Byzance après Byzance Indeed!

Forthcoming in January next year from (appropriately enough) the premier centre in North America for Byzantine studies is The Invention of Byzantium in Early Modern Europe (Dumbarton Oaks Press, 11 January 2022), 400pp. edited by Nathanael Aschenbrenner and Jake Ransohoff. About this book the publisher tells us this: 

A gulf of centuries separates the Byzantine Empire from the academic field of Byzantine studies. This book offers a new approach to the history of Byzantine scholarship, focusing on the attraction that Byzantium held for Early Modern Europeans and challenging the stereotype that they dismissed the Byzantine Empire as an object of contempt.

The authors in this book focus on how and why the Byzantine past was used in Early Modern Europe: to diagnose cultural decline, to excavate the beliefs and practices of early Christians, to defend absolutism or denounce tyranny, and to write strategic ethnography against the Ottomans. By tracing Byzantium’s profound impact on everything from politics to painting, this book shows that the empire and its legacy remained relevant to generations of Western writers, artists, statesmen, and intellectuals as they grappled with the most pressing issues of their day.

Refuting reductive narratives of absence or progress, this book shows how “Byzantium” underwent multiple overlapping and often discordant reinventions before the institutionalization of “Byzantine studies” as an academic discipline. As this book suggests, it was precisely Byzantium’s ambiguity―as both Greek and Roman, ancient and medieval, familiar and foreign―that made it such a vibrant and vital part of the Early Modern European imagination.

Problems in Balkan Historiographies after Byzantium

The long-lasting, if conflicted, imprint left by "Byzantium"--both real and imagined--is itself a topic worthy of further consideration in any number of ways. In September of this year, we had one such way from the hand of Dimitris Stamatopoulos, Byzantium after the Nation: The Problem of Continuity in Balkan Historiographies (Central European University Press, 2020), 330pp.  

About this book the publisher tells us this:

Dimitris Stamatopoulos undertakes the first systematic comparison of the dominant ethnic historiographic models and divergences elaborated by Greek, Bulgarian, Serbian, Albanian, Romanian, Turkish, and Russian intellectuals with reference to the ambiguous inheritance of Byzantium. The title alludes to the seminal work of Nicolae Iorga in the 1930s, Byzantium after Byzantium, that argued for the continuity between the Byzantine and the Ottoman empires. The idea of the continuity of empires became a kind of touchstone for national historiographies. Rival Balkan nationalisms engaged in a "war of interpretation" as to the nature of Byzantium, assuming different positions of adoption or rejection of its imperial model and leading to various schemes of continuity in each national historiographic canon.

Stamatopoulos discusses what Byzantium represented for nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholars and how their perceptions related to their treatment of the imperial model: whether a different perception of the medieval Byzantine period prevailed in the Greek national center as opposed to Constantinople; how nineteenth-century Balkan nationalists and Russian scholars used Byzantium to invent their own medieval period (and, by extension, their own antiquity); and finally, whether there exist continuities or discontinuities in these modes of making ideological use of the past.

The Liturgical Past in Byzantium and Early Rus

Forthcoming in August is a paperback edition of a book first published in September 2019: Sean Griffin, The Liturgical Past in Byzantium and Early Rus (Cambridge University Press, 2020), 285pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

The chroniclers of medieval Rus were monks, who celebrated the divine services of the Byzantine church throughout every day. This study is the first to analyze how these rituals shaped their writing of the Rus Primary Chronicle, the first written history of the East Slavs. During the eleventh century, chroniclers in Kiev learned about the conversion of the Roman Empire by celebrating a series of distinctively Byzantine liturgical feasts. When the services concluded, and the clerics sought to compose a native history for their own people, they instinctively drew on the sacred stories that they sang at church. The result was a myth of Christian origins for Rus - a myth promulgated even today by the Russian government - which reproduced the Christian origins myth of the Byzantine Empire. The book uncovers this ritual subtext and reconstructs the intricate web of liturgical narratives that underlie this foundational text of pre-modern Slavic civilization.

Streams of Bloody Gold

Oxford University Press, the publisher of  Streams of Gold, Rivers of Blood:The Rise and Fall of Byzantine, 955 A.D. to the First Crusade by Anthony Kaldellis (2019, 440pp.) tells me that it is bringing out a paperback edition of this book on, suitably, the start of the Byzantine new year, September 1st.

