Some Karamanlidika Inscriptions from the Monastery of the Zoodokhos Pigi, Balıklı, Istanbul

Abstract

‘Few scholars so equipped are disposed to abandon Homer and Sophocles, Thucydides and Plato, for George of Pisidia, Paul the Silentiary, Procopius of Caesarea and Michael Psellus.’ So Romilly Jenkins explained the late development of Byzantine studies. One might add that fewer still are prepared to forsake George of Pisidia, Paul the Silentiary, Procopius of Caesarea and Michael Psellus for Kaisarios Dapontes, Sergios Makraios, Nikodimos Agioreitis and Athanasios Komninos Ypsilantis. Not so Sir Steven Runciman who, in addition to his manifold contributions to the development of Byzantine studies stretching over a period of almost fifty years, has also found the time to make important forays into the as yet largely uncharted seas of what Nicolae Iorga termed Byzance apres Byzance. The ethnic complexity of the Ottoman Empire in its prime is strikingly illuminated in Sir Steven’s The Great Church in Captivity: A Study of the Patriarchate of Constantinople from the Eve of the Turkish Conquest to the Greek War of Independence. One of the lesser known features of this great agglomeration of races and cultures was the confusion of alphabets employed by the minorities of the Empire.