Byzantine Studies Research Articles

The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium

UK-based Contributors: Thomas S. Brown, Senior Lecturer in Medieval History, University of Edinburgh. Robert Browning, Professor Emeritus of Classics, University of London. David Buckton, Curator of Early Christian and Byzantine Collections, British Museum. Lawrence I. Conrad, Lecturer in Arab-Islamic Medicine, Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, London. Simon Franklin, Lecturer in Russian, University of Cambridge. Philip Grierson, Professor Emeritus of Numismatics, University of Cambridge. John Lowden, Lecturer in Art History, University of London. R. J. Macrides, Honorary Lecturer in Byzantine Studies and Modern Greek, University of St Andrews. Paul Magdalino, Lecturer in Medieval History, University of St Andrews. Cyril Mango, Bywater and Sotheby Professor of Byzantine and Modern Greek Language and Literature, University of Oxford. Marlia Mango, Art historian, Oxford. Sir Dimitri Obolensky, Professor Emeritus of Russian and Balkan History, University of Oxford. Nigel Wilson, Fellow and Tutor in Classics, University of Oxford.

Byzantine Studies: Essays on the Slavic World and the Eleventh Century.Speros Vryonis, Jr.

<i>Byzantine Studies: Essays on the Slavic World and the Eleventh Century.</i>Speros Vryonis, Jr.

Byzantine diplomacy (review)

240 Reviews specialist. Established textual and art history scholars will not find anything new in the critical or analytical apparatus within the covers. It is difficult to agree with the pubUsher's hype that the work is '... an indispensable guide for scholars . . . ' . It is, however, an admirable record of a cross-section of the manuscripts held in the Beinecke and will be valuable to bibliophiles and certainly a teaching tool at the undergraduate level. Whilst Latin or technical terms are generally explained in her text, the lack of a glossary does, nonetheless, limit the volume's function as a teaching aid in this area. Peter Rolfe Monks Townsvdle Shepard, Jonathon and Simon Franklin, eds., Byzantine diplomacy (Papers from the Twenty-fourth spring symposium of Byzantine studies, Cambridge, March, 1990), Aldershot, Variorum, 1992; pp. xi, 332; R.R.P.? This is an important book on several counts. First and not least it is the first volume in a new monograph series published by the Society for the promotion of Byzantine Studies. The SPBS, founded in 1983 as an umbrella organization for the sundry activities in Byzantine studies in the British Isles, has already taken under its wing the Bulletin of British Byzantine Studies (BBBS) whose annual, regular, and increasingly more complete lists of recent publications is now more than ever acting as a substitute for the authoritative but much delayed bibliographical listings of Byzantinische Zeitschrift. For nearer thirty than twenty years, at first in the University of Birmingham thanks to Antony Bryer's energy but more recendy in other centres too, Britain has also seen annual symposia on Byzantinetopics,always closely focussed (unlike the American and Australian affairs) and authoritative—but preserved in written form only occasionally. It is welcome news then that under the aegis of its cunent president Averil Cameron, the SPBS has found means which permit much more regular publication of these symposia. Then the subject matter of this book is significant. In the later Middle Ages Byzantine diplomatic machinations became a byword beyond the empire's borders for deviousness and subdety. However, there is no one modem study which examines the means by which this reputation came to be acquired, nor how the deviousness was put into practice. The symposium in 1990, and this coUection of papers derived from it provides the ground work for such a study. The topic is one that is not always easy to pin down. Foreign policy, the overall design, and diplomacy, the means by which the design is carried out are not always immediately separable. Although the symposium convenors and editors of this volume instructed the speakers to concentrate on the means rather Reviews 241 than the policy, some have been more successful than others in carrying this out. Thought has gone into the overall construction. There are general overviews of Byzantium's relations with outside powers by A. Kazhdan, E. Chrysos, J. Shepard, and N. Oikonomides. Between them they cover more than a thousand years of complex contacts, changing state structures, and differing external pressures. It is in these chapters, perhaps, that the distinctions between foreign policy and diplomatic means are most difficult to maintain, though a sense of the differing demands at different periods is well brought out. These papers are contrasted with more detailed analyses of Byzantium's relations with specific peoples: J. Herrin on the Franks, T. Noonan on the Khazars (especially useful because of the paucity of the evidence), H. Kennedy on the Arabs before the eleventh century, S. Franklin on detailed points of dispute with the Russian church in the twelfth century, and K. Hopwood on the sort of contract between Byzantine and Turkish communities in Asia minor that must have been very frequent but usually escapes attention. The question of our sources on Byzantine diplomacy is a tricky one, given the lack of primary archival documentation. By and large scraps have to be constructed from the rewritings of more or less literary historians, as was done in Dolger's Regesten der Kaiserurkunden. R. Scott (on Malalas of Antioch) and C. Schummer (on Liuprand of Cremona) discuss the remnants of diplomatic exchanges that can be seen in these authors while M . Mullett sets out the...

