This study concerns an inventory of books, dated 1428/29, inscribed in Sofia, Dujčev gr. 253 (olim Kosinitsa 265), fol. 290r. Although the text was obscurely published in 1886, the vicissitudes of this codex over the following century impeded further research and the inventory continues to be overlooked in studies of Byzantine libraries, books and reading. A new edition, furnishing corrections and filling lacunae, together with a first translation and palaeographical analysis, provide a foundation for introducing this rare document and (...) re-evaluating its context and significance. While the limited prior scholarship generally presumed compilation in a monastic library in 1428/29 and pursued inquiries based on that surmise, examination of Dujčev gr. 253 draws attention to annotations by a member of the Laskaris Leontares family, dated 1431-1437,which place the codex in private possession during this period. A survey of thirteen extant codices variously connected to this distinguished aristocratic dynasty, c.1400 - 1455, elucidates acquisition, ownership and use of books in this socio-cultural milieu, with particular reference to this family’s history and social networks. Comparative assessment of this sample of thirteen codices and the 21 items recorded in the book-list of 1428/29 affirms the view that it relates to a private rather than an institutional library and distinguishes its potential value for investigating aristocratic book culture in the late Byzantine era. (shrink)

Recently, seminal publications highlighted the Romanitas of the Byzantines. However, it is not without importance that from the 12th century onwards the ethnonym Hellene (Ἓλλην) became progressively more popular. A number of influential intellectuals and political actors preferred the term Hellene to identify themselves, instead of the formal Roman (Ρωμαῖος) and the common Greek (Γραικός). While I do not intend to challenge the prevalence of the Romanitas during the long Byzantine era, I suggest that we should reevaluate the emerging (...) importance of Hellenitas in the shaping of collective and individual identities after the 12th century. From the 13th to the 16th century, Byzantine scholars attempted to recreate a collective identity based on cultural and historical continuity and otherness. In this paper, I will seek to explore the ways Byzantine scholars of the Late Byzantine and Post Byzantine era, who lived in the territories of the Byzantine Empire and/or in Italy, perceived national identity, and to show that the shift towards Hellenitas started in the Greek-speaking East. (shrink)

Child analysis has occupied a special place in the history of psychoanalysis because of the challenges it poses to practitioners and the clashes it has provoked among its advocates. Since the early days in Vienna under Sigmund Freud child psychoanalysts have tried to comprehend and make comprehensible to others the psychosomatic troubles of childhood and to adapt clinical and therapeutic approaches to all the stages of development of the baby, the child, the adolescent and the young adult. Claudine and (...) Pierre Geissmann trace the history and development of child analysis over the last century and assess the contributions made by pioneers of the discipline, whose efforts to expand its theoretical foundations led to conflict between schools of thought, most notably to the rift between Anna Freud and Melanie Klein. Now taught and practised widely in Europe, the USA and South America, child and adolescent psychoanalysis is unique in the insight it gives into the psychological aspects of child development, and in the therapeutic benefits it can bring both to the child and its family. (shrink)

The Institute of Social Research, from which the Frankfurt School developed, was founded in the early years of the Weimar Republic. It survived the Nazi era in exile, to become an important centre of social theory in the postwar era. Early members of the school, such as Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse, developed a form of Marxist theory known as Critical Theory, which became influential in the study of class, politics, culture and ideology. The work of more recent members, and in (...) particular Habermas, has received wide attention throughout Europe and North America. Tom Bottomore's study takes a new and controversial look at the contributions of the Frankfurt School to modern sociology, examining several issues not previously discussed elsewhere. He discusses the neglect of history and political economy by the critical theorists, and considers the relationship of the later Frankfurt School to the radical movements of the 1960s and the present time. His critical analysis makes the school's writers accessible, through an assessment of their work and an exploration of the relationship of Critical Theory to other forms of sociological thought, especially positivism and structuralism. (shrink)

This article examines the Byzantine responses to the battlefield tactics followed by the armies of the Turkoman chiefdoms during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The most characteristic example reflecting the difficulties faced by the Byzantine army when confronted by the Turkomans is the battle of Pelekanos, in the gulf of Nikomedia. It was fought in 1329 between the Byzantines under the command of the emperor Andronikos III (1328–1341), and the Ottomans whose leader was Orhan (1326–1362). The outcome of (...) this battle typifies the inability of the late Byzantine armies to deal effectively with the Turkoman cavalry archers, despite the instructions given by the military treatises which were compiled in the earlier periods of Byzantine history, despite the experience of fighting against enemies of similar nature in the past, and despite the fact that generals such as Kantakouzenos possessed a good knowledge of the fighting methods of the Turkomans. This article argues that the inability of the Byzantines to adjust to the demands of the battlefield tactics of the Turkoman warriors was a combination of many factors. The loss of Asia Minor deprived Byzantium of its main source of competent archers. The Byzantines relied on heavy cavalry which, although it proved ineffective against the Turkomans, was the symbol of exalted status of members of the aristocracy. Moreover, stereotyped views about the Turkomans affected the performance of the Byzantines on the battlefield. It seems that Byzantine generals, even if they knew the fighting methods of the Turkomans, very often could not fully understand the strength of their armies. This article concludes that the failure to react successfully to the battlefield tactics of the Turkomans could be partly described as a failure of cultural adaptation, reinforced by stereotypes about ‘barbarians.’. (shrink)

