Byzantinisches Archiv

Nicola Mesarites, an erudite scholar and high-ranking official, witnessed firsthand the fall of the Byzantine Empire and its ensuing power fragmentation. The narrative of the sedition of John Comnenus, nicknamed “the Fat”, serves as an allusion to the empire’s decline before its downfall. This volume addresses the need for a critical edition of the text and provides an Italian translation, completed with a detailed commentary.

This book offers a comprehensive study of the Metaphrasis of the Psalms by Byzantine poet Manuel Philes (fourteenth century). It contains the first critical edition of the entire text (about 3,500 verses), where Psalms and their metaphraseis are displayed synoptically. The introduction provides a complete examination of the manuscripts; a survey of the language and the metre of Philes’ metaphrasis; and a study of how and why Philes rephrased the text of the Psalms.

The present volume is a Festschrift in honor of the distinguished scholar in Late Byzantine, post-Byzantine and Cretan Renaissance studies I. Mavromatis. The title Kalligraphos is indicative of the foundations of his scholarship, which lie in the fields of paleography and early printing. With manuscripts and early printed books as the primary material of his studies, Professor Mavromatis has produced several major works in the fields of Byzantine philology, Cretan Renaissance literature (especially Erotorcritos) and late Byzantine vernacular poetry. This volume includes a short preface and twenty-four articles by senior and younger scholars, former colleagues, collaborators, and students of Professor Mavromatis. The articles are loosely arranged in chronological order of their subject matter and treat issues ranging from Byzantine historiography going back to the 4th century CE to post-Byzantine Cretan poetry of the 17th century. This philological kaleidoscope features new editions and interpretations of hitherto unknown or little-known poems and texts. The volume is intended for scholars, graduate and undergraduate students and the general readership interested in Byzantine and post-Byzantine literature.

With over 50 contributions on written sources and archaeological finds, this volume offers numerous new editions and interpretations that expand our knowledge of Byzantium through the centuries and from different perspectives. Special emphasis is placed on topography, hagiography, edition philology, and art history, which at the same time reflect Albrecht Berger's various fields of research; this volume is dedicated to him.

The letter collections that the high-ranking court official Nikephoros Choumnos (c.1260–1327) compiled on the basis of his correspondence with the emperor, fellow intellectuals, clergymen and relatives, are an important testimony to the social and intellectual history of late Byzantium. They show how during this period of cultural revival and political crisis writers used letters not only as a medium for communication and networking within a small educated elite based primarily in Constantinople but also as a vehicle for self-representation through the publication of carefully curated manuscript collections.

The present book aims to make these different, yet closely intertwined layers of the 180 surviving letters of Nikephoros Choumnos accessible through a new critical edition with facing German translation. One of its main objectives is to present the individual collections the author commissioned as autonomous works of literary autobiography and to foreground textual fluidity on both the macrostructural level of the collections and the microstructural level of each letter. In addition to a short biography of the author, the introduction provides fundamental analyses of various aspects of the collections and of the individual letters preserved in them (transmission, formation and composition of the collections, prosopography, summaries with commentary, linguistic and literary elements), offers a detailed discussion of the orthography of the authorial manuscripts and explains the principles and methods applied in the edition and translation.

This volume presents, for the first time, a critical edition of a highly unusual Byzantine text: the Metaphrase – or intralingual translation – of the early 13th-century History (Chronike Diegesis) of Niketas Choniates. The original History of Choniates has always been considered a monument of Byzantine historical and rhetorical discourse. Its highly learned, Atticizing style of Greek, however, frequently made it obscure to readers, even in the Byzantine period. As a result, in the second quarter of the 14th century, probably in Constantinople, an individual or group of individuals undertook to transpose the entire work into a simpler register of Greek, closer to the everyday language of the period. Accordingly, the text as published here brings to light a major body of primary linguistic material, enabling scholars in the field to judge for themselves the nature and extent of the linguistic and stylistic enterprise represented by the Metaphrase. The introductory matter and accompanying analysis provide background information on the manuscript tradition of the Metaphrase, as well as an assessment of its linguistic and cultural context and genesis.

This volume examines the hagiographic works of Nicholas Kabasilas, a major fourteenth-century theologian from Thessalonica. The 16 manuscripts that transmit his encomium have been transcribed, collated, and carefully investigated, in order to reconstitute the manuscript transmission and prepare of a modern critical edition that enables important inferences.

The present volume is a Festschrift in honour of the distinguished Byzantinist Costas N. Constantinides. The title of the volume, Bibliophilos: Books and Learning in the Byzantine World, reflects Professor Constantinides’ major contribution to the fields of Greek palaeography, editions of Byzantine texts, Byzantine history, scholarship and education, and Cypriot manuscripts and culture. The volume is introduced by a preface and a tabula gratulatoria dedicated to the honorand, followed by twenty articles, written by seasoned and younger scholars, who are former colleagues and students of Professor Constantinides. These articles, which appear in alphabetical order, offer new material and shed fresh light to the study of Greek manuscripts, binders and scribes, and the life, works and activities of Byzantine scholars, teachers and students, providing editions of unpublished texts, including letters and poems, and exploring various aspects of Byzantine and Cypriot history, literature, art, science and culture. In the process the authors often challenge earlier views and offer new interpretations and insights. Bibliophilos is a book for the student, teacher and scholar of Byzantium in particular, and for every bibliophile in general.

