Understanding Byzantium

Understanding Byzantium PDF Author: Takacs Sarolta
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351758667
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 315

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Book Description
This book was first published in 2003.Paul Speck's work is acknowledged to be of profound importance for the study of the history and culture of the Byzantine world. If at times controversial, it has proved highly influential in terms of the approaches to be taken to historical and literary sources. For many, however, it has remained largely inaccessible in its original German. To help overcome this, the selection of studies presented here have been specially translated into English. Taken together, they make a substantial contribution to a critical understanding of Byzantine writing, and to an interpretation of history free from prejudice and stereotyped conceptions. Their coverage extends from the foundation of Constantinople to current perceptions of Byzantine history, but they focus in particular on the period from the 6th to the 9th centuries - the 'Dark Ages' and the Byzantine renaissance - and the transformation of Byzantium that then took place.

Understanding Byzantium

Understanding Byzantium PDF Author: Takacs Sarolta
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351758667
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 315

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book was first published in 2003.Paul Speck's work is acknowledged to be of profound importance for the study of the history and culture of the Byzantine world. If at times controversial, it has proved highly influential in terms of the approaches to be taken to historical and literary sources. For many, however, it has remained largely inaccessible in its original German. To help overcome this, the selection of studies presented here have been specially translated into English. Taken together, they make a substantial contribution to a critical understanding of Byzantine writing, and to an interpretation of history free from prejudice and stereotyped conceptions. Their coverage extends from the foundation of Constantinople to current perceptions of Byzantine history, but they focus in particular on the period from the 6th to the 9th centuries - the 'Dark Ages' and the Byzantine renaissance - and the transformation of Byzantium that then took place.

People and Power in Byzantium

People and Power in Byzantium PDF Author: Aleksandr Petrovich Kazhdan
Publisher: Dumbarton Oaks
ISBN: 9780884021032
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description


The Wars of Justinian

The Wars of Justinian PDF Author: Prokopios
Publisher: Hackett Publishing
ISBN: 1624661726
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 677

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Book Description
A fully-outfitted edition of Prokopios' late Antique masterpiece of military history and ethnography--for the 21st-century reader. "At last . . . the translation that we have needed for so long: a fresh, lively, readable, and faithful rendering of Prokopios' Wars, which in a single volume will make this fundamental work of late ancient history-writing accessible to a whole new generation of students." --Jonathan Conant, Brown University

Sacred Shock: Framing Visual Experience in Byzantium

Sacred Shock: Framing Visual Experience in Byzantium PDF Author: Glenn Peers
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 9780271047485
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
Sacred Shock attempts to lay bare the inner workings of Byzantine art by looking closely at the marginal or subsidiary areas in works of art.

The Lost World of Byzantium

The Lost World of Byzantium PDF Author: Jonathan Harris
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300216092
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
The acclaimed author of Byzantium and the Crusades “offers a fresh take on this fabled but hidden civilization” across 11 centuries of history (Colin Wells, author of Sailing from Byzantium). For more than a millennium, the Byzantine Empire presided over the juncture between East and West, as well as the transition from the classical to the modern world. Rather than recounting the standard chronology of emperors and battles, leading Byzantium scholar Jonathan Harris focuses each chapter of this engaging history on a succession of archetypal figures, families, places, and events. Harris’s introduction presents a civilization rich in contrasts, combining orthodox Christianity with paganism, and classical Greek learning with Roman power. Though frequently assailed by numerous armies, Byzantium survived by dint of its unorthodox foreign policy. Over time, its sumptuous art and architecture flourished, helping to establish a deep sense of Byzantine identity in its people. Synthesizing a wealth of sources to cover all major aspects of the empire’s social, political, military, religious, cultural, and artistic history, Harris’s study illuminates the heart of Byzantine civilization and explores its remarkable and lasting influence on the modern world.

Byzantium

Byzantium PDF Author: Sean McLachlan
Publisher: Hippocrene Books
ISBN: 9780781810333
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Long after Rome fell to the Germanic tribes, its culture lived on in Constantinople, the glittering capital of the Byzantine Empire. For more than 1000 yeras (AD 330-1453) Byzantium was one of the most advanced and complex civilisations the world had ever seen. As the Mediterranean outlet for the silk route, its trade networks stretched from Scandinavia to Sri Lanka; its artists created sombre icons and brilliant gold mosaics; its scholarship served as a vital cultural bridge between the Muslim East and the Catholic West; and it fostered the Orthodox Christianity that is the faith of millions today. This book shows the innovative art that inspired French kings and Arab emirs. It includes a gazetteer of historic Byzantine sites and monuments that travellers can visit today in greece, Italty, Turkey and the Middle East. A chronology of Byzantine history and a list of emperors complete this ideal resource for the student, traveller or generally curious reader.