Die überarbeitete Wiener Dissertation erhebt den Anspruch, einen grundsätzlichen Fortschritt in der Forschung darzustellen. Stathakopoulos (S.) geht es darum, die Bedeutung von Versorgungskrisen und epidemischen Krankheiten im spätantik-frühbyzantinischen Reich während eines Zeitraumes von 284 bis 750 herauszuarbeiten. Sein Buch soll dabei einen gesunden Mittelweg zwischen allzu großer Vernachlässigung dieser Faktoren und unkritischer Sensationshistorie beschreiten – der Verf. lehnt in diesem Fall insbesondere die übertriebenen und nur wenig fundierten Thesen von D. Keys mit Recht ab (2). Es handele sich, so S. (...) über seine Arbeit, um die erste Behandlung der Spätantike unter dem Blickwinkel von Hungerkrisen und Epidemien; seine Untersuchung basiere „on an exhaustive catalogue recording all such phenomena from 284 to 750. It is meant to offer a complementary view of this period beyond the turmoil of political and military history, and comments on themes such as continuity and change of social and economic structures and mentalities“ (2). Damit versucht S. zentrale Fragen anzugehen und in aktuellen Diskussionen Stellung zu beziehen. Der Autor hat neben den literarischen Quellen auch das epigraphische und papyrologische Material herangezogen (vgl. 10f.) und weist mehrfach darauf hin, wichtige Anregungen aus der Annales-Schule erhalten zu haben (etwa 4, 12). Ebenso selbstbewußt wird das Ziel der Untersuchung dargelegt: „We can, however, expect that certain patterns concerning the causes, effects and reaction within the phenomenon, or combinations of the above that are common in many cases will emerge – in short, that a typology of crises will be revealed“ (13f.). (shrink)

