Byzantine News

"Intelligible Beauty" recent research on Byzantine jewellery. Edited by Chris Entwistle and Noël Adams Click here to read

Read here a volume on Byzantium and the Modern Greek Identity : This collection of commissioned essays aims to present an overview of some of the different tendencies manifested by modern Greek attitudes to Byzantium since the late 18th-century Enlightenment.

A new book on Hagia Sophia and the Byzantine Aesthetic Experience by Nadine Schibille. From the introduction: Paramount in the shaping of early Byzantine identity was the construction of the church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople (532-537 CE). This book examines the edifice from the perspective of aesthetics to define the concept of beauty and the meaning of art in early Byzantium. Byzantine aesthetic thought is re-evaluated against late antique Neoplatonism and the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius that offer fundamental paradigms for the late antique attitude towards art and beauty. Click here to browse the book.

The latest updated list with Byzantine editions and translations can be consulted here

A new book in the series of Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Symposia and Colloquia The fourteen essays in Viewing the Morea focus on the late medieval Morea (Peloponnese), beginning with the bold attempt of Western knights to establish a kingdom on foreign soil. Reinserted into this tale of Crusader foundation are the large numbers of Orthodox villagers who shared the region and created their own narrative of an eternal and sacred empire generated by the pains of loss and the hopes of refoundation. Layered upon the historical and physical topography of the region are the traces of the Venetians, whose “right eye,” Modon, was located at the peninsula’s southwestern tip. How these groups interacted and how they asserted identity is at the center of inquiry in these essays. Also at the core of this study is the understanding of place and memory—the recollection of the ancient history of the Peloponnese, the architectural and cartographic marking of its mountains and valleys, the re-creation o...

Edited by Marina S. Brownlee, Princeton University, and Dimitri Gondicas, Princeton University The present volume has grown out of the conference held at Princeton University on November 12-14, 2009. Its essays explore a coherent, interrelated nexus of topics that illuminate our understanding of the cultural transactions (social, political, economic, religious and artistic) of the Greek East and Latin West: unexpected cultural appropriations and forms of resistance, continuity and change, the construction and hybridization of traditions in a wide expanse of the eastern Mediterranean. --> Areas that the volume addresses include the benefits and liabilities of periodization, philosophical and political exchanges, monastic syncretism between the Orthodox and Catholic faiths, issues of romance composition, and economic currency and the currency of fashion as East and West interact. Contributors are Roderick Beaton, Peter Brown, Marina S. Brownlee, Giles Constable, Maria Evangela...

A Byzantine art masterpiece: the David Plates This beautiful and exceptionally important set of nine silver plates, dated 629 to 630, was discovered with two other silver plates in 1902 in Karavas in northern Cyprus (see Map 2). The plates were found hidden near a small horde of gold jewelry. Most of this treasure came to the Metropolitan Museum from the collection of J. Pierpont Morgan. Six of the David Plates are in the Metropolitan’s collection and are on view in the Mary and Michael Jaharis Galleries for Byzantine Art on the first floor (in the long corridor gallery on the right of the Grand Staircase, as approached from the Great Hall). The other three plates are in the collection of the Cyprus Museum in Nicosia, Cyprus. In eleven scenes, David is summoned from his flock of sheep to meet the prophet Samuel; he is anointed the new king of Israel by Samuel (since King Saul of Israel is no longer in God’s favor); David argues with his brother Eliab after he comes into Saul’s camp...

From the volume published in 2010 at Dumbarton Oaks, San Marco, Byzantium, and the Myths of Venice , Edited by Henry Maguire and Robert S. Nelson: "The papers in this volume were originally presented, in a different form, in the colloquium “From Enrico to Andrea Dandolo: Imitation, Appropriation, and Meaning at San Marco in Venice,” jointly sponsored by Dumbarton Oaks and Johns Hopkins University, held in Baltimore in May 2007. The participants discussed the decoration of San Marco as an assemblage of mosaics, sculptures, and reliquaries, of which some were Venetian productions, but others were spolia or imitation spolia. The speakers addressed the diverse styles of these works, whether Late Roman, Early Christian, Byzantine, Islamic, or Gothic, and explored their sources, meanings, and significance, both individually and as an ensemble. These essays have been generated from those papers and the fruitful dialogues that took place subsequently between the speakers and...

