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Unity in Diversity: Aspects of Centrality and Regionalism in the Byzantine world (Texts, Visual Culture, Ideology, Identity)

International Byzantine Studies Conference on the Occasion of 115th Anniversary of the Chair and Seminar for Byzantine Studies at the University of Belgrade

9-10 November (via videolink)

Organizer: Vlada Stankovic

Shortly after Easter-day 1299 and the marriage of Serbian King Milutin with the five year-old princess Simonis, her father Emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos, followed by his son. and co-ruler Emperor Michael IX Palaiologos, issued chryssobuls in which they defined the new relationship between the Empire of the Romans and the king of Serbia as union (ἕνωσις) – a politically and ideologically loaded characterization, confirmed by Theodore Methochites, who used the same term for the newly reached alliance which he helped to establish. This unique definition stands at the end of the centuries of Byzantine outreach in the Balkans, which irreversibly started with the baptism of Bulgarian ruler Boris-Michael in 864/5 and the series of alliances with the rulers of Bulgaria and Serbia that followed over time. This Byzantine embracement of the populations in Constantinople’s European hinterland underline the Empire’s special relations with the Balkans, but at the same time, bring in focus place the problems of centrality and regional particularities within the Empire herself, questions of local and overarching Roman identities, of conflict and cooperation between the center and the periphery–but also among different regions themselves–, evident in texts, visual representations, communication and its means, expressions of local “patriotisms” and animosities for those who stem from different parts of the Empire or the regions within Byzantine sphere of influence.

The conference Unity in Diversity: Aspects of Centrality and Regionalism in the Byzantine world (Texts, Visual Culture, Ideology, Identity) is devoted to examination of these and similar topics, in an attempt to encourage new approaches and improve our knowledge on questions of centrality, regionalism(s) and localism(s), identity, dissemination of Byzantine thought and ideology–among others–in the broadly understood Byzantine world.

Conference Programme: