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Although perceived since the sixteenth century as the most
impressive literary achievement of Byzantine culture, historical
writing nevertheless remains little studied as literature.
Historical texts are still read first and foremost for nuggets of
information, as main sources for the reconstruction of the events
of Byzantine history. Whatever can be called literary in these
works has been considered as external and detachable from the
facts. The 'classical tradition' inherited by Byzantine writers,
the features that Byzantine authors imitated and absorbed, are
regarded as standing in the way of understanding the true meaning
of the text and, furthermore, of contaminating the reliability of
the history. Chronicles, whose language and style are anything but
classicizing, have been held in low esteem, for they are seen as
providing a mere chronological exposition of events. This book
presents a set of articles by an international cast of
contributors, deriving from papers delivered at the 40th annual
Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies. They are concerned with
historical and visual narratives that date from the sixth to the
fourteenth century, and aim to show that literary analyses and the
study of pictorial devices, far from being tangential to the study
of historical texts, are preliminary to their further study,
exposing the deeper structures and purposes of these texts.
The work known as Pseudo-Kodinos, the fourteenth-century text which
is one of two surviving ceremonial books from the Byzantine empire,
is presented here for the first time in English translation. With
facing page Greek text and the first in-depth analysis in the form
of commentary and individual studies on the hierarchy, the
ceremonies, court attire, the Blachernai palace, lighting, music,
gestures and postures, this volume makes an important new
contribution to the study of the Byzantine court, and to the
history and culture of Byzantium more broadly. The unique traits of
this ceremony book include the combination of hierarchical lists of
court officials with protocols of ceremonies; a detailed
description of the clothing used at court, in particular, hats and
staffs; an account of the functions of the court title holders, a
description of the ceremonies of the year which take place both
inside the palace and outside; the service of the megas domestikos
in the army, protocols for the coronation of the emperor, the
promotions of despot, sebastokrator and caesar, of the patriarch; a
description of the mourning attire of the emperor; protocol for the
reception of a foreign bride in Constantinople all these are
analysed here. Developments in ceremonial since the tenth-century
Book of Ceremonies are discussed, as is the space in which
ceremonial was performed, along with a new interpretation of the
'other palace', the Blachernai. The text reveals the anonymous
authors' interest in the past, in the origins of practices and
items of clothing, but it is argued that Pseudo-Kodinos presents
descriptions of actual practice at the Byzantine court, rather than
prescriptions.
Although perceived since the sixteenth century as the most
impressive literary achievement of Byzantine culture, historical
writing nevertheless remains little studied as literature.
Historical texts are still read first and foremost for nuggets of
information, as main sources for the reconstruction of the events
of Byzantine history. Whatever can be called literary in these
works has been considered as external and detachable from the
facts. The 'classical tradition' inherited by Byzantine writers,
the features that Byzantine authors imitated and absorbed, are
regarded as standing in the way of understanding the true meaning
of the text and, furthermore, of contaminating the reliability of
the history. Chronicles, whose language and style are anything but
classicizing, have been held in low esteem, for they are seen as
providing a mere chronological exposition of events. This book
presents a set of articles by an international cast of
contributors, deriving from papers delivered at the 40th annual
Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies. They are concerned with
historical and visual narratives that date from the sixth to the
fourteenth century, and aim to show that literary analyses and the
study of pictorial devices, far from being tangential to the study
of historical texts, are preliminary to their further study,
exposing the deeper structures and purposes of these texts.
The work known as Pseudo-Kodinos, the fourteenth-century text which
is one of two surviving ceremonial books from the Byzantine empire,
is presented here for the first time in English translation. With
facing page Greek text and the first in-depth analysis in the form
of commentary and individual studies on the hierarchy, the
ceremonies, court attire, the Blachernai palace, lighting, music,
gestures and postures, this volume makes an important new
contribution to the study of the Byzantine court, and to the
history and culture of Byzantium more broadly. The unique traits of
this ceremony book include the combination of hierarchical lists of
court officials with protocols of ceremonies; a detailed
description of the clothing used at court, in particular, hats and
staffs; an account of the functions of the court title holders, a
description of the ceremonies of the year which take place both
inside the palace and outside; the service of the megas domestikos
in the army, protocols for the coronation of the emperor, the
promotions of despot, sebastokrator and caesar, of the patriarch; a
description of the mourning attire of the emperor; protocol for the
reception of a foreign bride in Constantinople all these are
analysed here. Developments in ceremonial since the tenth-century
Book of Ceremonies are discussed, as is the space in which
ceremonial was performed, along with a new interpretation of the
'other palace', the Blachernai. The text reveals the anonymous
authors' interest in the past, in the origins of practices and
items of clothing, but it is argued that Pseudo-Kodinos presents
descriptions of actual practice at the Byzantine court, rather than
prescriptions.
This is the first English translation and study of George
Akropolites' History, the main Greek source for the history of
Byzantium between 1204 and 1261. Akropolites relates what happened
to Byzantium after the Latin conquest of its capital,
Constantinople, by the Fourth Crusade in 1204. He narrates the
fragmentation of the Byzantine world, describing how the newly
established 'empire' in Anatolia prevailed over its foreign and
Byzantine enemies to recapture the capital in 1261. Akropolites was
an eyewitness to most of the events he relates and a man close to
the emperors he served, and his account has therefore influenced
modern perceptions of this period. It has been an essential source
for all those studying the eastern Mediterranean in the thirteenth
century. However, until now historians have made use of his History
without knowing anything about its author. Ruth Macrides remedies
this deficiency by providing a detailed guide to Akropolites' work
and an analysis of its composition, which places it in the context
of medieval Greek historical writing.
The contributions to this volume have been selected from the papers
delivered at the 34th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies at
Birmingham, in April 2000. Travellers to and in the Byzantine world
have long been a subject of interest but travel and communications
in the medieval period have more recently attracted scholarly
attention. This book is the first to bring together these two lines
of enquiry. Four aspects of travel in the Byzantine world, from the
sixth to the fifteenth century, are examined here: technicalities
of travel on land and sea, purposes of travel, foreign visitors'
perceptions of Constantinople, and the representation of the travel
experience in images and in written accounts. Sources used to
illuminate these four aspects include descriptions of journeys,
pilot books, bilingual word lists, shipwrecks, monastic documents,
but as the opening paper shows the range of such sources can be far
wider than generally supposed. The contributors highlight road and
travel conditions for horses and humans, types of ships and speed
of sea journeys, the nature of trade in the Mediterranean, the
continuity of pilgrimage to the Holy Land, attitudes toward travel.
Patterns of communication in the Mediterranean are revealed through
distribution of ceramic finds, letter collections, and the spread
of the plague. Together, these papers make a notable contribution
to our understanding both of the evidence for travel, and of the
realities and perceptions of communications in the Byzantine world.
Travel in the Byzantine World is volume 10 in the series published
by Ashgate/Variorum on behalf of the Society for the Promotion of
Byzantine Studies.
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