This book covers a subject that has never previously been addressed, and yet it is both a fascinating and a provocative one: the representation of children in Byzantium. The visual material is extensive, intriguing and striking, and the historical context is crucially important to our understanding of Byzantine culture, social history and artistic output. The imagery explored is drawn from the fourth to the fifteenth centuries and encompasses media from manuscripts to mosaics and enamel. Part of the allure of this subject is that people do not associate childhood with Byzantium. Ernst Gombrich commented, 'who could find it easy, after a visit to Ravenna and its solemn mosaics, to think of noisy children in Byzantium?'. However, in Byzantium, patrons of art were often young, such as emperors who acceded to the throne as teenagers, and makers of art, sculptors, mosaicists, painters often began their training at an early age. How did this affect the creation, promotion and production of art? The study questions the definitions and perceptions of childhood, focusing on topics such as the family, saintly children and those associated with imperial power. Cecily Hennessy demonstrates that children are featured often in visual imagery and in key locations, indicating that they played a central role in Byzantine life, something which has previously been overlooked or ignored. In tackling this new subject she reveals important aspects of childhood, youth, and by extension adulthood in Byzantine society and raises issues that are also applicable to the present and to other historical contexts.

Essays exploring the influence of the sacred buildings of Jerusalem on architecture worldwide. Jerusalem - earthly and heavenly, past, present and future - has always informed the Christian imagination: it is the intersection of the divine and human worlds, of time and eternity. Since the fourth century, it has been the site of the round Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built over the empty tomb acknowledged by Constantine as the tomb of Christ. Nearly four hundred years later, the Sepulchre's rotunda was rivalled by the octagon of the Dome of the Rock. The city itself and these two glorious buildings within it remain, to this day, the focus of pilgrimage and of intense devotion. Jerusalem and its numinous buildings have been distinctively re-imagined and re-presented in the design, topography, decoration and dedications of some very striking and beautiful churches and cities in Western Europe, Russia, the Caucasus and Ethiopia. Some are famous, others are in the West almost unknown. The essays Inthis richly illustrated book combine to do justice to these evocative buildings' architecture, roles and history. The volume begins with an introduction to the Sepulchre itself, from its construction under Constantine to theCrusaders' rebuilding which survives to this day. Chapters follow on the Dome of the Rock and on the later depiction and signifcance of the Jewish Temple. The essays then move further afeld, uncovering the links between Jerusalemand Byzantium, the Caucasus, Russia and Ethiopia. Northern Europe comes finally into focus, with chapters on Charlemagne's chapel at Aachen, the role of the military orders in spreading the form of the Sepulchre, a gazetteer of English rounds, and studies of London's New Temple. ROBIN GRIFFITH-JONES is Master of the Temple at the Temple Church in London and Senior Lecturer (Theology and Religious Studies) at King's College London. He co-edited The Temple Church in London with David Park (2010). ERIC FERNIE is Director Emeritus of The Courtauld Institute of Art, London. Contributors: Alan Borg, Antony Eastmond, David Ekserdjian, Eric Fernie, Jaroslav Folda, Emmanuel Fritsch, Michael Gervers, Robin Griffith-Jones, Nicole Hamonic, Cecily Hennessy, Robert Hillenbrand, Catherine E. Hundley, Philip J. Lankester, Robin Milner-Gulland, Robert Ousterhout, David W. Phillipson, Denys Pringle, Sebastian Salvado.

Art historian, Cecily Hennessy, explores medieval Byzantine wall paintings in churches cut out of the beautiful landscape of central Turkey. Many of these were decorated by local artists, sometimes monks, or by the finest artists brought from other centres, such as Constantinople. This book is designed for both intrigued visitors and for those looking for art-historical information and understanding. It serves as a travel guide to the most important painted churches with numerous colour illustrations, plans and maps. It also encourages close examination of the painting, its meaning and its style and execution and provides background knowledge of Byzantine artistic and cultural practice.