changes that literary epigram underwent over the centuries, its interrelationship with other Greek literary genres and with the visual arts, as well as the factors which influenced its development across time. In this...

The Alexander romance is any of several collections of legends concerning the mythical exploits of Alexander the Great. The earliest version is in Greek, dating to the 3rd century. Several late manuscripts attribute the work to Alexander's court historian Callisthenes, but the historical figure died before Alexander and could not have written a full account of his life. The unknown author is still sometimes called Pseudo-Callisthenes. The text was recast into various versions between the 4th and the 16th centuries, in Middle Greek, Latin, Armenian, Syriac, Hebrew, and most medieval European vernaculars. --> The Greek versions The oldest version of the Greek text, the Historia Alexandri Magni (Recensio α), can be dated to the 3rd century. It was subjected to various revisions during the Byzantine period, some of them recasting it into poetical form in Middle Greek vernacular. Recensio α is the source of a Latin version by Julius Valerius (4th century), and an Armenian ...