Church and People in Byzantium. Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies. Twentieth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Manchester 1986. Edited by Rosemary Morris. Pp. x + 286 incl. 48 ills. Birmingham: University of Birmingham, Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, 1990. £14. 0 7044 11008

Church and People in Byzantium. Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies. Twentieth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Manchester 1986. Edited by Rosemary Morris. Pp. x + 286 incl. 48 ills. Birmingham: University of Birmingham, Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, 1990. £14. 0 7044 11008 - Volume 43 Issue 3

Rosemary Morris éd., Church and People in Byzantium, Society for the Promotion of Byzantines Studies. Twentieth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Manchester, 1986, Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modem Greek Studies, Birmingham, University of Birmingham, 1990,286 p.

Rosemary Morris éd., Church and People in Byzantium, Society for the Promotion of Byzantines Studies. Twentieth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Manchester, 1986, Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modem Greek Studies, Birmingham, University of Birmingham, 1990,286 p. - Volume 47 Issue 1

Parallel Universes: Byzantine art history in 1990 and 1991

AbstractArt history, like many disciplines in the so-called humanities, has engaged in a bout of re-definition over the past decade. Studies of the art of Byzantium have not been immune to this wave of revision and re-assessment. Though it must be said that Byzantine has been affected less than Roman or, especially, nineteenth-century art history, the discipline is nonetheless in a state of transition, and this fact deserves greater recognition than it has received. Byzantinists have, I think, a tendency to compartmentalise scholarship by authors (or occasionally universities) without examining the paradigmatic shifts in the discipline as a whole. Studies that provide such essentially historiographical overviews are normally confined within the limits of a book review or to the preface of a monographic study. In both cases, the scope is necessarily limited by the content. Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies has not included book reviews in the past, and my goal here is not primarily to write an extended re...

Divine Diplomacy in the late Eleventh Century

The subject of the XXIV Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies was Byzantine Diplomacy and many of the papers dealt with high-level contacts between Byzantium and other medieval states. But although Byzantines often made use of churchmen and monks as ambassadors and although there was usually a religious dimension to Byzantine diplomacy, it is worth noting that powerful monastic figures and influential houses often engaged in diplomacy on their own account. The theatre of operations was often more geographically limited, but this kind of monastic diplomacy had much in common with its lay counterpart. In both cases, it was Constantinople and the imperial court which was the centre of ‘diplomatic activity’ and, in both cases, negotiations were often delicate and long-protracted. If favours were sought, if confirmations of privileges were required, if difficulties with zealous local officials were to be overcome, then representations needed to be made at the highest level. This often meant a monastic delegation visiting Constantinople and operating in very similar ways to lay missions.

Divine Diplomacy in the late Eleventh Century

The subject of the XXIV Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies was Byzantine Diplomacy and many of the papers dealt with high-level contacts between Byzantium and other medieval states. But although Byzantines often made use of churchmen and monks as ambassadors and although there was usually a religious dimension to Byzantine diplomacy, it is worth noting that powerful monastic figures and influential houses often engaged in diplomacy on their own account.

The blessings of pilgrimage (review)