La tarda antichità fu un periodo di profondi cambiamenti che coinvolse l’Europa, il mediterraneo e il cosiddetto Vicino Oriente, dal IV-V al VII-VIII secolo. Questo paradigma è ormai ampiamente utilizzato negli studi islamici, dagli studi coranici, dove Angelika Neuwirth ha ampiamente scritto sul tema delle basi bibliche della rivelazione coranica come manifestazione dello scritturalismo tardo antico, agli studi storici relativi al Corano e all’Arabia preislamica, come nel libro di Aziz al-Azmeh _The Emergence of Islam in Late Antiquity_, che riprende (...) il filone di studi instaurato da Julius Wellhausen e Toufic Fahd. Sono pienamente d’accordo con la necessità di inserire l’Islam, la sua nascita e il suo sviluppo storico, religioso e filosofico nel contesto della tarda antichità, ma è necessario sottolineare quali temi hanno fatto dell’Islam una nuova religione rispetto al giudaismo e al cristianesimo. Questo è il tema del presente articolo che si articola nei seguenti momenti: 1) una breve rassegna critica della letteratura sulla tarda antichità; 2) il rapporto tra gli imperi – romano, bizantino e sasanide – della tarda antichità e il trionfo del monoteismo; 3) il concetto di _hanifiyya_. La conclusione è che il messaggio coranico trasmesso da Maometto ha diviso la storia in due parti: prima e dopo la venuta della _verità_. Late Antiquity describes a period of profound transformations that involved Europe, the Mediterranean world and the so-called Near East, from IV-V to VII-VIII centuries. This paradigm has now become widely used in Islamic studies, from Qurʾānic studies, where Angelika Neuwirth has extensively published in the past on the subject of the biblical underpinnings of the Qurʾānic revelation as a manifestation of late antique scripturalism, to historical studies related to the Qurʾān and pre-Islamic Arabia, as in Aziz al-Azmeh’s book _The Emergence of Islam in Late Antiquity_, which takes up the trend of scholarship established by Julius Wellhausen and Toufic Fahd. I completely agree with the need to put Islam and its historical, religious, philosophical birth and development in the context of the Late Antiquity, but what is at stake is to emphasize which themes made Islam a new religion with respect to Judaism and Christianity. This is the focus of the present paper which deals with: 1) a brief critical survey of the literature on Late Antiquity; 2) the relationship between the empires – Roman, Byzantine and Sasanid – of Late Antiquity and the triumph of monotheism; 3) the concept of _hanifiyya_. The conclusion is that the Qurʾānic message conveyed by Muhammad broke the history into two parts: before and after the coming of _truth_. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Cambridge History of Philosophy in Late AntiquityJohn RistLloyd P. Gerson, editor. The Cambridge History of Philosophy in Late Antiquity. 2 vols. Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Pp. 1313. Cloth, $240.00.1313 pages, including 915 pages of text and 200 of bibliography; 51 authors—in about 800 words! The editor of the present Cambridge History makes plain that his new two-volume monument is the (...) successor to Armstrong’s Cambridge History of Late Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy—8 contributors—and is intended to build on its strengths and correct its deficiencies in the light of some 40 years of highly successful investigation of the thought of late antiquity. The result is a professional structure in which the “giants” (Plotinus and Augustine) are awarded comparatively modest coverage, while figures often neglected, such as Damascius, of whom our understanding has greatly increased of late, are given much more space. Damascius secures 30 pages: the only individual to get more is Porphyry (33), while Augustine has 29 and Plotinus 24 (four more than Hierocles). There are those (as Tacitus might have put it) who will fear that the wood has been lost for the trees, and at least it must be said that one overall impression of these volumes is that some of their authors are recounting what will be of interest to a worldwide group of aficionados whose number can be counted on the fingers of a mutilated hand—and the importance of which lies less in philosophical achievement than in the handing on of a great tradition.Gilbert Ryle is supposed to have asserted that in France everyone can talk about philosophy but that there are no philosophers; some of Gerson’s more philosophically minded readers may find their prejudices confirmed that in late antiquity there were many who talked about Plato and Aristotle but few who understood what they were trying to do. For it is clear that a general theme of the present volumes is that in late antiquity philosophers were largely concerned to “interpret” Plato and (especially after Porphyry) Aristotle while occasionally seizing the opportunity not merely to rubbish their similarly-engaged predecessors but to add (if shamefacedly) something of their own. Except, that is, for the Christians, whose enterprise was very different and who, quite properly, are more visible in Gerson’s account of late antique thought than in that of Armstrong (though there remain strange omissions in a work on this scale: Methodius, Ambrose, Evagrius).Gerson has tried to contextualize his story by including short (and helpful) historical introductions by Elizabeth DePalma Digeser to the various epochs with which his volumes are concerned, and which can perhaps be divided into four sections: pre-Plotinian Platonism [End Page 136] (plus extras) from Cicero to Numenius; later pagan Platonism, including extensive treatment of the Neoplatonic commentators on Aristotle; Christian thought before Constantine; and later Christian philosophy-cum-theology. Rounding off the volume are introductions to the transition from “ancient” to “medieval” thought in the Latin West (Gersh), in Byzantium—a remarkably honest presentation of a largely stagnant philosophical world by Ierodiakonou and Zografidis—and (in a magisterial improvement on what is to be found in Armstrong) in Islam (Cristina d’Ancona) where (inter multa alia) the roots of the virtually inevitable later destruction of a flourishing philosophical tradition founded by al-Kindi and al-Farabi are identified in the more “orthodox” and theocratic approach—here there are Byzantine parallels—of the followers of al-Ash’ari (885).Gerson’s readers can inspect philosophical wisdom and conceptual muddle among late antique intellectuals—Christians, a few Muslims, pagans—down to Scotus Eriugena and al-Farabi. But some of them may suspect that an opportunity has been lost to reflect on the origins and nature of early Christian thought, and to ask why Christians soon jumped for Platonism rather than Stoicism (Aristotle, let alone Epicurus, was not—yet—considered a serious option)—and that is not intended as criticism of the excellent, if brief, treatment of important Christian thinkers such as Origen. But it was an adventure for Christians to begin to philosophize, and when they embarked on this adventure—here the significance... (shrink)

This article presents the first comprehensive study of Syriac rhetoric in late antiquity. It builds on existing scholarship on the Syrians’ engagement with Graeco-Roman paideia and Christian rhetoric, but it also goes further in that it draws attention to the Syrians’ participation in Near Eastern rhetorical traditions (mainly transmitted through Aramaic) and in the rhetoric of the Hebrew Bible, which was translated into Syriac without Greek intermediaries. At the same time, this article demonstrates that Syriac rhetoric flourished in distinctive (...) and original ways: It developed its own literary genres (with a strong predilection for poetry and a sensibility for gendered voices), performative settings (including the liturgy and the school), and thematic domains (notably Scriptural exegesis and religious controversy). It is especially remarkable that an elaborate “meta-rhetorical” reflection flourished in Syriac, as it first emerged in the work by Antony of Tagrit in the ninth century and in the broader context of late antique and Byzantine Aristotelianism. This comprehensive survey and its conceptual systematisation are designed to facilitate further research on Syriac rhetoric both during late antiquity and in later centuries, when the Syrians’ interaction with Arabic rhetoric came to play an increasingly influential role.Syriac words are given in a simplified transcription. For consonants, the standard system in use for Semitic languages is followed; spirantisation of b g k p t is marked by v gh kh f th respectively. East Syrian vocalisation is generally adopted unless the words are quoted from a West Syrian author; vowel length is not marked, with the exception of a/ā and e/ē in Eastern Syriac. (shrink)

