Volume 115, Issue 3

Although there has been significant scholarly attention on just war (jus ad bellum) in Byzantium and an increasing interest in the study of the Byzantine culture of war, military trickery and jus in bello (just conduct of war) remain largely unexplored by Byzantinists. This paper aims to fill this gap by studying the theory of military trickery and ethics in Byzantium, c. 900 -1204. It explores and analyses this aspect of jus in bello in Byzantium by employing methods and concepts from Byzantine history, war studies and military ethics. The paper begins by examining the impact of dominant literary traditions (Classical and Biblical) on Byzantine perceptions of military trickery, and then explores the reception and development of Classical and Biblical notions of military trickery and ethics by different sub-cultures in Byzantium (e. g., theologians, jurists, tacticians, historians, orators, poets). The author then attempts to frame a more complete theory of Byzantine military trickery and ethics, and to reflect on the relationship between jus ad bellum and jus in bello in Byzantium.

The quotes in the sacro-profane florilegia have so far been neglected as documents for the 9th-century readership of the Greek novels. This article uses the quotes as intertextual links to the originals and reconstructs the excerption: mapped back onto the novels, the quotes highlight the excerptors’ points of interest and the patterns that connect them. Excerption is thus fully understood as reading practice. The quotes were collected not only because they could provide wisdom when decontextualised, but also because they played a relevant role in the excerptors’ analysis and interpretation of the novels. The florilegia are therefore unique texts in revealing the experience of reading the novels in the 9thcentury.

In this article, we analyse two basilikoi logoi by Theophylact of Ohrid addressed to the emperors Constantine Doukas (1081-1091?) and Alexios I Komnenos (1081-1118) and contest recent scholarship which traces criticism to Alexios I by the use of subversion of traditional rhetorical topoi. We do not question the presence of such subversions, but rather their function in the text. For that, they are studied in their performative contexts: ceremonial events, performative practices and the political circumstances in which their composition possibly took place and when they were performed. By doing so, it is noticeable that criticism to the emperor in such situations is hardly conceivable and the inadequacies of the praises present in the texts can be interpreted as a response to already existing criticism to current imperial policy. Moreover, by comparing both orations as autonomous works, it is possible to perceive a clear shift both in the power balances in the recently established Komnenian consortium and in the relationship between Theophylact and major political player of his time

The city of Melitene in eastern Asia Minor/western Armenia presents a peculiar case in the study of Byzantine-Islamic commerce in the early Middle Ages, because, unlike Trebizond or Attaleia, its commerce was entirely based on land-route connections, and the available evidence does not identify it as a town deliberately designated as a commercial exchange point by the Byzantine authorities. My purpose is to find an answer to the question of how Byzantine- Islamic trade took place in a location on the eastern land frontier where the coexistence of war and trade was a daily reality. The products and export items as well as the routes of the Melitene zone and its neighboring regions (Cappadocia, Pontos, Armenia) are examined in order to situate Melitene in a larger commercial context. I argue that Melitene prospered commercially in the middle of war zone for centuries and that its commercial fortunes began to improve especially by the beginning of the tenth century, reaching their climax in the eleventh century.

Procopius of Caesarea inserts numerous events of symbolic and prognostic character in his Gothic Wars. In Bella 5(1).20.1-4 he describes a game of competition between young Samnite shepherds imitating the current political situation. The loser was hung from a tree by them taking the common Late Roman punishment on the furca as a model. Due to the contingent appearance of a wolf he was not rescued and died. The tragic event is subsequently attributed predicting significance.

Τhis paper revisits the luxurious Palaiologan illuminated manuscript of the New Testament, Codex 31 of the Hagia Lavra monastery in Kalavryta. Iconographic and stylistic characteristics of the miniatures are compared with others and with seals of the early fifteenth century, as well as with the wall-paintings of the Pantanassa Monastery at Μystras (ca 1430). It is argued that the codex was commissioned by Georgios Kantakouzenos Palaiologos, a close collaborator of Konstantinos Palaiologos, Despot of the Morea and subsequent emperor, who lived in Kalavryta and promoted his personal library, which was enjoyed even by Ciriaco of Ancona.