Reviews 173 Ousterhout, R., ed., The blessings ofpilgrimage, (Illinois Byzantine Studies, No. 1), Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1990; pp. xii, 149; 54 ill.; R. R. P. US$24.95. The nature of the 'blessings' referred to in thetitleof this collection of conference papers changes as one reads the book. They are not so much the intangible spiritual benefits that pilgrims might hope to acquire from their travels as the smaU souvenirs and tokens that were to prolong the spiritual experience on the traveUers' return home. The book falls into two sections, of which the second deals with these objects while the first is concerned with the development and theory of pdgrimage. The temporal focus of the book is on the early Byzantine period, with most emphasis on the fourth century; although Maggie Duncan-Flowers in 'A pilgrim's ampulla from the shrine of St. John the Evangelist at Ephesus' and Ch. Bakirtzis in 'Byzantine ampuUae from ThessaloniM' extend their discussions to middle Byzantium. Not surprisingly, given the book's concentration on the early period, the physical focus is on the Loca Sancta and the Holy Land, though the two papers already mentioned deal with the role of Ephesos and Thessaloniki, lesser centres of pilgrimage within the later Byzantine world. Also, perhaps inevitably, the iconographic and symbohc values that are adduced come largely from within the practices and thought patterns of eastern, rather than western, Christianity. Of the 'theoretical' papers, Sabine MacCormack in 'Loca Sancta: the organization of sacred topography of late antiquity' develops Peter Brown's arguments on the role of places sanctified by the presence of holy men both in their Ufetimes and after death. John Wilkinson in 'Jewish holy places and the origins of Christian pilgrimage' sets theriseof Christian pilgrim routes within the Holy Land in the context of Jewish practice while Hagith S. Sivan in 'Pdgrimage, monasticism and the emergence of Christian Palestine in the fourth century' argues that, from their role in connection with Mount Sinai and Mount Nebo for example, monastic communities moulded the identification of Biblical sites, using both Jewish and Christian sources, and thereby encouraged pilgrim visits. Kenneth G. Holum in 'Hadrian and St Helena: imperial travel and the origins of Christian Holy Land pilgrimage' argues that the concept of pilgrimage was barely formulated until Helena, mother of the emperor Constantine, made an imperial progress (female version) to the Holy Land and inaugurated lavish building programmes in Jerusalem. It is in this paper that the disadvantages of collecting conference papers, not all of them even given on the same occasion, become apparent. Holum disagrees with the assumption implicit in MacCormack's and Wilkinson's essays that pilgrimage was a phenomenon whose origins go back to before the earliest phases of Christian practice. However, there are no cross-references nor any attempt at a dialogue. Readers are 174 Reviews lefttocreate their own debate. Given that Ousterhout has provided introductions to each paper, perhaps a litde more editorial intervention could have been used to expand this argument and forward the analysis of the role of pilgrimage in late antique society. Of the remaining papers in the second section, Cynthia Hann in 'Loca Sancta souvenirs: sealing the pilgrim's experience' emphasises the spiritual symbolism of the decoration on ampuUae and tokens. Gary Vikan in 'Pilgrims in Magi's clothing: the impact of mimesis on early Christian pilgrimage art' demonstrates how appropriate it is that those archetypal travellers, the Magi, are the figures most frequendy represented on pdgrim tokens. Robert Ousterhout in 'Loca Sancta and the architectural response to pdgrimage' discusses the motives and varying symbolism behind the construction elsewhere in Europe of architectural copies of the Anastasis Rotunda of Jerusalem that culminated in the numerous 'round churches' of the Templars and HospitaUars. There are useful points raised in aU these papers, though some, for example, Wilkinson's, Holum's and Vikan's read like footnotes to their authors' more substantial pubhcations elsewhere on similartopics.Others, especially Sivan's, cry out for more extensive treatment All reveal the constraints of their original twenty-minute format usual in the annual meetings of the American Byzantine Studies Conference. Despite one or two places where the computer has devoured...

Christianizing death: the creation of a ritual process in early medieval Europe (review)

