Serving Byzantium's Emperors

Serving Byzantium's Emperors PDF Author: Dimitris Krallis
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3030045250
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
This book is a microhistory of eleventh-century Byzantium, built around the biography of the state official Michael Attaleiates. Dimitris Krallis presents Byzantium as a cohesive, ever-evolving, dynamic, Roman political community, built on traditions of Roman governance and Hellenic culture. In the eleventh century, Byzantium faced a crisis as it navigated a shifting international environment of feudal polities, merchant republics, steppe migrations, and a rapidly transforming Islamic world. Attaleiates’ life, from provincial birth to Constantinopolitan death, and career, as a member of an ancient empire’s officialdom, raise questions of identity, family, education, governance, elite culture, Romanness, Hellenism, science and skepticism, as well as political ideology during this period. The life and work of Attaleiates is used as a prism through which to examine important questions about a long-lived medieval polity that is usually studied as exotic and distinct from both the European and the Near Eastern historical experience.

Serving Byzantium's Emperors

Serving Byzantium's Emperors PDF Author: Dimitris Krallis
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3030045250
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 297

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book is a microhistory of eleventh-century Byzantium, built around the biography of the state official Michael Attaleiates. Dimitris Krallis presents Byzantium as a cohesive, ever-evolving, dynamic, Roman political community, built on traditions of Roman governance and Hellenic culture. In the eleventh century, Byzantium faced a crisis as it navigated a shifting international environment of feudal polities, merchant republics, steppe migrations, and a rapidly transforming Islamic world. Attaleiates’ life, from provincial birth to Constantinopolitan death, and career, as a member of an ancient empire’s officialdom, raise questions of identity, family, education, governance, elite culture, Romanness, Hellenism, science and skepticism, as well as political ideology during this period. The life and work of Attaleiates is used as a prism through which to examine important questions about a long-lived medieval polity that is usually studied as exotic and distinct from both the European and the Near Eastern historical experience.

The Immortal Emperor

The Immortal Emperor PDF Author: Donald M. Nicol
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521894098
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
The first biography of the last Byzantine Emperor.

The Byzantine Republic

The Byzantine Republic PDF Author: Anthony Kaldellis
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674967402
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
Although Byzantium is known to history as the Eastern Roman Empire, scholars have long claimed that this Greek Christian theocracy bore little resemblance to Rome. Here, in a revolutionary model of Byzantine politics and society, Anthony Kaldellis reconnects Byzantium to its Roman roots, arguing that from the fifth to the twelfth centuries CE the Eastern Roman Empire was essentially a republic, with power exercised on behalf of the people and sometimes by them too. The Byzantine Republic recovers for the historical record a less autocratic, more populist Byzantium whose Greek-speaking citizens considered themselves as fully Roman as their Latin-speaking “ancestors.” Kaldellis shows that the idea of Byzantium as a rigid imperial theocracy is a misleading construct of Western historians since the Enlightenment. With court proclamations often draped in Christian rhetoric, the notion of divine kingship emerged as a way to disguise the inherent vulnerability of each regime. The legitimacy of the emperors was not predicated on an absolute right to the throne but on the popularity of individual emperors, whose grip on power was tenuous despite the stability of the imperial institution itself. Kaldellis examines the overlooked Byzantine concept of the polity, along with the complex relationship of emperors to the law and the ways they bolstered their popular acceptance and avoided challenges. The rebellions that periodically rocked the empire were not aberrations, he shows, but an essential part of the functioning of the republican monarchy.

Constantine Porphyrogenitus De Administrando Imperio

Constantine Porphyrogenitus De Administrando Imperio PDF Author: Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (Emperor of the East)
Publisher: Dumbarton Oaks
ISBN: 9780884020219
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
This edition contains a wide variety of information on both foreign relations and internal administration and is one of the most important historical documents surviving from the Middle Byzantine period.

The Roman Emperor Aurelian

The Roman Emperor Aurelian PDF Author: John F. White
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1473844770
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
The leader who helped keep the Dark Ages at bay: “An excellent picture of the Crisis of the Third Century and the life and work of Aurelian” (StrategyPage). The ancient Sibylline prophecies had foretold that the Roman Empire would last for one thousand years. As the time for the expected dissolution approached in the middle of the third century AD, the empire was lapsing into chaos, with seemingly interminable civil wars over the imperial succession. The western empire had seceded under a rebel emperor, and the eastern empire was controlled by another usurper. Barbarians took advantage of the anarchy to kill and plunder all over the provinces. Yet within the space of just five years, the general, and later emperor, Aurelian had expelled all the barbarians from within the Roman frontiers, reunited the entire empire, and inaugurated major reforms of the currency, pagan religion, and civil administration. His accomplishments have been hailed by classical scholars as those of a superman, yet Aurelian himself remains little known to a wider audience. His achievements enabled the Roman Empire to survive for another two centuries, ensuring a lasting legacy of Roman civilization for the successor European states. Without Aurelian, the Dark Ages would probably have lasted centuries longer.

The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire c.500-1492

The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire c.500-1492 PDF Author: Jonathan Shepard
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781107685871
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1228

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Book Description
Byzantium lasted a thousand years, ruled to the end by self-styled 'emperors of the Romans'. It underwent kaleidoscopic territorial and structural changes, yet recovered repeatedly from disaster: even after the near-impregnable Constantinople fell in 1204, variant forms of the empire reconstituted themselves. The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire c.500-1492 tells the story, tracing political and military events, religious controversies and economic change. It offers clear, authoritative chapters on the main events and periods, with more detailed chapters on outlying regions and neighbouring societies and powers of Byzantium. With aids such as maps, a glossary, an alternative place-name table and references to English translations of sources, it will be valuable as an introduction. However, it also offers stimulating new approaches and important findings, making it essential reading for postgraduates and for specialists. The revised paperback edition contains a new preface by the editor and will offer an invaluable companion to survey courses in Byzantine history.

The Cambridge Intellectual History of Byzantium

The Cambridge Intellectual History of Byzantium PDF Author: Anthony Kaldellis
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110821021X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1438

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Book Description
This volume brings into being the field of Byzantine intellectual history. Shifting focus from the cultural, social, and economic study of Byzantium to the life and evolution of ideas in their context, it provides an authoritative history of intellectual endeavors from Late Antiquity to the fifteenth century. At its heart lie the transmission, transformation, and shifts of Hellenic, Christian, and Byzantine ideas and concepts as exemplified in diverse aspects of intellectual life, from philosophy, theology, and rhetoric to astrology, astronomy, and politics. Case studies introduce the major players in Byzantine intellectual life, and particular emphasis is placed on the reception of ancient thought and its significance for secular as well as religious modes of thinking and acting. New insights are offered regarding controversial, understudied, or promising topics of research, such as philosophy and medical thought in Byzantium, and intellectual exchanges with the Arab world.

The Life of Belisarius

The Life of Belisarius PDF Author: Earl Philip Henry Stanhope Stanhope
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 502

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Book Description


Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae

Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae PDF Author: Barthold Georg Niebuhr
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Byzantine Empire
Languages : la
Pages : 792

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Book Description


Heraclius, Emperor of Byzantium

Heraclius, Emperor of Byzantium PDF Author: Walter E. Kaegi
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521814591
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
Table of contents