Download PDF | Authority In Byzantium, By Pamela Armstrong, Routledge ( 2016)
392 Pages
List of Contributors
Anne Alwis received her PhD in Late Antique and Byzantine Studies from King’s College, London under the supervision of Judith Herrin. She was a Rome Scholar at the British School at Rome from 2001 to 2002 and a Visiting Fellow in Hellenic Studies at Princeton University in 2007. She is currently Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of Kent, Canterbury. Her research interests lie in hagiography, codicology, narrative, and gender in Late Antiquity and Byzantium. Her monograph, Celibate Marriages in Late-Antique and Byzantine Hagiography: The Lives of Saints Julian & Basilissa, Saints Andronikos &8 Athanasia, and Saints Galaktion &¥ Episteme, was published by Continuum (London, 2011).
Christine Angelidi is Emerita Research Director at the Institute for Byzantine Research, Athens. She has written on hagiography, literature and cultural history. She has also published on icons and cult, and the interpretation of ancient art. She also collaborated with A. Kazhdan, A History of Byzantine Literature, vols 1-2 (Athens, 1999, 2006).
Charalambos Bakirtzis is Emeritus Ephor of Byzantine Antiquities of Thessaloniki, Eastern Macedonia and ‘Thrace, and Professor of Byzantine Archaeology at the University of Thessaloniki (1988-1998). He is currently Director of the the Anastasios G. Leventis Foundation, Nicosia, Cyprus. His publications on Byzantine archaeology include pottery, topography of Byzantine Thessaloniki, Philippi and Amphipolis, epigraphy, art of mosaics, cult of saints. He has also published a commentary on the Miracula of Saint Demetrius.
Jane Baun is University Research Lecturer for Byzantine and Eastern Church History in the Theology Faculty, University of Oxford, and a Research Fellow of St Benet’s Hall. Judith Herrin was her doctoral supervisor at Princeton. Before coming to Oxford, she was Assistant Professor of History and Hellenic Studies in the Onassis Centre at New York University. Her publications include Tales from Another Byzantium: Celestial Journey and Local Community in the Medieval Greek Apocrypha (Cambridge, 2007). She is currently engaged in a multidisciplinary study of life-cycle ritual in medieval Orthodox religious culture.
Albrecht Berger is Professor of Byzantine Studies at the University of Munich and editor of the Byzantinische Zeitschrift. He studied at the University of Munich and the Free University of Berlin, and later spent five years at the German Archaeological Institute in Istanbul. His research focuses on the historical topography of Constantinople and Asia Minor, as well as on Byzantine hagiography and religious literature. His publications include a study of the Patria Konstantinoupoleos, and editions of the hagiographical lives of Saint Gregory of Agrigentum and of Saint Gregentios, Archbishop of Taphar.
Sergey A. Ivanov is Professor of Byzantine Studies, St Petersburg State University and the Russian University for the Humanities, and a member of the Institute for Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. He has authored numerous publications on the relations between Byzantium and the Slavs, and a commentary for the Russian translation of Leo the Deacons ‘History’. He is editor of and principal contributor to the Corpus of the Oldest Written Evidence on Slavs. His monographs include Byzantine Missions: Can a Barbarian become a Christian?, Czech and English trs. in press, Holy Fools in Byzantium and Beyond and In Search of Constantinople: A Guidebook through Byzantine Istanbul and Around (in Russian).
Elizabeth Jeffreys is Bywater and Sotheby Professor Emerita at Oxford University and an Emeritus Fellow of Exeter College. Among her publications are editions of Digenis Akritis and the letters of the Monk Iakovos from the twelfth century, and the War of Troy from the fourteenth; a current major project is the edition of the poetry of Manganeios Prodromos. Her translations of the twelfth-century Romances are published in the new series, Translated Texts for Byzantinists (Liverpool University Press 2012).
Jo00hannes Koder has recently retired as Professor and Director of the Institute for Byzantine and Neohellenic Studies, University of Vienna, where he had been an undergraduate and then undertook doctoral studies under Herbert Hunger before becoming Professor at the University of Mainz. He is a full member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences; a foreign member of the Academy of Athens; and was a Senior Fellow Dumbarton Oaks 2002-2008. His extensive publications include c. 10 monographs and 250 articles.
Marc D. Lauxtermann is Bywater and Sotheby Professor of Byzantine and Modern Greek Language and Literature in the University of Oxford and Fellow of Exeter College. Before coming to Oxford in 2007, he served as Professor of Modern Greek and Byzantine Studies at the University of Amsterdam. His books include The Spring of Rhythm: An Essay on the Political Verse and Other Byzantine Metres (Vienna, 1999) and Byzantine Poetry from Pisides to Geometres: Texts and Contexts, vol. I (Vienna, 2003). He is currently working on the second volume. Recent publications focus on eleventh-century prose and poetry as well as on scholars and scholarly publications in early modern Europe.