About this book we are told the following:

In the second half of the tenth century, Byzantium embarked on a series of spectacular conquests: first in the southeast against the Arabs, then in Bulgaria, and finally in the Georgian and Armenian lands. By the early eleventh century, the empire was the most powerful state in the Mediterranean. It was also expanding economically, demographically, and, in time, intellectually as well. Yet this imperial project came to a crashing collapse fifty years later, when political disunity, fiscal mismanagement, and defeat at the hands of the Seljuks in the east and the Normans in the west brought an end to Byzantine hegemony. By 1081, not only was its dominance of southern Italy, the Balkans, Caucasus, and northern Mesopotamia over but Byzantium's very existence was threatened.

How did this dramatic transformation happen? Based on a close examination of the relevant sources, this history-the first of its kind in over a century-offers a new reconstruction of the key events and crucial reigns as well as a different model for understanding imperial politics and wars, both civil and foreign. In addition to providing a badly needed narrative of this critical period of Byzantine history, Streams of Gold, Rivers of Blood offers new interpretations of key topics relevant to the medieval era. The narrative unfolds in three parts: the first covers the years 955-1025, a period of imperial conquest and consolidation of authority under the great emperor Basil "the Bulgar-Slayer." The second (1025-1059) examines the dispersal of centralized authority in Constantinople as well as the emergence of new foreign enemies (Pechenegs, Seljuks, and Normans). The last section chronicles the spectacular collapse of the empire during the second half of the eleventh century, concluding with a look at the First Crusade and its consequences for Byzantine relations with the powers of Western Europe. This briskly paced and thoroughly investigated narrative vividly brings to life one of the most exciting and transformative eras of medieval history.

Byzantine Constructions of the West

More than five years ago now, I lavished rather a lot of attention on an important and fascinating collection, Orthodox Constructions of the West. It seems that next month we are to have a similar collection albeit one with a tighter focus on a particular period: Byzantium and the West: Perception and Reality (11th-15th c.), eds. Nikolaos Chrissis, Athina Kolia-Dermitzaki, and Angeliki Papageorgiou (Routledge, 2019), 334pp.

About this collection the publisher tells us the following:

The interaction between Byzantium and the Latin West was intimately connected to practically all the major events and developments which shaped the medieval world in the High and Late Middle Ages – for example, the rise of the ‘papal monarchy’, the launch of the Crusades, the expansion of international and longdistance commerce, or the flowering of the Renaissance. This volume explores not only the actual avenues of interaction between the two sides (trade, political and diplomatic contacts, ecclesiastical dialogue, intellectual exchange, armed conflict), but also the image each side had of the other and the way perceptions evolved over this long period in the context of their manifold contact.

Twenty-one stimulating papers offer new insights and original research on numerous aspects of this relationship, pooling the expertise of an international group of scholars working on both sides of the Byzantine-Western ‘divide’, on topics as diverse as identity formation, ideology, court ritual, literary history, military technology and the economy, among others. The particular contribution of the research presented here is the exploration of how cross-cultural relations were shaped by the interplay of the thought-world of the various historical agents and the material circumstances which circumscribed their actions. The volume is primarily aimed at scholars and students interested in the history of Byzantium, the Mediterranean world, and, more widely, intercultural contacts in the Middle Ages.

A Brief Introduction to Byzantine Christianity

The well-known British scholar Averil Cameron, a Byzantinist of long-standing distinction and many publications, has recently published Byzantine Christianity: A Very Brief History (SPCK/IVP, 2018), 138pp.

About this book the publisher tells us the following:

From the foundation of Constantinople in 330 to its fall in 1453, this brief history explores the key components of Byzantine Christianity, including the development of monasticism, icons and iconoclasm, the role of the emperor in relation to church councils and beliefs, the difficult relationship with the papacy, and the impact of the Crusades.

The book also considers Byzantine Christianity as a living force today: the variety and vitality of Orthodox churches, the role of the Church in Russia, and the enduring relevance of a spirituality derived from the church fathers.

Assumptionists as Byzantinists

Since doing some field research with a graduate student of mine back in 2013, when we visited the remnants of the Byzantine Franciscans in Sybertsville, PA and their lovely neighbors the Byzantine Carmelite sisters in Sugarloaf, PA, I have become acutely aware of how badly Eastern Catholics fail at writing our own history, including that of such unique communities as these two. The Byzantine Franciscans are but a tiny shell of what they once were though they still maintain an absolutely lovely church and campus. The Byzantine Carmelite sisters, by contrast, had a goodly number of young vocations when I was there and seem to have a fairly stable and promising future. Their chapel is stunning, and their singing very unique and beautiful.