174 Reviews lefttocreate their own debate. Given that Ousterhout has provided introductions to each paper, perhaps a litde more editorial intervention could have been used to expand this argument and forward the analysis of the role of pilgrimage in late antique society. Of the remaining papers in the second section, Cynthia Hann in 'Loca Sancta souvenirs: sealing the pilgrim's experience' emphasises the spiritual symbolism of the decoration on ampuUae and tokens. Gary Vikan in 'Pilgrims in Magi's clothing: the impact of mimesis on early Christian pilgrimage art' demonstrates how appropriate it is that those archetypal travellers, the Magi, are the figures most frequendy represented on pdgrim tokens. Robert Ousterhout in 'Loca Sancta and the architectural response to pdgrimage' discusses the motives and varying symbolism behind the construction elsewhere in Europe of architectural copies of the Anastasis Rotunda of Jerusalem that culminated in the numerous 'round churches' of the Templars and HospitaUars. There are useful points raised in aU these papers, though some, for example, Wilkinson's, Holum's and Vikan's read like footnotes to their authors' more substantial pubhcations elsewhere on similartopics.Others, especially Sivan's, cry out for more extensive treatment All reveal the constraints of their original twenty-minute format usual in the annual meetings of the American Byzantine Studies Conference. Despite one or two places where the computer has devoured lines, the book is nicely produced and well illustrated. Elizabeth M . Jeffreys Department of M o d e m Greek University of Sydney Paxton, Frederick S., Christianizing death: the creation of a ritual process in early medieval Europe, Ithaca & London, C o m e U University Press, 1990; cloth; pp. xiv, 229; R. R. P. US$31.50. The encounter with death is so fundamental to human society that it is perhaps surprising how little effort medievaUsts have made to understand the emergence in the early Middle Ages of elaborateritualsintended to cope with this moment offinalrupture. Paxton's book remedies this deficiency admirably. Liturgical texts present daunting problems of identification and interpretation to the nonspeciaUst and tend as a result to be ignored by aU except the assiduous liturgical scholar. Combining the great progress made in the last twenty years by liturgists in the identification and classification of sacramentaries with anthropological insights into the nature ofritual,Paxton documents and analyses the profound shifts that took place in the Church's attitude to sickness and death in the early medieval period. Only in relatively recent years have 'the lastrites'been re-named by Roman CathoUc authorities 'the sacrament of the sick'. A profound change in attitude Reviews 175 to sickness and death is involved. Paxton's book unfolds with great precision the process by which praying for and anointing the sick, a practice originaUy quite distinct in the early R o m a n Church from prayers for the dead, became fused together into a singleritualfor the dying by the ninth century. His chapter on the Mediterranean background to these subsequent changes, demonstrates how, in the R o m a n liturgy, prayers for the sick were intended to restore people to health. The central act of preparation for death was reception of the Eucharist. Only in the fifth century, above all with Caesarius of Aries in the early sixth, does Paxton see a shift away towards an emphasis on deathbed penance and the welfare of the soul. The Irish liturgy in particular, a strong influence on that of the Frankish Church in the seventh and eighth centuries, seems to have been responsible for combining prayers for the sick with prayers for the dying. In the more violent and less secure environment of the barbarian kingdoms, the Church was more concerned with devisingritualstoincorporate the dead into a wider community of saints than to restore the sick to life. The subject matter of Paxton's book is dense. H e does not skip over delicate and vital questions about the dating of individual manuscripts. Valuable tables Ust the contents of individual sacramentaries. As is inevitable in such a study as this, there is more one would like to know. What documentation do we have of actual ministry to the sick and the dying in the early...