Despite the growing body of excavation finds and the steady publication of museum collections, the numismatic evidence remains an underutilized historical source. Historians who study Late Antiquity rely on archaeological evidence but tend to ignore coin finds, partly because numismatics developed as an independent field with its own set of specialized tools and research questions. Insufficient dialogue between the disciplines has delayed a proper appreciation of Early Byzantine coins as historical source and the development of a clear methodology (...) for their use in conjunction with the literary and archaeological evidence. In order to overcome such disciplinary divides, this paper proposes several research directions by highlighting the main benefits of integrating the numismatic evidence more fully into the historical narrative. These research directions include a greater emphasis on bronze coinage, the study of the long-distance circulation of people and goods, and distinctions between urban, rural, and fortified contexts. This methodological discussion is followed by a case study from Byzantium’s Lower Danube frontier. (shrink)

The Byzantine dreambook known in the tradition as The Oneirocriticon of Achmet has had a long and influential history both in its field and in scholarship. It is the longest of the eight surviving Byzantine books on dream interpretation, and most likely also the oldest. It was compiled during the Macedonian renaissance—specifically, the two termini of 843 and 1075 can be established—possibly in the reign of Leo VI (r. 886–912), to whom it may have been dedicated, and (...) possibly through the influence of his Arab minister Samonas. It was translated early into Latin, in 1176 (by contrast, the famous ancient dreambook of Artemidorus was not translated until 1539), and “through this translation found its way into several European and vernacular languages from the late thirteenth century onward” (p. 4). The scholarly study of the work began in 1577, with the preface Johann Loewenklau wrote for his Latin translation of the Greek text, and continued apace to this day. The book by Maria Mavroudi under review here, from which this information is taken (chapter 1), is the latest in a long series of studies. It is also the most exhaustive and meticulous in its research and the first fully to take into account, in a professional and exemplary manner, the Arabic sources of the work. Exhaustive, but perhaps also exhausting—one may object that 471 pages of text (exclusive of prefatory material and bibliographies and indices) for a study of a mere dreambook may be too many, though apparently necessary, for Mavroudi's book contends against the weight of previous scholarship and offers much needed correctives. (shrink)

The Discriptio Hispaniae is a passage from the Geometry of Gisemundus, also entitled Ars Gromatica Gisemundi, a medieval treatise of agrimensura written by an unknown author, probably a monk known as Gisemundus who had some agrimensorial experience. The work was compiled around AD 800 by collecting passages of a range of sizes, from just a few words to several pages, extracted from ancient and medieval sources. Although modern research into Roman agrimensorial texts has admitted the importance of the AGG, its (...) corrupt condition has not invited sustained analysis. The passage now known as the Discriptio Hispaniae, a short section from chapter three of the second book of the AGG entitled III De segregatione provinciarum ab Augustalibus terminis, is particularly interesting for the information that it provides concerning the territorial division of Hispania in Late Antiquity. This article presents an edition and English translation of the Discriptio Hispaniae and argues that the most likely point of origin for the Discriptio Hispaniae is during the Byzantine occupation of parts of southern Spain during the second half of the sixth century and the first quarter of the seventh century. We suggest that the Discriptio Hispaniae was preserved because the Byzantine authorities were keen to keep on record information about the borders of the province of Carthaginensis, perhaps the main theme in the text. (shrink)

It is widely known that one of the projects that was most preoccupying the late, and much regretted, Alexander Kazhdan in his latter years was a study of Byzantine literature that would bring this field into the modern era. For far too long Byzantine literature, he asserted, had been encased in the strait-jacket imposed by Krumbacher's magisterial Geschichte. Byzantinists were constrained by a Handbuch mentality whose bonds had been confirmed by the three volumes that replaced Krumbacher's single (...) tome: Beck on ‘Theologische Literatur’ and ‘Volksliteratur’ and Hunger on high-style secular literature. However humane the tone might appear at times in these reference works (Hunger's contributions being particularly noteworthy), nothing could disguise the fact that these books were taxonomic catalogues. Byzantium's literary output was categorised by genre, genres largely imposed by modern historians and not necessarily recognisable to any Byzantine: authors were disposed under a series of at times arbitrary divisions and it was virtually impossible to have a sense of any individual's total output; Psellos was perhaps the most notoriously splintered example. Furthermore, the content of these catalogues was resolutely pragmatic: names, dates, works, editions, contents. Qualitative assessments were eschewed, there was little interpretation of literary movements. (shrink)

