New Book!

Derek Krueger, Liturgical Subjects: Christian Ritual, Biblical Narrative, and the Formation of the Self in Byzantium, Univ. of Pensylvania Press 2014

Liturgical Subjects examines the history of the self in the Byzantine Empire, challenging narratives of Christian subjectivity that focus only on classical antiquity and the Western Middle Ages. As Derek Krueger demonstrates, Orthodox Christian interior life was profoundly shaped by patterns of worship introduced and disseminated by Byzantine clergy. Hymns, prayers, and sermons transmitted complex emotional responses to biblical stories, particularly during Lent. Religious services and religious art taught congregants who they were in relation to God and each other.

Focusing on Christian practice in Constantinople from the sixth to eleventh centuries, Krueger charts the impact of the liturgical calendar, the eucharistic rite, hymns for vigils and festivals, and scenes from the life of Christ on the making of Christian selves. He explores the verse of great Byzantine liturgical poets, including Romanos the Melodist, Andrew of Crete, Theodore the Stoudite, and Symeon the New Theologian. Their compositions offered templates for Christian self-regard and self-criticism, defining the Christian "I." Cantors, choirs, and congregations sang in the first person singular expressing guilt and repentence, while prayers and sermons defined the collective identity of the Christian community as sinners in need of salvation. By examining the way models of selfhood were formed, performed, and transmitted in the Byzantine Empire, Liturgical Subjects adds a vital dimension to the history of the self in Western culture.

LBG online!

LBG

Lexikon zur byzantinischen Gräzität

A COLLABORATION BETWEEN THE THESAURUS LINGUAE GRAECAE® AND THE AUSTRIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

Fascicles 1-6

Editor: Erich Trapp

now ONLINE

New Book!

Maged S. A. Mikhail, From Byzantine to Islamic Egypt: Religion, Identity and Politics After the Arab Conquest, London/New York 2014

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The conquest of Egypt by Islamic armies under the command of Amr ibn al-As in the seventh century transformed medieval Egyptian society. Seeking to uncover the broader cultural changes of the period by drawing on a wide array of literary and documentary sources, Maged Mikhail stresses the cultural and institutional developments that punctuated the histories of Christians and Muslims in the province under early Islamic rule. From Byzantine to Islamic Egypt traces how the largely agrarian Egyptian society responded to the influx of Arabic and Islam, the means by which the Coptic Church constructed its sectarian identity, the Islamisation of the administrative classes and how these factors converged to create a new medieval society. The result is a fascinating and essential study for scholars of Byzantine and early Islamic Egypt.

New Book!

Clemens Gantner, Freunde Roms und Völker der Finsternis. Die päpstliche Konstruktion von Anderen im 8. und 9. Jahrhundert, Vienna 2014

This is an open access publication sponsored by the Austrian Science Funds (FWF). Download a copy of the book for free here

Contents

Das Papsttum im 8. und 9. Jahrhundert sah sich unter wechselnden politischen Rahmenbedingungen mit einer Vielzahl von Anderen und Fremden konfrontiert, zum Teil im Zuge einer durchaus selbstbewussten geistlichen Machtpolitik: die Päpste waren in ihrer Interaktion mit den Anderen mitten im politischen Geschehen Italiens. Das Papsttum kommunizierte mit Anderen und über Andere, deren Alterität aber oft erst entsprechend artikuliert, definiert und konstruiert werden musste.

Clemens Gantner untersucht drei Beispiele, die auf jeweils verschiedene Art und Weise das Papsttum im behandelten Zeitraum besonders geprägt haben: die Repräsentation des „byzantinischen“ oder „griechischen“ Kaiserreichs, jene der Langobarden und Franken im 8. Jahrhundert und der einseitig dargestellte Konflikt mit „Sarazenen“ genannten muslimischen Gruppen im 9. Jahrhundert.

International Conference!

A Sociolinguistic Approach to Late Byzantine History Writing

Vienna, September 1-2, 2014

Abteilung für Byzanzforschung/Division of Byzantine Research

Convened by

Erich Trapp (erich.trapp@assoc.oeaw.ac.at)

Andrea Massimo Cuomo (andrea.cuomo@oeaw.ac.at)

Sponsored by the FWF Austrian Science Fund (P – 23912 G19) and the Division of Byzantine Research (Vienna)

Even though ‘Style switching’, ‘Levels of style’, ‘Mimesis’ and ‘Intertextuality’ are familiar concepts to scholars of Byzantine philology, and have been explored as signs of a Byzantine author’s education (or lack of it), their pragmatic function has not drawn enough attention from modern scholars. Moreover, the target audience and the active role that it played in shaping texts have not been sufficiently appreciated.

This conference aims to approach late Byzantine history wr iting from a sociolinguistic point of view, which implies that even written literary texts have to be considered as a product of the relationships linking an author, his communicative purpose, the sociocultural context and his target audience. The workshop will focus on the reception of the milestones of historical sociolinguistics – from Romaine 1982 to Eckert 2012 – in the field of Byzantine philology and will address the challenging questions of whether and how the actual scientific debate in (historical) sociolinguistics may influence the hermeneutic of medieval Greek literature.

On the basis of examples from late Byzantine historiographic works, papers presented in sessions I–I I show and analyse possible causal links between linguistic choices (i.e. vocabulary, intertextuality, allusions, style) made by Byzantine historians and the sociocultural contexts (i.e. schooling systems, cultural trends, political and religious debates etc.) in which they and their target audience(s) lived. More concretely, the following questions will be addressed: a. Does the choice of vocabulary, level of style, etc. imply a pragmatic function? b. Is it possible to analyse the communicative effectiveness of a historiographical text (i.e. its effect on the target audience)? c. Is it possible to find causal links between an author’s linguistic choices and his educational path / communicative purpose / target audience? d. Can we consider the way in which a historical text has been written as the product of its social, political and historical context? And if so, how should we do this?

A sociolinguistic approach to textual interpretation must address the common cultural framework that authors and their audience(s) shared. Papers presented in session II I will focus on the perception of different levels of Greek in the Palaeologan era on the basis of contemporary witnesses and will present case studies in which sociolinguistic theories have been successfully applied. Sessions IV–V will focus on linguistic and lexicographic resources, classical education and book culture in Palaeologan Byzantium.

International Conference!

Byzantium and the West: Perception and Reality (12th-15th c.)

Faculty of History and Archaeology – Department of History

University of Athens, 5-6 September 2014

Main Building, Amphitheatre “Alkis Argyriadis”

New Paper!

Ioannis Stouraitis, Roman identity in Byzantium: a critical approach, Byzantinische Zeitschrift 107/1 (2014) 175-220

Open access to paper-pdf here

Collective identity in the so-called Byzantine Empire is a much-debated issue that has drawn a lot of attention over the years. The current paper attempts a critical assessment of the hitherto main lines of thinking about Byzantine identity, focussing on the period between the seventh and the thirteenth centuries. By proposing an alternative view on source material based on a comprehensive theoretical framework, I argue that a conceptualization of the collective identity of this medieval imperial social order with its constantly fluctuating geopolitical and cultural boundaries needs to be disconnected from essentialist and reifying views on perennial ethnicity as well as from the modern phenomenon of the nation-state.