Byzantine News

The Rotunda (early 4th c.) The Church of Acheiropoietos (450-470) Hagia Sophia (8th c)

An exhibition on late antique textile is opened in Manhattan: The Spring exhibition, Designing Identity: The Power of Textiles in Late Antiquity, offers intimate glimpses into the lives of those who commissioned and used textiles and more sweeping views across Late Antique society (roughly third to seventh century CE). The exhibition brings together over fifty textiles of diverse materials, techniques, and motifs to explore how clothing and cloth furnishings expressed ideals of self, society, and culture. By their valuable materials and virtuoso execution, the textiles displayed their owners’ wealth and discernment. To modern viewers, the materials and techniques also attest to developments around the Mediterranean world and farther east along the routes of the silk trade. The Late Antique owners, in choosing from a vast repertory of motifs, represented (hopefully more than actually) the prosperity and well-being of their households. The owners represented themselves through the d...

The UK based project, Cult of Saints from its origins to circa AD 700, across the entire Christian world, has recently published a list of great resources for the students of medieval cults of saints in a variety of languages. Click here to access the list and the project's website. The aims of the project: The project, which launched in January 2014, will map the cult of saints as a system of beliefs and practices in its earliest and most fluid form, from its origins until around AD 700 (by which date most cult practices were firmly established): the evolution from honouring the memory of martyrs, to their veneration as intercessors and miracle-workers; the different ways that saints were honoured and their help solicited; the devotion for relics, sacred sites and images; the miracles expected from the saints.

An event which influenced the history of both Byzantium and the Western states, the crusades pose many problems to the researchers of today. Were the crusades a Holy War in Byzantium? The late G.T. Dennis tried to give an answer to this question in a Dumbarton Oaks volume. Click here to read more

KU Leuven announces a new conference on literary culture in early Chrisitanity: The intellectual landscape of the Classical world was radically altered by the rise and spread of Christianity, which brought about a transformation of moral and cultural values, beliefs and attitudes. Profound changes also occurred in the practical and theoretical approaches to languages as cognitive, ethnic and cultural phenomena. The linguistic horizon of Western scholars was considerably widened through direct acquaintance with the Old Testament languages (Hebrew and Aramaic); at the same time Early Christian authors became increasingly aware of the startling linguistic diversity within the Roman world and outside of it. Read more

The Canons of Our Fathers. Monastic Rules of Shenoute by Bentley Layton From the presentation of the book: This book is the first publication of a very early collection of Christian monastic rules from Roman Egypt. Designed for the so-called White Monastery Federation, a community of monks and nuns who banded together about 360 CE, the rules are quoted by the great monastic leader Shenoute of Atripe in his writings of the fourth and fifth century. These rules provide new and intimate access to the earliest phases of Christian communal (cenobitic) monasticism. The Table of Contents : Preface I: The Nature of the Rules Introduction 1: The Historical Context of the Rules 2: The Corpus of Monastic Rules 3: Monastic Life as seen in the Rules 4: Monastic Experience and Monastic Rules Subject Index to Part I Index of Rule Numbers cited in Part III I: Corpus of Monastic Rules Abbreviations for Libraries and Museums Holding the Coptic Manuscripts Editorial SignsThe Rules, ...

A conference at the University of Cyprus, 16-18 October 2014. Tales of miracle and wonder decorate both ancient and Byzantine literature and seem to have had a great impact upon ancient and Byzantine thought. A strong interest in the wondrous is already apparent in the works of Homer and Hesiod. However, a more organized recording of marvels is detected much later, in Herodotus’s time, when marvelous stories and travel accounts of exotic places and peoples are increasingly produced. From the era of Alexander and onwards such stories are recruited by historians and rhetors in an attempt to apotheose the ideal ruler. Between the third century BC and the third century AD, the genre of paradoxography, collections of stories relating strange events and phenomena, achieves great popularity, and influences another new genre, the Hellenistic novel. At about the same time, a number of stories circulate that relate the miraculous healings of suffering people who practice incubation in Asclepi...

Alice Mary Talbot, An Introduction to Monasticism. The institution of monasticism was one of the most important characteristics of Byzantine society, and touched the life of virtually every imperial subject in many ways. First of all, a substantial number of Byzantine men and women took monastic vows: some in their youth, who pledged themselves to a lifetime of dedication to Christ; some in middle age, when their children were grown; many more at the end of their lives. Countless Byzantines, when they realized they were on their deathbed, took the monastic habit for their final hours or days, in the belief that, by dying in the holier monastic state, they were more likely to achieve salvation in the world to come. Read here the rest of the study -->

An article by Ioli Kalavrezou: Ioli Kalavrezou-Maxeiner, Byzantine Icons in Steatite, I-II, Revue des etudes byzantines, 1986.  Click here to read it online.

Psalterium graeco-latinum, 9th century Via Paleografia Greca : Click here to browse the manuscript from the University Library of Basel. Description: In addition to Greek and Latin Psalms, written somewhere in continental Europe by Irish monks during the Carolingian period, this famous Basel codex also contains a brief series of devotions in Latin for private use, appended by the monks. The exact place where the manuscript was written and its various subsequent travels are unknown, although, based on one note, whose interpretation is under debate, some relation to the Abbey of St. Gall and/or to that of Bobbio is frequently mentioned. In about 1628-1630 the manuscript was listed in the catalog of the Amerbach family, then around 1672-1676 in that of Johannes Zwinger. (and)

From the Medieval and Early Manuscripts Blog : The Theodore Psalter (British Library Additional MS 19352) is one of the most famous illuminated manuscripts to survive from the Byzantine Empire. Completed in Constantinople in February 1066, the Psalter consists of 208 folios which include 440 separate images, making it the most fully illuminated Psalter to come down from Byzantium. It is undeniably one of the greatest treasures of Byzantine manuscript production and of supreme importance for our understanding of Byzantine art. -->