The Science Museum, London, has recently acquired four fragments of a portable sundial with associated calendrical gearing. All the fragments are made of low zinc brass of substantially the same composition. The sundial is of a type known in other examples, some the products of recent archaeological excavations and all dated to the Late Antique or Early Byzantine period. Dating by the place names included in the latitude table, by the style of the heads of the planetary gods (...) used to identify the days of the week, and by the style of the script, all indicate that the instrument dates from the late fifth century of the Christian era or the first half of the sixth.The gearing, of which two arbors survive, carrying four toothed wheels and one ratchet, seems to have resembled that of a calendrical device described by al-Bīrūnī in about AD 1000. Like al-Bīrūnī's device and the geared calendar associated with a Persian astrolabe of AD 1221/2 now in the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford, the Byzantine instrument displayed the shape of the Moon and its age in days. Probably the calendar further resembled its Islamic counterparts in also displaying the positions of Sun and Moon in the Zodiac.The emergence of Byzantine mathematical gearing indicates that the Hellenistic tradition attested by the Antikythera machine continued to be active in the Byzantine period, and suggests that it may have influenced the Islamic tradition. Once again an artefact has shown up the inadequacy of the evidence derived from literary sources. (shrink)

There is a long tradition of considering the lesser Byzantine historical texts - those not written in the classicizing narrative style of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Procopius - as the products of a continuous development from Hellenistic and late antique chronicles. As a result, they are all still called chronicles in spite of the fact that the only characteristics they share with earlier chronicles and one another is their condensed and ‘universal’ approach to history. In reality, there were (...) only a very few true Byzantine chronicles, while all the other so-called chronicles developed from other Hellenistic and Roman genres into six distinct groups of texts that are completely unrelated to chronicles, apart from some content. This analysis is founded primarily upon the structure of and use of chronology by these texts, which are all represented by lengthy quotations that readers can compare for themselves. (shrink)

If today the archaeological investigation of Graeco-Roman sites no longer begins with the wholesale destruction of the late antique strata, much of the credit should go to the exemplary American excavations conducted from 1931 onwards in the Athenian agora. And yet, in part because the late antique city's heart shifted eastwards, away from the classical agora towards an area that has been only partially excavated, we still have no monograph on late Roman and early Byzantine Athens—and (...) that despite the current fashion for historico-archaeological studies of the evolving urban tissue. As for the even newer fashion for archaeological survey, which has produced impressive results in neighbouring Boeotia, it will inevitably pass the immediate Athens region by, thanks to its extensive urbanization in the past thirty years. It is worth remembering, though, that if a quarter of the Athenian's horizon is the familiar and all-important sea, three quarters are mountain. On Parnes, Pentelicus and Hymettus, with their fortresses, watch-towers and sacred caves, one can still catch echoes of a lost rural world in constant interaction with the nearby city. As a contribution to the research on ‘city and countryside’ that is the natural synthesis of urban history and rural survey, it seems worthwhile to consider what can presently be known about the relation between late antique Athens and its neighbouring mountains. (shrink)

Origen has been always studied as a theologian and too much credit has been given to Eusebius’ implausible hagiography of him. This book explores who Origen really was, by pondering into his philosophical background, which determines his theological exposition implicitly, yet decisively. For this background to come to light, it took a ground-breaking exposition of Anaxagoras’ philosophy and its legacy to Classical and Late Antiquity, assessing critically Aristotle’s distorted representation of Anaxagoras. Origen, formerly a Greek philosopher of note, whom (...) Proclus styled an anti-Platonist, is placed in the history of philosophy for the first time. By drawing on his Anaxagorean background, and being the first to revive the Anaxagorean Theory of Logoi, he paved the way to Nicaea. He was an anti-Platonist because he was an Anaxagorean philosopher with far-reaching influence, also on Neoplatonists such as Porphyry. His theology made an impact not only on the Cappadocians, but also on later Christian authors. His theory of the soul, now expounded in the light of his philosophical background, turns out more orthodox than that of some Christian stars of the Byzantine imperial orthodoxy. (shrink)