This book examines the work of Manuel Philes, the most prominent Byzantine poet of the fourteenth century. The book analyzes a range of encomiastic (i.e. written in praise) poetry dedicated to members of the Constantinople elite. The works are studied from the perspective of their composition (genre, motifs, techniques), socio-cultural context (production and reception), and functions.

This volume addresses the literary and aesthetic work of Theodore Metochites. It focuses on the “Miscellanea” and “Ethics or on Education,” the panegyrics on Nikaia (the exile capital) and Constantinople, along with the reconfiguration of the Chora Church. It takes into account Byzantine spatial representations as well as interdisciplinary relationships of the early Palaiologos period to the declining Western Late Middle Ages.

The only known work of Nikolaos Kataphloron, an eminent orator and teacher in 12th century Constantinople, has so far remained mostly unpublished. This book presents its first full critical edition commented and translated into French, with Introduction and Indices. The text is a masterpiece of Comnenian rhetoric; the author, through the praise of a Byzantine aristocrat governor residing in Athens, without deviating from the regulatory framework of the genre, raises issues of rhetoric and political theory, philosophical reflection, social behavior and ethics, literary and self-criticism. More over, he composes and integrates various rhetorical genres, exemplary laudatory pieces for different types of men, women and circumstances, in a high and elaborate style, with a multitude of quotes or indirect references to texts of Christian and pagan literature. This work seems to have functioned as a source of feed for any interested orator. In the Introduction and the footnotes, in addition to the Nikolaos Kataphloron biography, the questions about the recipient’s prosopography, the historical context in which the text was composed and its date, they are discussed issues related to the education, the rhetoric and more generally the literature of Comnenian era.

This volume examines the loanwords found in 18 late-Byzantine histories and chronicles. In order to analyze the lexical interferences in the lexicon of late-Byzantine historical literature, all words were included (except place names and proper names) that substantiate language contact. The editors place special emphasis on the sociolinguistic context in which the loanwords were used.

This annotated critical edition presents the epigrams of the Byzantine scholar Maximus Planudes. Due to the absence of a critical edition of almost all Maximus Planudes’ epigrams as well as of a methodical commentary or a systematic review of their thematic, lexical, stylistic and metrical features, this study aims to elucidate the least recognised facet of the literary work of one of the most important scholar of the Palaiologan Renaissance.

L'étude contient l'édition critique ainsi que le commentaire methodique des épigrammes du moine érudit de la renaissance paléologue, Maxime Planude.

The late Byzantine age, from the conquest of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204 to the fall of the last independent Greek territories to the Ottomans in 1461, was not only a period of political decline, but also of intensive cultural activity. The essays assembled in this volume discuss the works and lives of various authors (Nikephoros and Theodoros Xanthopoulos, Theodoros Metochites, Nikephoros Gregoras and Manuel Philes), they investigate issues such as ancient Greek and contemporary Western influences on the literary production, and discuss themes of material culture and, with a clear focus on Constantinople, of social, administrative and economical history.

This volume fills the need for a new critical edition and linguistic study of John Kananos' account of the siege of Constantinople in 1422. New research on the manuscripts has produced a new stemma codicum and shown that the oldest witness of this narrative, Vat. gr. 579 (ff. 355r - 364v), was written in Constantinople and belonged to the prolific scribe Phlamules Kontostephanos, who also provided the copy with a title in which the name of John Kananos is mentioned for the first time. The philological approach adopted here explains contradictions among the manuscripts and Kananos' peculiar vernacularisms and reveals a surprisingly realistic and elaborate Greek. The accompanying English translation, a chapter on the language of Kananos, and a complete thesaurus make this volume a valuable contribution to the study of late Byzantine literature.

This volume presents a broad array of contributions on Byzantine literature and culture, in which well-known Byzantinists approach topics of ceremonial, education, historiography, hagiography, homiletics, law, philology, philosophy, prosopography, rhetoric and theology. New editions and analyses of texts and documents are included. The essays combine traditional scholarship with newer approaches, thus reflecting the current dynamics of the field.

Author and authorship have become increasingly important concepts in Byzantine literary studies. This volume provides the first comprehensive survey on strategies of authorship in Middle Byzantine literature and investigates the interaction between self-presentation and cultural production in a wide array of genres, providing new insights into how Byzantine intellectuals conceived of their own work and pursuits.

The Monastery of Pantokrator, founded by John II Komnenos and his wife Piroska-Irene, is not only one of the most important and most impressive monastic complexes of the Komnenian age, it is also one of the few to occupy a key position in the life of Constantinople in the Palaiologan age, given that its mortuary chapel (Heroon) was also the last resting place of many members of the latter dynasty. The first attempt to chronicle its history, based on the texts known at the time, was undertaken by G. Moravscik (1932). Interest was rekindled by P. Gautier’s critical edition of its Typikon (1971), and more recently by restoration work on its buildings.