I maintain only the fondest recollections of their dynamic and wonderful founder and mother-superior, a no-nonsense Irish Catholic from New York who "discovered" the Christian East in the 1950s and felt it was her life's work and call to help Catholics know the East, love the East, and be reconciled with the East. Hers is a fascinating history, and I strongly encouraged her to write both her own history and that of the community she founded, but she was reluctant to do so, having so many other pressing projects. 

All this is but a preface to note a new book whose publication I cheered because it helps fill in some of the many holes in Eastern Catholic historiography: L'apport des Assomptionnistes français aux études byzantines : une approche critique (Peeters, 2017), 536pp.

I studied and wrote about the activities of a few of the Assumptionists and their role in Ukraine and Russia when Peter Galadza and I were working on Unité en division : Les lettres de Lev Gillet, Un moine de l'Eglise d'Orient à Andrei Cheptytsky, 1921-1929. It was, at times, hard going trying to find out much about some of these figures. So I am, as I say, happy to see this new edited collection about which the publisher tells us the following:

Membres d'une congrégation catholique fondée en France en 1845, les Assomptionnistes n'avaient pas initialement vocation à devenir des byzantinistes. Lorsqu'à la faveur de l'installation d'une petite communauté à Constantinople en 1895, certains d'eux ont entrepris des recherches sur l'Orient orthodoxe, ils ne pensaient probablement pas faire école ni marquer la byzantinologie d'une empreinte spécifique. Pourtant leurs travaux, poursuivis durant plus d'un siècle, ont stimulé et nourri ceux de beaucoup de spécialistes. Comprendre comment ils ont abordé leur objet d'étude - l'Église byzantine -, selon quelles directions de recherche et en mettant en valeur quel type de résultats, permet de repenser aujourd'hui certaines des orientations qu'ils ont données à la discipline. Les études réunies dans cet ouvrage collectif analysent dans une perspective critique les méthodes et les choix scientifiques de ces religieux catholiques, mais aussi leurs préjugés en tant que spécialistes d'une confession qu'ils qualifiaient eux-mêmes de «dissidente», alors qu'ils étaient animés, au moins à l'origine, par une perspective prosélyte. Les contributions de ce volume entrecroisent l'histoire des intellectuels catholiques au 20e siècle et l'historiographie byzantine, afin d'éclairer ces relations entre engagement confessionnel et science, souvent fécondes, mais parfois peut-être aussi contradictoires, et afin d'esquisser un bilan de l'oeuvre scientifique des Assomptionnistes de l'Institut français d'études byzantines.

For those who do not read French, the table of contents, available here, shows that there are a handful of articles in English, including one by Daniel Galadza, author of the recent monograph I noted here.

Byzantine Architecture and Aurality

I hope soon to run an interview with Nicholas Denysenko about his new book, Theology and Form: Contemporary Orthodox Architecture in America.

But this is a rich summer for those with an interest in such topics, as Bissera Pentcheva has just edited and published Aural Architecture in Byzantium: Music, Acoustics, and Ritual (Routledge, 2017), 272pp.

About this collection the publisher tells us:

Emerging from the challenge to reconstruct sonic and spatial experiences of the deep past, this multidisciplinary collection of ten essays explores the intersection of liturgy, acoustics, and art in the churches of Constantinople, Jerusalem, Rome and Armenia, and reflects on the role digital technology can play in re-creating aspects of the sensually rich performance of the divine word. Engaging the material fabric of the buildings in relationship to the liturgical ritual, the book studies the structure of the rite, revealing the important role chant plays in it, and confronts both the acoustics of the physical spaces and the hermeneutic system of reception of the religious services. By then drawing on audio software modelling tools in order to reproduce some of the visual and aural aspects of these multi-sensory public rituals, it inaugurates a synthetic approach to the study of the premodern sacred space, which bridges humanities with exact sciences. The result is a rich contribution to the growing discipline of sound studies and an innovative convergence of the medieval and the digital.

Pentcheva also has a monograph coming out in September under her own hand, clearly related this topic: Hagia Sophia: Sound, Space, and Spirit in Byzantium (Penn State, 2017), 304pp.