Università di Genova, Istituto di Medievistica, Publications

182 Reviews saturation of markets, etc? To m y mind Spufford's analysis places undue emphasis on the role of precious metd in the economy to the detriment of its other mechanisms. John H. Pryor Department of History University of Sydney Universita di Genova, Istituto di Medievistica, Publications (1) Cinquant' anni di storiografia medievistica italiana e sovietica. Gli insediamenti genovesi nel Mar Nero: atti del Convegno storico italo-sovietica e della Tavola Rotonda, Genova 11-13 novembre 1976 (Collana storica di fonti e studi, fuore serie), Genoa, Associazione Italia-URSS, 1982; pp. 384; II. 8. These are the acts of a joint Italian-Soviet colloquium at Genoa in November 1976. The participants included a star-studded cast of all the important names in contemporary medieval Genoese history. Papers were organized on themes with, by and large, an Italian and a Soviet contribution to each. Those on economic history included Victor Rutenburg, Luigi de Rosa, and Eugenia Gutnova. Those on religious history, Raoul Manselli and Anatoli Novesel'cev. Those on Byzantine studies in Italy and the U S S R , Agostino Pertusi and Zinaida Udal'cova. Paolo Brezzi reviewed medievd studies in Italy for the years 1925-1975. Appendices were contributed by Rimna Bondar on the Italian Black Sea colonies in the light of Soviet archaeological research and by Aldo Agosto on the sources for the Black Sea colonies in the Archivio di Stato di Genova. The volume is finished off by a fine colour reproduction of the Adante luxoro portolan chart from the Civica Biblioteca Berio di Genova. (2) Balletto, L., Bllancio di trent'anni e prospettive della medievistica genovese (Collana storica di fonti e studi, fuore serie), Genoa, Universita di Genova, 1983; pp. 154. This is a survey of the work of the Genoese school of medievdists which began with the foundation of the Istituto di storia medievale e m o d e m a della Facolta di Lettere at the University of Genoa in 1950 by Giorgio Falco. This later became the Istituto di paleografia e storia medioevale from 1963 udner Geo Pistarino; renamed from 1982 the Istituto di Medievistica. The volume contains a survey of the work of the Italian scholars at the Institute and a complete bibliography of their publications (pp. 99-154). The productivity of some of these scholars is little short of bewildering. Pistarino has 178 items to his credit many of them books. Even his students have extraordinary publication records: Gabriella Airaldi 90 items, and Laura Bdletto 61. Again many of these are whole books and extensive chapters and articles containing the results of important original research. The only works by foreigners included are those by Reviews 183 scholars such as Michel Balard and Roberto S. Lopez who have been associated with the Institute in some of their publications. (3) Pavoni, R., ed., Notai genovesi in Oltremare: atti rogati a Cipro da Lamberto di Sambuceto (gennaio-agosto 1302) (Collana storica di fonti e studi No. 49), Genoa, Universita di Genova, 1987; pp. 411; 2 plates. The acts of the famous Genoese notary Lamberto di Sambuceto, who worked in Cyprus in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, were first edited by Comelio Desimoni in Archives de I'Orient Latin (1884) and Revue de ('Orient Latin (1893). The present volume is the fifth in the series of a modem edition of his Cypriote acts. This present volume contains 283 documents from Notarial Registers Nos 382 and 173 of the Archivio di Stato di Genova. Happily, editorial policy is now to print the documents in extenso, thus preserving their legal niceties and orthographical integrity and making them avdlable to historians of all persuasions, rather than to use the abbreviations and cdendar forms which still plague editions of medieval documents elsewhere. The documents of Lamberto di Sambuceto present a fascinating world in the eastern Mediterranean dter the fall of Acre. Cyprus, particularly Famagusta, became a cosmopolitan 'Mecca' for people from all over the Mediterranean world. There are Marseillese and Marsalans, Pisans, Genoese and Venetians, Provencals and Catalans, Greeks and Armenians, and many others. The commerce of the town with Lesser Armenia, particularly Ayas and Tarsus, had become very intense after the loss of Acre in 1291...

Continuity and Change in Late Byzantine and Early Ottoman Society (review)

154 Reviews Anthony Bryer and Heath Lowry (editors), Continuity and Change in Late Byzantine and Early Ottoman Society. Birmingham (England): The University of Birmingham Centre for Byzantine Studies; and Washington, D.C: Dumbarton Oaks. 1986. Pp. vii + 343. This collection of conference papers, brought out under joint Anglo-American auspices, provides the text of 12 of the 13 papers presented in May 1982 at a Dumbarton Oaks symposium organized under the same title by the editors of the present work. The symposium itself was the outcome of a four year pilot project sponsored by the University of Birmingham and Dumbarton Oaks, which had as its aim an investigation of the degree to which what the editors define as 'elements of continuity and change' in late Byzantine and early Ottoman society (namely in the southern Balkans and in Anatolia) could be studied and compared on the basis of late Byzantine praktika or monastic charters and the earliest surviving Ottoman tahrir defters, commonly regarded as a cross between province-wide cadastral surveys and records of fixed and movable (land, crops, livestock, subject population) taxable resources. The intellectual catalyst for the whole enterprise appears to have been the near-simultaneous appearance, little more than a decade ago, of Angeliki Laiou-Thomadakis' wellknown study of late Byzantine (principally Macedonian) peasant society , based on the surviving relevant praktika, and Heath Lowry's tahrir-based Ph.D. dissertation on the Turkification and Islamization of Trebizond during the first century and a quarter of Ottoman rule. What, then, could be more potentially fruitful than to bring together late Byzantine and early Ottoman specialists to attempt a comparison of the available evidence for 'change and continuity' in, at least, certain selected areas of former Byzantine, later Ottoman territory? In the event, the three areas which were chosen for investigation —the Chalkidiki, the Matzouka/Maçuka valley in the hinterland of Trebizond, and the island of Lemnos/Limnos — were selected not so much for their intrinsic historical significance but because there exists for these regions, and not for others, a sufficiency of both charter- and defter-based material. Two of the three regions came into Ottoman hands relatively late (Trebizond in 1461; Limnos not until 1479), while for the Chalkidiki there is a gap of virtually a century between the beginnings of Ottoman conquest and settlement and the date of the oldest surviving defter for the region. Bridge-building across such historical chasms is a risky business. The caesura in Balkan (as mainly earlier in Anatolian) society brought about by the disappearance of old state and social forms, by depopulation and war, and by plague or mass deportation, during the mid- Reviews 155 14th to mid-15th century, when taken together with the imposition of an entirely new governing and religious superstructure is a series of linked historical processes for which the present study supplies no authoritative overview. This lack, when taken together with the (source-determined) differing approaches to their common subjectmatter displayed by the distinguished symposiasts, makes of their collected papers an object-lesson in historiographical discontinuity, in which the almost entire lack of any common form of discourse is the most startling discovery. The fourth, general section of the papers is devoted to urban themes, yet Vryonis' reworking of Theodore Anagnostes' lamentations on the fall of Thessaloniki has nothing in common with Bryer's careful toponymie observations on Nicaea, or Lowry's unrestrained triumphalism on Mehemmed II and the conquest of Istanbul. We are, it seems, what we study. Also highlighted is the disparate level of human resources which were able to be brought to bear on the subject from the Byzantine and Ottoman sides. Each of the four sections into which the Symposium was divided, produced two papers in what may be described as a major (i.e., prescriptive) and one in a minor (i.e., descriptive) mode. As far as the 'major' themes are concerned, on the Chalkidiki and its 'sample' (but how far representative?) village of Roadolibos/ Radilofo the Byzantinists were able to draw on the expertise of Jacques Lefort; on the Matzouka valley ('Late Byzantine Rural Society in Matzouka '), on the doyen of Pontological studies Anthony Bryer; on Lemnos , on John Haldon...