This volume brings together a comprehensive selection of all the texts concerning or connected with the Monastery of Pantokrator, and through them it demonstrates the Monastery’s importance and its role throughout the history of the Byzantine Empire—a role that has received insufficient attention, given that older studies have tended to focus on the 12th century. The texts cover the situation in Constantinople before the Monastery was founded, the historical and cultural context within which it was established, its Typikon (monastic formulary), the descriptions of Slav and Western travellers, the Byzantine texts (homiletic, historical, hagiographic, and poetic) relating to the Monastery and its history from the 12th to the 15th century, the Byzantine officials associated with it, and the celebration of the principal festivals in its churches. It also contains critical editions of and commentaries on the two versions of the Synaxarion of Irene Komnene, a speech referring to the Empress’s associate in the construction of the Monastery, another on the translation of the icon of St. Demetrios from the Church of St. Demetrios in Thessalonica to the Monastery of Pantokrator, an Office of the Translation of the Holy Stone, the verse Synaxarion composed for the consecration of the Monastery, and the known and unpublished poems by Byzantine poets (12th-15th c.) relating to it, as well as an extensive bibliography.

Among the many versions of the Alexander Romance originating from Alexandria (3rd century AD) the long Byzantine Alexander Poem takes a special place. It is transmitted in only one miscellaneous manuscript, Ms. Marcianus Graecus 408, and contains 6130 ‘political’ (fifteen-syllable) verses. This edition presents a new critical text of the Byzantine Alexander Poem with an introduction and an extensive commentary.

The general scope of the present volume is to present a variety of approaches and topics within the growing field of research on Byzantine aesthetics. Theurgy in Neoplatonic and Christian contexts is represented by the contributions of W.-M. Stock and L. Bergemann; theories of beauty are at the centre of interest of the papers by S. Mariev and M. Marchetto. A. Pizzone approaches Byzantine aesthetics by looking for aesthetic experience in the literary texts, while the remaining contributions explore issues related to the iconoclast controversy: An important moment in the development of Byzantine philosophy on the eve of iconoclasm is the primary interest of A. del Campo Echevarría, who looks at the question of universals in John of Damaskos. The relationship between image and text in Byzantine illustrated manuscripts occupies the attention of B. Crostini. D. Afinogenov explores from a philological perspective the fate of important iconophile terminology in Old Bulgarian, while L. Lukhovitskij reconstructs from historical and philological perspectives the historical memory of the iconoclast controversy during the Late Byzantine Period.

This volume examines the effects of Byzantine culture on the rest of Europe, from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance, Protestant Reformation, Enlightenment, and up to the present time. The individual contributions cast a new light on different forms of encounter, adaptation, and impact, as well as the cultural clash. They investigate phenomena from literature, philosophy, theology, history, jurisprudence, music, and art, elucidating the ways in which the Byzantine Empire significantly shaped the development of Europe as a transmitter of the Greek, Roman, and Christian cultures.

The book is an annotated critical edition of an unpublished collection of hymnographical texts, preserved in the eleventh-century Greek manuscript 11 of the library of Leimonos monastery, Lesbos, Greece. This important codex is a Menaion for June comprising thirty akolouthiai on saints; nineteen of them are hitherto unpublished. The edition of the texts is accompanied by an introduction, a liturgical, palaeographical, and hymnographical commentary, appendices of unpublished hymns preserved in manuscripts other than Lesbiacus Leimonos 11, and indices.

The introduction examines codex Lesbiacus Leimonos 11 and its importance from a liturgical, hymnographical, and palaeographical perspective. It is divided into four chapters. The first presents the liturgical environment of the period from the ninth century, when most of the texts edited were composed, to the eleventh, when the production of the codex could be placed, and the liturgical books used in the period, the structure of the akolouthiai and the festal calendar of the Byzantine church. The second chapter deals with the content of the texts edited. Chapter Three presents briefly the life and the hymnographical work of the authors of the texts. The last chapter of the introduction is devoted to the manuscript tradition of the texts.

This volume combines twenty-six contributions on Byzantine literature in which well-known Byzantine scholars approach subjects from epistolography, historiography, hagiography, philology and prosopography. New editions of many of the texts and documents analysed are included.

Saint Theodosia of Constantinople enjoys a special place among the martyrs of the iconoclastic persecutions. Her cult reached its zenith under the Byzantine dynasty of the Palaiologoi (1259–1453), which is reflected not only in three rhetorical panegyrics in her honour, but also in historical works, poetry, hymnography, and in the travel journals of Russian pilgrims.
Kotzabassi provides a detailed analysis of and a commentary on these texts, as well as a critical edition based on all known manuscripts of the texts, some of which are published for the first time.

Twenty articles on Byzantine literature written in honour of W. Hörandner by colleagues are contained in this volume. They focus on his research interests, in particular epigrams and the literature of the Comnenan period, as well as the history of literary motifs, rhetoric and questions of literary language. Several contributions include editions of texts. The articles are written in German, English, French and Italian.