This paper focuses on the remains of the Baptistery chapel within the North Church complex on the outskirts of Shivta, a fifth-seventh century Byzantine village in the Negev. Presumably a monastery, the North Church is the largest and most elaborately constructed of the three Shivta churches. After addressing general structural and chronological issues of the complex, a comparison of the North Church Baptistery to the South Church Baptistery aims to clarify the linkage between shape and ritual. The authors propose that the earlier South Church Baptistery probably served the public, while the later North Church Baptistery fulfilled the internal needs of the monastery. The remains of the Baptism of Christ wall painting, recently rediscovered in the apse of the North Church Baptistery, complements, even if partially, knowledge of the links between architecture, liturgy, and art within the space. The study offers a glimpse into the religious and cultural world of the people who lived in this arid and remote, but by no means isolated area.

Michael and Niketas Choniates, significant figures of letters of the second half of the twelfth and the early thirteenth century, were closely related to the Belissariotai, a noble family of the Byzantine aristocracy. Thanks to both Choniatai brothers we are able to gather valuable information about the Belissariotai and to examine not only their role in the administration of the state during the last quarter of the twelfth century, but also their unbreakable bonds of friendship and kinship with the Choniatai. This paper aims to present a thorough prosopographic study on the Belissariotai family through the examination of literary and sigillographic evidence and to challenge a series of long-established views regarding the different stages of their life and career.

This study concerns an inventory of books, dated 1428/29, inscribed in Sofia, Dujčev gr. 253 (olim Kosinitsa 265), fol. 290r. Although the text was obscurely published in 1886, the vicissitudes of this codex over the following century impeded further research and the inventory continues to be overlooked in studies of Byzantine libraries, books and reading. A new edition, furnishing corrections and filling lacunae, together with a first translation and palaeographical analysis, provide a foundation for introducing this rare document and re-evaluating its context and significance. While the limited prior scholarship generally presumed compilation in a monastic library in 1428/29 and pursued inquiries based on that surmise, examination of Dujčev gr. 253 draws attention to annotations by a member of the Laskaris Leontares family, dated 1431-1437,which place the codex in private possession during this period. A survey of thirteen extant codices variously connected to this distinguished aristocratic dynasty, c.1400 - 1455, elucidates acquisition, ownership and use of books in this socio-cultural milieu, with particular reference to this family’s history and social networks. Comparative assessment of this sample of thirteen codices and the 21 items recorded in the book-list of 1428/29 affirms the view that it relates to a private rather than an institutional library and distinguishes its potential value for investigating aristocratic book culture in the late Byzantine era.

The present study offers a new critical edition of fifteen letters of the bishop of Tabrīz Gregory Chioniades (fl. ca. 1300) and of one further anonymous letter, all preserved in the manuscript Vind. theol. gr. 203, as well as the first edition of yet another letter penned by Chioniades and preserved in the manuscript New York, Columbia University, Smith Western, Add. 10. An attempt at the reconstruction of Chioniades’ career is made, and the content of his letters is analysed, especially with a view to exploring the cultural and political history of the Empire of Trebizond. Codex Vind. hist. gr. 4, the archetype of the medieval tradition of Arrianos’ Anabasis and Indike and one of the most important Greek manuscripts held by the Austrian National Library (ÖNB), is shown to have belonged to Gregory Chioniades and to have passed through the hands of several owners in Trebizond before reaching Constantinople via Demetrios Angelos, a physician and copyist active in the Ottoman capital shortly after the Turkish conquest.

Cyril of Jerusalem is one of the very important witnesses of faith in the East in the fourth century. He is the author of the Catecheses, which contain the content of the catechumenal and mystagogical teaching in Jerusalem. They are an excellent example of how to transmit Christian doctrine to candidates for Christianity and confirm it in the newly baptized. However, the basic method used by Cyril to convey his message is the use of biblical texts. The present study will show the motivation for using biblical references in two mystagogical catecheses on the Eucharist, i.e. Catechesis 22 and Catechesis 23. Their author emphasizes the formation of deep faith and Christian formation of the spirit in the audience. The analysis of the content of these catecheses also shows the principle of the catechist invoking biblical texts based on the active or passive involvement of participants in the liturgical rite. Secondary reasons for the use of quotations or paraphrases from the holy books of the Bible are also highlighted.

An additional witness to the Byzantine tradition of application of Psalms for amuletic and other ritual purposes, conventionally termed “magical”, in a fifteenth-century codex on medicine and the occult sciences (Bologna, BU Ms. 3632), is edited and translated, and its place in the tradition is considered. Combined with another, indirect witness, references to analogous uses of the Psalms by Theodore Balsamon and Matthew Blastares, this evidence strengthens a recent suggestion of broad popularity for the practice in Byzantium.