Reviews and Short Notices

Reviews and Short Notices

Bryer Anthony and Lowry Heath (ed.): Continuity and change in late Byzantine and early Ottoman society. Papers given at a Symposium at Dumbarton Oaks in May1982. vii, 343 pp., foldout map. Birmingham: University of Birmingham, Centre for Byzantine Studies: Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1986.

Bryer Anthony and Lowry Heath (ed.): Continuity and change in late Byzantine and early Ottoman society. Papers given at a Symposium at Dumbarton Oaks in May1982. vii, 343 pp., foldout map. Birmingham: University of Birmingham, Centre for Byzantine Studies: Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1986.

The chronicle of John Malalas (review)

Reviews 141 internal economic and socid influences in laying the foundation for a harmonious blend of self-interest and some sort of inherent commund regard for the public good, dl of which, in the author's view, came to an end with the tighterregulationand control experienced in the foUowing century. John Wdmsley Department of History Macquarie Umversity Malalas, J. The chronicle of John Malalas, trans. E. Jeffreys, M . Jeffreys, R. Scott, et d. (Byzantina Australiensia 4), Melbourne, Australian Association for Byzantine Studies, 1986; pp.xU, 371; R.RP. A U S $27.00. The chronicle of the sixth century Byzantine author John Malalas covers the history of the world from the creation of Adam to the reign of Justinian. It has not been preserved well. A n eleventh century manuscript contdns most of the text but a number of foUos are missing and, beyond this, it is clear that it abbreviates a good ded of the origind. To an extent its deficiencies can be repaired by consulting earlier materid that M d d a s may be presumed to have used and later Greek authors, not dl of them published, who excerpted or paraphrased Mdalas. More distantly, Armenian and Syriac materid which stands in some relation to the origind text can determine what M d d a s may have written, as can the Ethiopian translation of an Arabic translation of a Greek (and Coptic?) chronicle by John of Nikiu, generally cited in a translation into EngUsh. If this were not enough, there is dso a fairly full medievd translation of the text into Slavomc. The task confronting thoseresponsiblefor this new translation of Maldas into EngUsh was therefore immense. They decided to provide a translation of the eleventh century manuscript which Dindorf took as the base for his edition in the Bonn corpus (1831) and to provide a subtext introducing materid from other sources. They promise a forthcoming volume which wUl provide a rationde for some of the decisions they have taken. For the time being it can be sdd that they have performed their labours on the text with amazing thoroughness and that, quite apart from its value as a translation, this book is by far the best cunently available guide to what Malalas may have written. But most readers of the volume will simply use it as a translation of a difficult text As it happens there is dready a translation of the Slavonic original of books VIII-XVIII (the last book incomplete), that by Matthew Spinka in collaboration with Glanville Downey (Chicago 1940), and the comparison of two passages will enable theirrespectivemerits to be assessed. 142 Reviews Firstly, from p.372 of Dindorfs text: 'During his reign, Czar Leo fought a terrible naval battle with Zinzirich the Vandal, the Czar of Africa' (Spinka/Downey); 'Leo in the time of his reign began a campdgn agdnst Geiseric the Vandd, king of the Africans, fighting a tremendous sea-battle' (Jeffreys/Jeffreys/Scott). Not only is the latter version closer to the origind in its verbd precision, but intitulatureas well. To take another example, from p.383 of Dindorfs text: 'During [Zeno's] reign, Theuderich (Pheodorit), the son of Vdemar, the Stratelates in praesenti, who had been deposed from the consdship, seeing what befell Armanis, feared the Czar' (Spinka/Downey). This is a woefd guide to the meaning of the passage. It is translated more conectly as 'During his reign the ex-consul Theoderic, the son of Vdamer, who had been brought up and educated in Constantinople, was magister mihtum praesentalis. But dter seeing what had happened to Armatus he became draid of the emperor Zeno' (Jeffreys/Jeffreys/Scott). Students approaching Theoderic via the index will be misled by a mistaken conflation of him with Theoderic the Visigoth. They may have found it usefd beingtoldthat Theoderic was certdnly not Vdamer's son, dthough a footnote reference to PLRE 2 which is suppUed would dlow them to clear this up, and could have been interested in the fact that M d d a s spelt Theoderic's name SeuSepixoc,. Here, as elsewhere, the translators amend his spelling of proper names to bring it into conformity with received usage. But there can...