This short essay presents four 11th century A.D. Byzantine lead seals, all of which are stored in the local museum of Kırşehir, in ancient Cappadocia, which is located today in southeastern part of central Turkey. The Museum of Kırşehir owns a minor collection of at least 13 Byzantine lead seals and a selection of four unpublished seals is being presented, which were sold to the museum by local antique dealers from the Turkish provinces of Kırşehir and Aksaray. All (...) of the seals are dated to the late 10th and early or mid-11th centuries A.D. No. 1 is an overstruck seal with a parallel piece which is a very unique specimen and raises some sigillographic and prosopographic questions. The three other seals are discussed with a focus to Byzantine dignitaries and their offices during the 11th century A.D. The descriptive discussion at the beginning briefly touches upon a some geographical and historical issues related to Kırşehir and its museum. This small collection of seals provides important evidence regarding the seal owners and the administration of the themes of Cappadocia and Charsianon on the eastern border of the Byzantine Empire. The paper offers a substantive analysis of the material, with a discussion and resolution of the sigillographic inscriptions and imagery. (shrink)

The Pythagorean Life is the most extensive surviving source on Pythagoreanism, and has wider interest as an account of the religious aspirations of late antiquity. "...admirably clear translation and sensible introduction"--The Classical...

Schubert's late music has proved pivotal for the development of diverse fields of musical scholarship, from biography and music history to the theory of harmony. This collection addresses current issues in Schubert studies including compositional technique, the topical issue of 'late' style, tonal strategy and form in the composer's instrumental music, and musical readings of the 'postmodern' Schubert. Offering fresh approaches to Schubert's instrumental and vocal works and their reception, this book argues that the music that the (...) composer produced from 1822–8 is central to a paradigm shift in the history of music during the nineteenth century. The contributors provide a timely reassessment of Schubert's legacy, assembling a portrait of the composer that is very different from the sentimental Schubert permeating nineteenth-century culture and the postmodern Schubert of more recent literature. (shrink)

By focusing on the known details of Laonikos Chalkokondyles’ biography, on his relation to Byzantine historiographical tradition, by comparing his historical work to that of contemporary intellectuals living under the Ottomans as well as those in the west, examining his portrayal of Mehmed II, his adoption of a Herodotean model, the revival of Herodotus in the Renaissance more generally, and the reception of the ᾿Aπόδειξις in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, I argue that Laonikos was writing for an elite (...) circle of Byzantine émigrés and other intellectuals with access to classical Greek in the west, rather than for the post- Byzantine intellectuals associated with the Ottoman court. (shrink)

In 1396 an inventory of the treasury of Hagia Sophia was commissioned. It was written by three educated laymen who all had experience of court culture, and they listed some 180 items. Their descriptions of the few icons that they listed is of interest for several reasons: they do not mention the date or period of the icons, nor their style, condition, size, donors or any inscriptions that they displayed. Their only way of describing them was by the title of (...) the subject of each icon. This suggests that, at any rate for laymen, the subject of an icon was of overwhelming importance, and this factor alone was thought to be sufficient to identify an icon in an inventory of this kind. (shrink)

Although environmental history has emerged as a distinct historical field only since the late 1960s, it has a long ancestry. The idea that human society (and hence history) is affected by physical environment can be traced back as far as ancient Greece; ideas of climatic and geographical determinism were also widespread in the eighteenth and nineteenth century Europe. Modern environmental history has, however, been shaped by the development of historical geography and agrarian history, by attempts (...) to establish a more scientific basis for history, and, more recently, by growing concern about environmental degradation. Modern environmental history can also be understood as part of a wider reaction against an older history of nations, states and “great men and women”. Byzantine studies too, have not avoided this “environmentalism”. Since the early 1980s various studies concerning aspects of historical geography of the Byzantine period have appeared. (shrink)

Chapter Outline of Byzantine history: the political context This chapter goes no further than an attempt at a sketch of the history of the Byzantine ...

