Une expérience mémorable d'échanges scientifiques entre antiquisants et médievistes et le rapport Orient-Occident dans l'Antiquité tardive

Abstract

This study, which had to wait until this year to appear, draws the reader's attention to an interesting project of the chair of Byzantine studies at the Collège de France and his research team, directed by G. Dagron and later D. Feissel. At the initiative of C. Morrisson and J. Lefort, during the academic year 1985-1986, specialists of the Late Antique and Early Byzantine periods, some of them foreigners, came to present the results of their research, primarily regarding major economic and social question. In each area, an effort was made (to the extent possible) to balance East and West in the information presented, and each speaker was matched with another specialist -called a ""relator"" -who explained his own point of view. In the seminar format, each pair of presentations was followed by a discussion (not reproduced in the publication). Although incomplete, since the selection depended on research in progress, the group of papers constitutes a useful, balanced ensemble, less ambitious than the one prepared by A. Giardina in the four-volume Italian work entitled Socictà romana e impero tardo antiro. The study is divided into three sections. The subject of the first part is ""populations and the organization of space"". C. Lepelley and N. Duval, P. Leveau and R. Rebuffat discussed Africa in Late Antiquity; G. Tate and J.-Ch. Baity, the evolution of villages in northern Syria and the urban constructions of Apamea in the Byzantine era. J. Durliat and J.-N. Biraben offered two different perspectives on the great plague of the 6th century. -In the section of""exchanges"", C. Panella and C. Abadie-Raynal with C. Bemont essentially discussed the circulation of ceramics in the East and West during the period in question. J.-P. Sodini presented an analysis of the (eastern) marble trade, especially in the form of capitals made of marble from Proconnesos, Thasos, and quarries in Asia Minor. The sigillographer N. Oikonomidés, using this type of documen(, tried to reconstruct the mechanics of the official trade in silk along the frontiers of the Byzantine Empire. -In the section entitled ""finances, taxation, coinage"", D. Nony for the early period, M. Corbier for the 3rd century, and J.-P. Callu for the 4th century followed the evolution of coinage, prices, and purchasing power. C. Morrisson, after speaking about 4th-century coinage (she participated in the analysis of coin-strikes of that period) continued this study with a fresh synthesis regarding the 5th and 6th centuries, to which J. Durliat responded. R. Delmaire, the specialist in financial institutions of the Late Roman Empire, noted the gradual disappearance of ""sacred largesses"". In the last part, the papyrologist J. Gascou examined (from the point of view of taxes, military allowances for payments and prices) the celebrated ""budgetary table""from Antaeopolis (South of Asyut) which provides a ""blueprint"" of the tax system and its redistribution in this garrison town of the mid-6th century. [Author. Translated by D. Parrish]