Byzantine News

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In the Department of History of Ghent University (Belgium), a post-doctoral position is available for four years (consisting of two two-year periods), as part of an ERC-funded research project on late antique historiography (A.D. 300-800). The project will a) establish a complete inventory of late ancient historiography; b) produce editions of fragmentary texts; c) study medieval compilations; and d) situate late-antique historiography in its cultural and literary context. Your profile: You possess a Ph.D. in a relevant discipline (or will possess one by 30/9/2013) and have an excellent knowledge of Classical Arabic and, if possible, knowledge of Syriac. Acquaintance with Greek and/or languages such as Coptic and Armenian constitutes an advantage. You have an interest in historiography, literature, and their wider historical and cultural context. You are able to work independently, but can also work in a team. --> Your duties: You will be given the chance to write a mo...

Review by Catherine Holmes: Historical writing was one of the most significant forms of cultural production in Byzantium. Certainly there were times of fat and times of thin, with some periods (e.g., the late eleventh century) rich in historical narratives, and others (especially the seventh and eighth centuries) rather more impoverished; but despite these ups and downs, it is clear that histories were compiled, annotated, simplified, complicated, reissued and updated across the Byzantine centuries. That there was variety, quantity, and sometimes real quality in Byzantine history writing is not in dispute. More curious, however, is the fact that Byzantine historiography has received so little sustained scholarly analysis. Social and political historians have habitually approached Byzantine histories with the rather limited aim of sifting solid nuggets of "fact" out of a superfluous chaff of literary allusions, digressions and distortions (a point made forcefully by Ruth Macr...

A comprehensive 12-year investigation headed by Tübingen historian, Professor Mischa Meier into the Chronographia of the Byzantine historiographer Ioannes Malalas (a Greek chronicler from Antioch born around 490 AD) will begin in 2013. “This project marks the end of a long period of rejection of Byzantine historical writings,” says Mischa Meier, “The texts were considered mediocre literature, written by unscholarly monks who simply parroted older sources – making ridiculous mistakes along the way. But now we recognize how very important this text is. The aim now is not just to make Ioannes Malalas accessible as the “father” of all Byzantine chroniclers – it is also to make new discoveries about the treatment of the past in the critical period between Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages, using a key example.” Read more here . (via @Archaeologybbe )

Heroes and Romans in Twelfth-Century Byzantium: The Material for History of Nikephoros Bryennios : Nikephoros Bryennios' history of the Byzantine Empire in the 1070s is a story of civil war and aristocratic rebellion in the midst of the Turkish conquest of Anatolia. Commonly remembered as the passive and unambitious husband of Princess Anna Komnene (author of the Alexiad), Bryennios is revealed as a skilled author whose history draws on cultural memories of classical Roman honor and proper masculinity to evaluate the politicians of the 1070s and implicitly to exhort his twelfth-century contemporaries to honorable behavior. Bryennios' story valorizes the memory of his grandfather and other honorable, but failed, generals of the eleventh century while subtly portraying the victorious Alexios Komnenos as un-Roman. This reading of the Material for History sheds new light on twelfth-century Byzantine culture and politics, especially the contested accession of John Komnenos, the r...

Niketas or Nicetas Choniates (Νικήτας Χωνιάτης, ca. 1155 to 1215 or 1216), sometimes called Acominatos, was a Greek historian – like his brother Michael Acominatus, whom he accompanied from their birthplace Chonae to Constantinople. Nicetas wrote a history of the Eastern Roman Empire from 1118 to 1207. Nicetas Choniates was born to wealthy parents around or after 1150 in Phrygia in the city of Chonae (near the modern Honaz in Turkey). Bishop Nicetas of Chonae baptized and named the infant; later he was called "Choniates" after his birthplace. When he was nine, his father dispatched him with his brother Michael to Constantinople to receive an education. Niketas' older brother greatly influenced him during the early stages of his life. He initially took up politics as a career, and held important appointments under the Angelus emperors (amongst them that of Grand Logothete or Chancellor) and was governor of the theme of Philippopolis at a critical period. After the capt...

PLGO is hosting links to the 50 volumes of the Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae, the 19th c edition of many interesting Greek texts. Click  here   to access the collection.

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...