An interesting article by C. Kelty, author of Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software (Experimental Futures) on virtual libraries and their role in shaping knowledge: The disappearing virtual library The shutdown of library.nu is creating a virtual showdown between would-be learners and the publishing industry.  Last week a website called "library.nu" disappeared. A coalition of international scholarly publishers accused the site of piracy and convinced a judge in Munich to shut it down. Library.nu (formerly Gigapedia) had offered, if the reports are to be believed, between 400,000 and a million digital books for free. And not just any books - not romance novels or the latest best-sellers - but scholarly books: textbooks, secondary treatises, obscure monographs, biographical analyses, technical manuals, collections of cutting-edge research in engineering, mathematics, biology, social science and humanities. Read more

The Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine Hagiography Volume I: Periods and Places ed. by Stephanos Efthymiades, Open University of Cyprus Hagiography is the most abundantly represented genre of Byzantine literature and it offers crucial insight to the development of religious thought and practice, social and literary life, and the history of the empire. It emerged in the fourth century with the pioneering Life of St Antony and continued to evolve until the end of the empire in the fifteenth century, and beyond. The appeal and dynamics of this genre radiated beyond the confines of Byzantium, and it was practised also in many Oriental and Slavic languages within the orbit of the broader Byzantine world. This Companion is the work of an international team of specialists and represents the first comprehensive survey ever produced in this field. It will consist of two volumes and is addressed to both a broader public and the scholarly community of Byzantinists, Medievalists, historian...

Tonia Kiousopoulou, Emperor or Manager: Power and Political Ideology in Byzantium before 1453 Byzantium in the 15th century is too easily dismissed as the anachronistic tail end of an ancient ecumenical empire, whose only achievements, apart from the heroic last stand of Constantinople in 1453, were the contribution of literary Hellenism to Renaissance humanism, and the preservation of Orthodoxy from the encroachment of Catholicism. This book argues that in struggling to survive as a small fortified enclave at the heart of Ottoman territory, Byzantium adopted the social structure and political ideology of a secular, territorial city-state on the Italian model. It thus presents the empire of the last Palaiologoi in an entirely new light. Emma Maayan Fanar, Revelation through the Alphabet. Aniconism and Illustrated Initial Letters in Byzantine Artistic Imagination The book explores aniconic tendencies in the post-iconoclastic lectionaries, with special emphasis on illuminated ini...

Sherry, Kurt. Kassia the Nun in Context   Kassia the Nun offers a unique glimpse into ninth-century Byzantium as the only woman whose works were included in the corpus of liturgical hymns. Kassia the Nun in Context explores Kassia’s thought on Christology, on gender, and on monasticism itself. Kurt Sherry’s analysis provides readers with an opportunity to know this woman of remarkable intellect, wit, and piety by drawing primarily on her own words. He critically examines the most famous vignette of her life: a heated exchange of wits with the Emperor Theophilos, whereupon he married a rival. Sherry examines the way Kassia articulated the partisan theology of the iconophiles. Kassia’s is one of the only female voices from ninth-century Byzantium and this volume accordingly examines her reflections on gender in the context of her society and concludes that she represents a perspective that might be described as feminist. The last chapter evaluates Kassia’s philosophy of monasticism...

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Two books which try to make Byzantium accessible to a wider public have been published recently. In AD 476 the Roman Empire fell–or rather, its western half did. Its eastern half, which would come to be known as the Byzantine Empire, would endure and often flourish for another eleven centuries. Though its capital would move to Constantinople, its citizens referred to themselves as Roman for the entire duration of the empire’s existence. Indeed, so did its neighbors, allies, and enemies: When the Turkish Sultan Mehmet II conquered Constantinople in 1453, he took the title Caesar of Rome, placing himself in a direct line that led back to Augustus. For far too many otherwise historically savvy people today, the story of the Byzantine civilization is something of a void. Yet for more than a millennium, Byzantium reigned as the glittering seat of Christian civilization. When Europe fell into the Dark Ages, Byzantium held fast against Muslim expansion, keeping Christianity alive. When li...