The Music Sessions at the 17th International Congress of Byzantine Studies Georgetown University 3-8 August 1986

The Music Sessions at the 17th International Congress of Byzantine Studies Georgetown University 3-8 August 1986

Leontius, Presbyter of Constantinople —: An Edifying Entertainer

Leontius, Presbyter of Constantinople - A n Edifying Entertainer* Our edition of fourteen homilies of Leontius, presbyter of Constantinople, has appeared in the Corpus Christianorum Series Graeca. A n annotated translation of these homilies is also being prepared by us for publication in another Belgian series, Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense. In this paper it is our intention to introduce Leontius to the reader, especially in his capacity as an edifying entertainer. Eleven homilies have come down to us in the manuscript tradition attributed to Leontius, presbyter of Constantinople. One French scholar, Maurice Sachot, would like to see another fourteen homilies assigned to Leontius, and this on linguistic and stylistic grounds.1 These fourteen homilies are attributed in the manuscripts to such diverse writers as Amphilochius of Iconium, Athanasius of Alexandria, John Chrysostom and Timothy, presbyter of Jerusalem or Antioch. The variety of these attributions, according to Sachot, is to be traced to the man who used the name of Leontius, presbyter of Constantinople, and other names, in the hope that he would thereby assure the transmission of his sermons.2 N o w it has been our conviction that in the homiletic tradition stylistic criteria and lexicological material by themselves are too shaky a basis for making attributions. In the first place w e believed that w e needed to be in possession of a properly investigated corpus of the homilies which w e are entitled to regard as Leontius' work, and which at all times must form the touchstone in questions of authenticity. Thus the objective of the text edition which has appeared has been twofold. Firsdy w e wanted to offer an edition of those eleven homilies attributed in the manuscripts to Leontius, presbyter of Constantinople, in the belief that they form a corpus which must be our touchstone in deciding whether other homilies attributed to different authors are * A version of this article was delivered as a paper by Pauline Allen at the Fifth Australian Byzantine Studies Conference, Canberra, 8-11 May, 1987. In this article all line-references are to our edition of Leontius' homilies, Leontii Presbyteri Constantinopolitani Homiliae, ed. C. Datema and P. Allen, TumhoutLeuven , 1987 (Corpus Christianorum Series Graeca 17). i M. Sachot Les homelies de Leonce, pretre de Constantinople, Recherches de sciences religieuses 51, 1977, 234-243. 2 See M . Sachot, ibid., and L'homilie pseudo-chrysostomienne sur la Transfiguration CPG 4724, BHG 1975. Contextes liturgiques. Restitution a Lionce, pretre de Constantinople, Edition critique et commentee, Traduction et itudes connexes, Frankfurt am Main-Bern, 1981. Cf. P. Allen - C. Datema, Leontius, presbyter of Constantinople - a compiler?, Jahrbuch der Osterreichischen Byzantinistik29, 1980, 9-20; C. Datema - P. Allen, Leontius, presbyter of Constantinople, the author of ps.Chrysostom, In psalmum 92 (CPG 4548)?, Vigiliae Christianae 40, 1986, 169-182. 2 P. Allen also from Leontius' pen. Secondly, on the basis of our findings regarding the contents, style and vocabulary of these eleven authentic homilies of Leontius, we wishedtoadd a further three homiliestohis ceuvre. This brings our total of Leontius' homilies to fourteen. For six of these w e are publishing the editio princeps; for another two homilies what we are offering is tantamount to an editio princeps, in that up to the present Homily in has been edited only in contaminated form, and the edition of Homily V (Tartu, 1827) does not admit of access. The fourteen sermons are as follows (asterisks indicate that he text has not been published previously): *I O n the Birth of John the Baptist *JI O n Palm Sunday (BHGa 2227, C P G 7893) m O n Palm Sunday (two versions) ( B H G a 2216, 2216a-b;CPG 7898,4643 *IV OnJob(BHGa 939i,CPG7894) V O n Job (BHGa 939b, C P G 7892) *VI O n the Betrayal Of Christ (BHGa 939k, C P G 7895) V H O n Good Friday (BHG 422r, C P G 7889) VUI O n Easter (CPG 7891) DC O n the Resurrection (CPG 7890) X O n Mid-Pentecost (BHGa 1488e, C P G 7888) *XI O n Pentecost (CPG 7896) X H O n the Birth of Jesus Christ (BHGa 1914m, C P G 4753) * X m O n...

