Byzantine Style, Religion and Civilization

by Jeffreys, Elizabeth

• ISBN13: 9781107405899
• ISBN10: 1107405890
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-07-26
• Publisher: Cambridge Univ Pr

Summary

Sir Steven Runciman's History of the Crusades (1951-4) remains widely read and influential but represents only a part of his wide-ranging, erudite and immensely readable literary activity. His early work focused on Byzantium in the tenth century (The Emperor Romanus Lecapenus) and the history of the first Bulgarian empire. Later he wrote with authority on ecclesiastical relations between the eastern and western Churches (The Eastern Schism), more generally on Byzantine culture (Byzantine Style and Civilization), with forays into medieval diplomacy (The Sicilian Vespers) and British colonial society (The White Rajahs). With a diplomatic past which informed his studies, he was the doyen of Byzantine studies in Britain. This volume of essays, first published in 2006, explores topics relevant to Sir Steven's interests, long planned in his honour by British Byzantinists of all generations, and includes a memoir of his life and a full bibliography of his work.

Table of Contents

James Cochran Stevenson Runciman Anthony Bryer

Style

The Christian Topography (Vat. gr. 699) revisited: image, text, and conflict on ninth-century Byzantium

Byzantine enamels in the twentieth century

The rise and fall of towns, loci of maritime traffic, and silk production: the problem of Thisvi-Kastorion

Women in Serbian politics, diplomacy and art at the beginning of Ottoman rule

Byzantium-Venice-Manchester: an early thirteenth-century carved marble basin and British Byzantinism at the turn of the twentieth century

Manners maketh Romans? Young barbarians at the emperor's court

Byzantine and crusader art: Sir Steven was right

Religion

The discovery of the relics of St Grigor and the development of Armenian tradition in ninth-century Byzantium

The image of Edessa: some notes on its later fortunes

Photios as theologian

Magic at the cross-roads in the sixth century

'The Angelic Life': monasteries for eunuchs

Armed pilgrimage and the reign of the anti-Christ: Steven Runciman and the origins of the First

Civilization

Wine for immortality and immortality for wine: reflections on the Dionysiaca of Nonnos of Panopolis

'Greek Fire' revisited: recent and current research

Constantinople in the reign of Basil II

A short piece of narrative history: war and diplomacy in the Balkans, winter 921/2-spring 924

Restoration of Orthodoxy, the pardon of Theophilos and the Acta Davidis, Symeonis et Georgii

Freestanding towers in the countryside of Rhodes

The Campanopetra re-considered: the pilgrimage church of the Apostle Barnabas?

The travels of Paul Lucas

Aristocrats and aliens in early Byzantine Constantinople

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