About this forthcoming book, the publisher tells us:

Experiencing the resonant acoustics of the church of Hagia Sophia allowed the Byzantine participants in its liturgical rituals to be filled with the Spirit of God, and even to become his image on earth. Bissera Pentcheva’s vibrant analysis examines how these sung rites combined with the church’s architectural space to make Hagia Sophia a performative place of worship representative of Byzantine religious culture in all its sensory richness.

Coupling digital acoustic models and video with a close examination of liturgical texts and melodic structures, Pentcheva applies art-historical, philosophical, archeoacoustical, and anthropological methodologies to provide insight into the complementary ways liturgy and location worked to animate worshippers in Byzantium. Rather than focus on the architectural form of the building, the technology of its construction, or the political ideology of its decoration, Pentcheva delves into the performativity of Hagia Sophia and explains how the “icons of sound” created by the sung liturgy and architectural reverberation formed an aural experience that led to mystical transcendence for worshippers, opening access to the imagined celestial sound of the angelic choirs.

Immersive, deeply researched, and beautifully illustrated, this exploration of Hagia Sophia sheds new light on sacred space, iconicity, and religious devotion in Byzantium. Scholars of art and architectural history, religious studies, music and acoustics, and the medieval period will especially appreciate Pentcheva’s field-advancing work.

Pentcheva is the author of two earlier studies in iconography, both of which were very positively reviewed in Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies. In 2006 she published Icons and Power: The Mother of God in Byzantium.

In 2010 she published The Sensual Icon: Space, Ritual, and the Senses in Byzantium (Penn State, 320pp).

Both books deserve a prominent place in any library serious about iconography.

New Studies in Byzantine History

Peter Lang informs me of two recent publications in Byzantine history. The first is an academic collection edited by Maximilian Lau, Caterina Franchi, and Morgan Di Rodi, Landscapes of Power: Selected Papers from the XV Oxford University Byzantine Society International Graduate Conference (Lang, 2014), 307pp.

About this volume we are told:

This volume contains selected papers from the XV International Graduate Conference, highlighting the latest scholarship from a new generation of Late Antique and Byzantine scholars from around the world. The theme of the conference explored the interaction between power and the natural and human environments of Byzantium, an interaction that is an essential part of the empire’s legacy. This legacy has come down to us through buildings, literature, history and more, and has proved enduring enough to intrigue and fascinate scholars centuries after the fall of Constantinople. From religion and trade at the end of Antiquity, imperial propaganda and diplomacy at the end of the first millennium, to culture and conquest under the Komnenian and Palaeologan dynasties - this volume demonstrates the length and breadth of the forays being made by young academics into the still often undiscovered country of the Late Antique and Byzantine world.

A second title treats ecclesial realities more directly: Bernard Mulholland, ed., The Early Byzantine Christian Church: An Archaeological Re-assessment of Forty-Seven Early Byzantine Basilical Church Excavations Primarily in Israel and Jordan, and their Historical and Liturgical Context (Lang, 2014), 229pp.

About this book we are told: 

The observation that domestic artefacts are often recovered during church excavations led to an archaeological re-assessment of forty-seven Early Byzantine basilical church excavations and their historical, gender and liturgical context. The excavations were restricted to the three most common basilical church plans to allow for like-for-like analysis between sites that share the same plan: monoapsidal, inscribed and triapsidal. These sites were later found to have two distinct sanctuary configurations, namely a Π-shaped sanctuary in front of the apse, or else a sanctuary that extended across both side aisles that often formed a characteristic T-shaped layout. Further analysis indicated that Π-shaped sanctuaries are found in two church plans: firstly a protruding monoapsidal plan that characteristically has a major entrance located to either side of the apse, which is also referred to as a ‘Constantinopolitan’ church plan; and secondly in the inscribed plan, which is also referred to as a ‘Syrian’ church plan. The T-shaped layout is characteristic of the triapsidal plan, but can also occur in a monoapsidal plan, and this is referred to as a ‘Roman’ church plan. Detailed analysis of inscriptions and patterns of artefactual deposition also revealed the probable location of the diakonikon where the rite of prothesis took place.

The publisher also provides details of the contents:

Contents: Domestic artefacts in Early Christian churches – Methodology – What can church sites reveal about liturgy? – A second focus of liturgical activity – Other activities in Early Byzantine basilical churches – Gender analysis: is there evidence for segregation of the sexes in Early Byzantine basilical churches?