Experiencing Byzantium

Experiencing Byzantium PDF Author: Claire Nesbitt
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317137825
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 462

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Book Description
From the reception of imperial ekphraseis in Hagia Sophia to the sounds and smells of the back streets of Constantinople, the sensory perception of Byzantium is an area that lends itself perfectly to an investigation into the experience of the Byzantine world. The theme of experience embraces all aspects of Byzantine studies and the Experiencing Byzantium symposium brought together archaeologists, architects, art historians, historians, musicians and theologians in a common quest to step across the line that divides how we understand and experience the Byzantine world and how the Byzantines themselves perceived the sensual aspects of their empire and also their faith, spirituality, identity and the nature of ’being’ in Byzantium. The papers in this volume derive from the 44th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, held for the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies by the University of Newcastle and University of Durham, at Newcastle upon Tyne in April 2011. They are written by a group of international scholars who have crossed disciplinary boundaries to approach an understanding of experience in the Byzantine world. Experiencing Byzantium is volume 18 in the series published by Ashgate on behalf of the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies.

Mosaics, Empresses and Other Things in Byzantium

Mosaics, Empresses and Other Things in Byzantium PDF Author: Liz James
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040098002
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
This volume consists of 15 articles published between 1991 and 2018. It falls into three sections, reflecting different areas of Liz James’s interests. The first section deals with light and colour and mosaics: four articles considering light and colour in mosaics and the making of mosaics, as well as the question of what it means to define mosaics as ‘Byzantine’ are reprinted. The second brings together four pieces on empresses: their relationships with female personifications and the Mother of God; their roles in founding and refounding buildings; and their employment as ciphers by some authors. Finally, seven papers cover a range of topics: what monumental images of saints in churches might have been for; what the differences between relics and icons might have been; how captions to images can be misleading; why touch was an important sense; how words can sometimes ‘just’ be decorative rather than for reading; why the materiality of objects makes a difference. There is also a brief section of additional notes and comments which add to, update and reflect on each piece now in 2024. Mosaics, Empresses and Other Things in Byzantium will be of interest to scholars and students alike interested in material culture, the depiction of regal women, and the use of relics and icons in the Byzantine Empire.

Byzantium

Byzantium PDF Author: Thomas F. Mathews
Publisher: Prentice Hall
ISBN: 9780130807441
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
For more than a thousand years, from the time of early Christian Rome until the Renaissance, the Byzantine emperors reigned over a society famed for its high refinement, deep learning, and marvelous variety. Byzantine civilization was both Greek and Oriental, Christian and Roman, European and Asiatic. From the metropolis of Constantinople its art and culture spread outward to Russia, Syria, and Italy. Indeed, Byzantium preserved the artistic heritage of classical antiquity and conveyed it to Europe, transforming it along the way with infusions of Eastern Orthodox religion and Islamic aesthetics. Thomas Mathews surveys Byzantine art within a broad cultural and historical context. Themes emerge: the role of the imperial city within the empire; the place and representation of women; urban and country life; the domestic and secular spheres and the religious and public realms of church, palace, and street. Examining art styles and motifs, Mathews gives fresh readings to icons and iconoclasm, architecture, and the decorative arts.

Byzantium, Its Neighbours and Its Cultures

Byzantium, Its Neighbours and Its Cultures PDF Author: Danijel Dzino
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004344918
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
Byzantium was one of the longest-lasting empires in history. Throughout the millennium of its existence, the empire showed its capability to change and develop under very different historical circumstances. This remarkable resilience would have been impossible to achieve without the formation of a lasting imperial culture and a strong imperial ideological infrastructure. Imperial culture and ideology required, among other things, to sort out who was ʻinsiderʼ and who was ʻoutsiderʼ and develop ways to define and describe ones neighbours and interact with them. There is an indefinite number of possibilities for the exploration of relationships between Byzantium and its neighbours. The essays in this collection focus on several interconnected clusters of topics and shared research interests, such as the place of neighbours in the context of the empire and imperial ideology, the transfer of knowledge with neighbours, the Byzantine perception of their neighbours and the political relationship and/or the conflict with neighbours.