The Music Sessions at the 17th International Congress of Byzantine Studies Georgetown University 3-8 August 1986

Research Article| January 01 1988 The Music Sessions at the 17th International Congress of Byzantine Studies Georgetown University 3-8 August 1986 Peter Jeffery Peter Jeffery Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Journal of Musicology (1988) 6 (1): 130–134. https://doi.org/10.2307/763672 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Peter Jeffery; The Music Sessions at the 17th International Congress of Byzantine Studies Georgetown University 3-8 August 1986. Journal of Musicology 1 January 1988; 6 (1): 130–134. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/763672 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All ContentJournal of Musicology Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1988 Regents of the University of California Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Continuity and Change in Late Byzantine and Early Ottoman Society, edited by Anthony Bryer and Heath Lowry. 343 pages, 8 indices, 9 appendices, 10 maps, 20 figs. Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C.; The Centre for Byzantine Studies, University of Birmingham, England1986.

Continuity and Change in Late Byzantine and Early Ottoman Society, edited by Anthony Bryer and Heath Lowry. 343 pages, 8 indices, 9 appendices, 10 maps, 20 figs. Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C.; The Centre for Byzantine Studies, University of Birmingham, England1986.

THE SPELLING OF GREEK WORDS IN ENGLISH

It is often difficult to decide on the most appropriate way in which Greek words should be rendered in English. Different conventions have come into force at different times, and as a result it is rare to find any scholarly publication which is consistent in its use of any system, unless dealing with a limited range of words. Sometimes inconsistencies appear to be based on nothing more than a misunderstanding of the conventions of spelling and as such can be extremely irritating. This has been the writer's experience on countless occasions, most recently on finding the spellings lAcedaimon, Oidipos and Diodorus Siculus in books published by some respected academic presses. However, inconsistencies are sometimes inevitable, arising from systemic confusion. The following notes, written from the viewpoint of a classicist or ancient historian, offer an explanation of the rules which govern the different ways in which Greek words may be spelt in English. This should be particularly useful to students of ancient history, art or civilisation, whose primary training has not been in the classical languages, and who may therefore feel less sure of themselves, or be less well acquainted with the reference works which would enable them to make correct decisions in matters of doubt. The primary distinction which must be made is between the spelling of Greek words in a Latin form (sometimes with an added French flavour, or slightly Anglicised), and their more direct transliteration. At one time, when Latin was the international language of scholarship, it was the custom to spell all Greek words in this Latin form, or to give Roman equivalents (such as Minerva for Athena or Hercules for Herakles). In the nineteenth century, however, as more and more scholarly work began to be written in the vernacular languages, some writers, particularly in Germany, began to spell such Greek words as they included in their texts in forms which were direct transliterations of the Greek. A few writers in English, particularly in the United States, adopted this style, while others kept to the traditional Latin forms. Nowadays, it is normal to transliterate words into English in a modern Greek context, rather than to try to give them a Latin spelling. In the case of Byzantine studies also, it would probably be true to say that most scholars are now following this convention, although there are still some who clutch at the sweet familiarity of