Plato in the Third Sophistic examines the influence and impact of Plato and Platonism on later Christian and Byzantine rhetoric. The volume brings together specially commissioned articles from leading scholars of late antique philosophy and literature. Their examinations show that Plato is the single most important and influential literary figure used to frame the literature of this time. Plato in the Third Sophistic will help scholars and students from a wide range of disciplines better understand the development of (...) Christian and Byzantine rhetoric and philosophy during the third through sixth centuries. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 30.2 (2000) 3-24 [Access article in PDF] Agamben's Potential Leland Deladurantaye Giorgio Agamben. Potentialities: Collected Essays In Philosophy. Ed., trans., and intro. Daniel Heller-Roazen. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1999. [P] It is only after a long and arduous frequenting of names, definitions, and facts that the spark is lit in the soul which, in enflaming it, marks the passage from passion to accomplishment.--Giorgio Agamben, The Idea of ProseIn (...) a preface written for the French translation of his Infancy and History: The Destruction of Experience, Giorgio Agamben states that"every written work can be regarded as the prologue (or rather, the broken cast) of a work never penned, and destined to remain so, because later works, which in turn will be the prologues or the moulds for other absent works, represent only sketches or death masks." 1 This remark, which describes every work of art as a preface, does not simply refer to the impossibility of translating the all of life into a single work. Nor does it simply refer to those purely empirical obstacles which stand in the way of creation, preventing the work of art from attaining the plenitude it might have hoped for had not greedy wine-merchants, harrying tailors, and eloquent panderers distracted the Great Minds from their tasks. Instead, in returning every work of art to its originary hesitation, in evoking the oscillation between work and draft, effort and accomplishment, Agamben invokes a much richer and darker potentiality lying at the heart of the work. It is this richer and darker potentiality that constitutes the central concern of Agamben's thought and that gives its name to this collection. Yet what is named in this potentiality? What is the nature of the potentiality of which Agamben speaks? What is this potentiality the potential for?Before advancing in the investigation of this question, let us look briefly at what is gathered together under its name. In this collection of essays by a thinker of unquestionable brilliance one finds a number of axes. The first of these is that of chronology: the essays presented in this volume stretch from 1975 to 1996 and thus cover the period during which works such as Stanzas, Infancy and History, The Idea of Prose, and The Coming Community were prepared and published. The second axis--the one that dictates the ordering of the texts found in this volume and which is the choice of the editor and not the author--is a thematic one: the book is divided into four sections entitled respectively, "Language," "History," "Potentiality," and "Contingency." 2 One notes the presence of other, more fugitive axes such as those which can be found in connections between different essays in the collection (as in the case of the remark from a late Byzantine lexicon cited in the closing paragraphs of the first essay, which receives a magisterial, thirty-page gloss in the last, richest essay in the collection) and between the essays gathered together in this volume and Agamben's other written works (the question [End Page 3] of the genealogy of the sacred, which lies at the heart of Agamben's most recent works, is evoked here in the closing lines of the eighth essay in this collection; the question of a philosophy of life as the coming philosophy in the chronologically final essay in this volume [chapter 14] thus announces Agamben's more recent studies on the politico-philosophical concept of life). These last two axes confront the reader with all the more urgency, as no major thinker since Walter Benjamin has occupied himself with such a tensely, densely interconnected constellation of concerns at the heart of such seeming diversity of subject. At the hub of these axes, which accelerate and blur in the reading of the work, lies the animating, abiding concern of Agamben's thought: potentiality. The Potentiality of Language, or Matter 1.1 This preface with which we began, and which finds itself near the chronological midpoint of the essays gathered together in this volume, contains a singular profession de foi. After suggesting that, "if for every author there exists a... (shrink)

The article tries to contribute to a more concrete embedding of early Islam into the context of late antique, in particular late Roman history. It takes its starting point in a description of the phenomenon of liturgification as an overarching process of religious permeation and internalization that swept across Eastern Roman society since the second half of the sixth century and saved society from collapse. During the early seventh century, when the Romans suffered from immense territorial losses (...) to the Persians, liturgification contributed to the survival of the Empire as well. Liturgification, however, radiated out into the territory of the immediate neighbors of the Romans, and thus also reached Arabia by various ways, not least via trade and military contacts, but probably above all through the mediation of the Ǧafnids, who energetically supported Christianization in their area of influence, which extended deep into the Arabian Peninsula. In this way, liturgification itself created the enabling space in which Islam could come into being. The restitutio crucis by Heraclius in Jerusalem, March 21, 630, then lent these developments concrete reference points and impetus. It should be viewed as the culmination of a process that was driven in turn by liturgification and characterized especially by the grave threats that the Eastern Roman-Byzantine Empire faced in its war against the Persians in the early decades of the seventh century. It led to a reconceptualization of the imperial monarchy, which now attributed a messianic quality to the emperor in a highly eschatologically charged context. The emperor, in turn, first effectively tapped the representational potential of this quality in the act of restoring the relics of the True Cross in Jerusalem in 630. This brought about a situation of messianic rivalry, since the rise of the Prophet Muhammad – which was made possible in turn by the penetration of liturgification into Arabian territory – was based on claims similar to those that Heraclius had claimed for himself. The first attacks on Byzantine outposts in the years 629/30 may have been a direct response to the emperor’s self-representation in Jerusalem. They were the beginning of the Muslim armies’ excursions beyond the Arabian Peninsula and thus the beginning of the great Muslim-Arabian Empire that would come into being in the ensuing century. Against this background, the restitutio crucis proves to be vitally important as a turning point in developments both within the Byzantine Empire and beyond its borders. (shrink)

The article summarizes the main achievements of the historical and philosophical thought of Greece in the study of Byzantine philosophy. Modern Greek researchers make a significant contribution to the formation of a theoretical and methodological basis for the study of Byzantine philosophy. Based on this basis, we can discover the origins, essential features and characteristic antinomies of Byzantine philosophy. The article examines the generalizing works of Greek scientists, in which Byzantine philosophy is presented as a holistic (...) phenomenon. Greek scholars perceive Byzantine philosophy as an integral part of the history of national philosophical thought. Therefore, the position of modern Greek thinkers is interesting and has a special heuristic value. (shrink)

This three-volume series provides a critical examination of the history of theology in Scotland from the early middle ages to the close of the twentieth century. Volume II begins with the early Enlightenment and concludes in late Victorian Scotland.