Byzantine Subversion

One of the little-noticed but deeply significant parts of the Westminster parliamentary system is that the major second party, which does not garner enough seats to form a government, is styled "Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition." That adjective is important for Christians and others inclined towards ideological thinking never to forget: opposition is not of itself evidence of "disloyalty." Indeed, it may in fact be evidence of a far deeper loyalty.

The role of opposition in Byzantium has not been well studied, but a recent academic conference, and the even more recent publication of its proceedings, aim to change that: Dimiter Angelov and Michael Saxby, eds., Power and Subversion in Byzantium: Papers from the Forty-Third Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, University of Birmingham, March 2010 (Ashgate, 2013), 299pp.

About this scholarly collection we are told:

This volume addresses a theme of special significance for Byzantine studies. Byzantium has traditionally been deemed a civilisation which deferred to authority and set special store by orthodoxy, canon and proper order. Since 1982 when the distinguished Russian Byzantinist Alexander Kazhdan wrote that 'the history of Byzantine intellectual opposition has yet to be written', scholars have increasingly highlighted cases of subversion of 'correct practice' and 'correct belief' in Byzantium. This innovative scholarly effort has produced important results, although it has been hampered by the lack of dialogue across the disciplines of Byzantine studies. The 43rd Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies in 2010 drew together historians, art historians, and scholars of literature, religion and philosophy, who discussed shared and discipline-specific approaches to the theme of subversion. The present volume presents a selection of the papers delivered at the symposium enriched with specially commissioned contributions. Most papers deal with the period after the eleventh century, although early Byzantium is not ignored. Theoretical questions about the nature, articulation and limits of subversion are addressed within the frameworks of individual disciplines and in a larger context. The volume comes at a timely junction in the development of Byzantine studies, as interest in subversion and nonconformity in general has been rising steadily in the field.

A second book recently published treats many of the same themes: Phil Booth, Crisis of Empire: Doctrine and Dissent at the End of Late Antiquity (University of California Press, 2013), 416pp.

About this book we are told:

This book focuses on the attempts of three ascetics—John Moschus, Sophronius of Jerusalem, and Maximus Confessor—to determine the Church’s power and place during a period of profound crisis, as the eastern Roman empire suffered serious reversals in the face of Persian and then Islamic expansion. By asserting visions which reconciled long-standing intellectual tensions between asceticism and Church, these authors established the framework for their subsequent emergence as Constantinople's most vociferous religious critics, their alliance with the Roman popes, and their radical rejection of imperial interference in matters of the faith. Situated within the broader religious currents of the fourth to seventh centuries, this book throws new light on the nature not only of the holy man in late antiquity, but also of the Byzantine Orthodoxy that would emerge in the Middle Ages, and which is still central to the churches of Greece and Eastern Europe.

Byzanz in Europa. Europas östliches Erbe

Forthcoming from Brepols is a bilingual (German-English) collection: M. Altripp, ed., Byzanz in Europa. Europas östliches Erbe: Akten des Kolloquiums 'Byzanz in Europa' vom 11. bis 15. Dezember 2007 in Greifswald, ed. M. Altripp (Brepols, 2011), c. 550pp + 79 b/w ill.

About this collection the publisher tells us:

The role of Byzantium in the Middle Ages is comparable to that of a modern political superpower such as the United States. The latter has a pervasive cultural impact on Europe and Asia, and similar cross-cultural relationships between East and West were also evident in medieval Europe, when Byzantine literature, music, art, and ritual were not only known but also studied and appropriated throughout the West. Scholarship on Byzantium and its relationship with Western Europe has yet to explore the full dynamics of this relationship or the extent to which the West was influenced by Byzantine culture. The papers presented in this volume offer a wide interdisciplinary perspective on the crucial importance of Byzantium for Western Europe, featuring articles on art and architectural history, social and religious history, musicology, literature, historiography, gender studies. The essays originate from an interdisciplinary conference, held in the Wissenschaftskolleg Greifswald in December 2007, which brought together an international group of scholars. The proceedings of this gathering give a new and compelling testimony to the exceptionally high status of Byzantine culture in Western Europe and invite further studies on the exceptional and unique role of the Byzantine Empire, positioned at the crux between Europe and Asia.

A very lengthy and detailed table of contents of the book may be seen here.