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Modern historiography has become accustomed to portraying the
emperor Theophilos of Byzantium (829-842) in a favourable light,
taking at face value the legendary account that makes of him a
righteous and learned ruler, and excusing as ill fortune his
apparent military failures against the Muslims. The present book
considers events of the period that are crucial to our
understanding of the reign and argues for a more balanced
assessment of it. The focus lies on the impact of Oriental politics
on the reign of Theophilos, the last iconoclast emperor. After
introductory chapters, setting out the context in which he came to
power, separate sections are devoted to the influence of Armenians
at the court, the enrolment of Persian rebels against the caliphate
in the Byzantine army, the continuous warfare with the Arabs and
the cultural exchange with Baghdad, the Khazar problem, and the
attitude of the Christian Melkites towards the iconoclast emperor.
The final chapter reassesses the image of the emperor as a good
ruler, building on the conclusions of the previous sections. The
book reinterprets major events of the period and their chronology,
and sets in a new light the role played by figures like Thomas the
Slav, Manuel the Armenian or the Persian Theophobos, whose identity
is established from a better understanding of the sources.
The papers in this volume derive from the 28th Spring Symposium of
Byzantine Studies, held for the Society for the promotion of
Byzantine Studies at the Univesity of Birmingham in March 1994.
Virtually from the time of their first foundation, the monastic
communities of Mt Athos assumed a central position in the world of
Orthodox Christianity. The spiritual, and political and economic
influence of the Holy Mountain soon transcended the boundaries of
the Byzantine empire within which it lay, to take on a
supra-national importance and become one of the pillars of
Orthodoxy after the fall of the empire. For the historian, the
significance of Mt Athos is enhanced by the fact that its archives
contain the most substanial body of Byzantine documentation to have
survived the Middle Ages, and its libraries, treasuries and
buildings have preserved much that has elsewhere been lost. These
archives are now largely edited, and investigation of the art and
archaeology is yielding substantial evidence. The papers in this
volume, by an international set of scholars, embody the fruits of
this research. Starting from Athos itself, they embrace the whole
phenomenon of Byzantine monasticism, dealing with questions of
asceticism, authority, community, economy, enlightenment,
fortification, hesychasm, liturgy, manuscripts, music, patronage,
scandal, spirituality, and women (to take an alphabetical sample).
Together these papers provide a coherent and immediate view of
scholarship in the field.
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