In the later Byzantine age, historical sources mention many examples of prophecies concerning Chremetismomancy, the divination by horses' neighs. As far as we know, however, we have no earlier documents about this practice from ancient or from medieval Greece. Under the Komnenoi and Palaiologoi, to the contrary, important prophetic neighs are quoted by Anna Komnene, by Niketas Choniates and Nikephoros Gregoras. Wonders which were worked by neighing horses are of very great political consequence, relating to crucial moments such as (...) an emperor's military victories, a prince's succession to the imperial throne or the deposition of a ruler. In Gregoras' Roman History, it is not a living animal responsable for the nocturnal neighs, but a painted one at a chapel in the palace. It is very interesting to examine these narrative plots and historical accounts, as they convey many informations about Byzantine society. In particular, the strong disposition for magic, even at top-level of the society, should be emphasized. The philomantic emperors par excellence are Manuel I Komnenos and Andronikos II Palaiologos, the author of a themation, an astrological interpretation of horses' neighs, together with his faithful Logo the tes Theodoros Metochites, an expert at astrology and hemerology. The advance of such divinatory practices in the late Byzantine centuries should be related to home instability and enemies' threats on the boundaries. Chremetismomantic omina clearly focus on this particular climate of terror and uncertainty which forms the ideal ground for any attempt to foretell the future. Therefore, these practices were no laughing matter for Byzantine writers and their readers: only Nicetas Choniates' shy irony may argue us out of believing this. (shrink)

The first comprehensive account of Platonism in Antiquity, from the foundation of Plato's Academy in the fourth century BC to Late Antiquity. Written in a clear language, the book shows that Platonism is philosophically engaging and very influential in the history of philosophy. Useful for both students and scholars.

Przeł. i oprac. MAŁGORZATA GLINICKA This is a translation of Theodore Metochites’s essay concerning philosophical irony from the Hypomnematismoi kai semeioseis gnomikai (Annotations and gnomic notes), an excellent collection of 120 texts on history, literature and thinking, containing the most extensive commentary on Aristotelian philosophy of the late Byzantine period. The essay on philosophical irony – never translated in Poland – is a commentary on the Dialogues of Plato, which had an important influence on the Platonic renaissance (...) of the 15th century. Metochites, growing up in the cultural center of Constantinople, was a prolific writer, leaving behind works of rhetoric, poems, a literary testament, a collection of philosophical texts and two works on astronomy. (shrink)

The mind-body relation was at the forefront of philosophy and theology in late antiquity, a time of great intellectual innovation. This volume, the first integrated history of this important topic, explores ideas about mind and body during this period, considering both pagan and Christian thought about issues such as resurrection, incarnation and asceticism. A series of chapters presents cutting-edge research from multiple perspectives, including history, philosophy, classics and theology. Several chapters survey wider themes which provide context for (...) detailed studies of the work of individual philosophers including Numenius, Pseudo-Dionysius, Damascius and Augustine. Wide-ranging and accessible, with translations given for all texts in the original language, this book will be essential for students and scholars of late antique thought, the history of religion and theology, and the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

One of the most important and most interesting questions of the history of Christian thought is that of the influence of Platonism on Patristic and Scholastic speculation. Today, perhaps more than ever before, this question of the influence of Plato--and that of his later, more faithful disciples, the Neo-Platonists--presents itself as a fascinating issue. Ivánka is a historian, and the shorter essays and studies of a thirty-year research career are here recast and integrated into a unified book, focussing on (...) some major figures and problems of Christian Platonism. After a lengthy and highly interesting general reflection on Platonism and its historical fortunes, we have chapters on Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, and Augustine, representing the culmination of Platonism in the Greek East and the Latin West respectively. The second part of the book is devoted to speculative mystical theology: Pseudo-Dionysius, Maximus Confessor, the pre-Thomistic West, and at the end a fascinating chapter on the Platonic core of the spiritual doctrine of the late Byzantine centuries.--M. J. V. (shrink)

To review a book that deals with 1000 years of Byzantine history is just as bold an undertaking as the writing of the book itself. Treadgold (henceforth T.) took this challenge on, and we should be grateful to him for doing so. The reviewer admits that he is not informed equally well over all periods of the history of the Byzantine empire – there is probably no-one on the planet who could with a clear conscience assert (...) that they were. In this respect the reviewer admires T. for his lack of reserve in expressing his views on problems and periods of Byzantine history with which he is clearly less familiar than with those of the eighth and ninth centuries. (shrink)