Ruth Macrides is Senior Lecturer at the University of Birmingham where she teaches Byzantine history. She is interested in social aspects of Byzantine law and has published articles on this subject collected in Kinship and Justice in Byzantium, 11th-13th centuries (Aldershot, 1999). She has also studied historical narratives. Her publications on this subject include George Akropolites, The History (Oxford, 2007) and the edited volume, History as Literature in Byzantium (Farnham, 2010). More recently she has worked on aspects of late Byzantine ceremonial and the Blachernai palace.
Paul Magdalino studied at Oxford and from 1977 to 2009 taught at the University of St Andrews. He is currently Professor in the Department of Archaeology and History of Art at Koc University, Istanbul. His extensive publications on medieval Byzantine history include The Empire of Manuel I Komnenos, 1143-1180 (Cambridge, 1993), L’Orthodoxie des astrologues (Paris, 2006), and Studies in the History and Topography of Medieval Constantinople (Aldershot, 2007).
Ljubomir Maksimovié is Professor of Byzantine History Emeritus at the University of Belgrade, and Director of the Institute for Byzantine Studies of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. He is also editor-in-chief of the Recueil des Travaux — Zbornik radova (ZRVI), vice-president of the Association Internationale des Etudes Byzantines, and a member of the British Society for Promotion of Byzantine Studies. He is a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, of the Academy of Athens, and of the European Academy of Sciences, Humanities and Arts (Paris). His research interests cover the history of the social and state structures of Byzantium, Serbo-Byzantine relations, and political theory in the Byzantine world. He has published more than 200 studies, in several countries (see www.sanu.ac.rs).
Cécile Morrisson is Director of Research Emerita, CNRS (Paris) and Advisor for Byzantine Numismatics, Dumbarton Oaks. She has written on Byzantine coins and monetary history and published with A. Laiou The Byzantine Economy (2007). She also edited the handbook Le monde byzantin, I: Lempire romain d’Orient (330641) (2004) and, with Angeliki Laiou (+), its third volume: Byzance et ses voisins (1203-1453) (2011). She edited Trade and Markets in Byzantium (Dumbarton Oaks Symposia and Colloquia 4, 2012).
Alexander Murray is Professor Emeritus, University of Oxford. Jinty Nelson is Professor Emerita, King’s College London.
Leonora Neville is the John W. and Jeanne M. Rowe Associate Professor of Byzantine History at the University of Wisconsin Madison. Professor Judith Herrin directed her doctoral dissertation at Princeton. She works on Byzantine social and cultural history of the tenth-twelfth centuries, with particular interests in gender, historiography, cultural memory, religious practice and local authority. She is the author of Authority in Byzantine Provincial Society, 950-1100 (Cambridge, 2004) and Heroes and Romans in Twelfth-Century Byzantium: The Material for History of Nikephoros Bryennios (Cambridge, 2012).
Giinter Prinzing was Professor of Byzantine Studies at the Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, until his retirement in October 2008. His research focuses on the history of the middle and late Byzantine period, with a special interest in the relations between Byzantium and its neighbours in Southeast Europe or EastCentral Europe, and in Byzantine vernacular literature. He is co-editor of Das Lemberger Evangeliar (Wiesbaden, 1998) with Andrea B. Schmidt, and edited the Ponemata diaphora of Demetrios Chomatenos (Berlin and New York, 2002 = CFHB 38).
Susan Reynolds is Emeritus Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and runs the Association of the Institute of Historical Research, University of London.
Miri Rubin is Professor of Medieval and Early Modern History, Queen Mary College London.
Jonathan Shepard was Lecturer in Russian History at the University of Cambridge. He is co-author of The Emergence of Rus, 750-1200 (London, 1996) with Simon Franklin, with whom he also edited Byzantine Diplomacy (Aldershot, 1992). Recent edited volumes include The Expansion of Orthodox Europe (Aldershot, 2007) and The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire (Cambridge, 2008). He has published many articles on subjects which range from Anglo-Saxon settlements on the Black Sea to the First Crusade.
Alicia Simpson is a post-doctoral fellow at the Institute for Historical Research (NHRF) in Athens. She received her PhD from King’s College London under the supervision of Judith Herrin, and has taught in Turkey and Cyprus. Her research interests focus on Byzantine literature and culture. She is co-editor (with Stephanos Efthymiadis) of the collective volume, Niketas Choniates: A Historian and a Writer (Geneva, 2009) and author of Niketas Choniates: A Historiographical Study (Oxford, in press)
Dionysios Stathakopoulos is lecturer in Byzantine Studies at King’s College London. He studied in Athens, Miinster and Vienna, and has taught in Vienna, Budapest and London. His books include Famine and Pestilence in the Late Roman and Early Byzantine Empire: A Systematic Survey of Subsistence Crises and Epidemics (Ashgate, 2004) and an edited volume The Kindness of Strangers: Charity in the Pre-Modern Mediterranean (London, 2007). As a social historian he has published widely on poverty, charity, remembrance and disease.
Maria Vassilaki is Professor in Byzantine Art History at the Department of History, Archaeology and Social Anthropology of the University of Thessaly at Volos and scientific advisor to the Benaki Museum, Athens. She has curated and co-curated exhibitions, such as Mother of God: Representations of the Virgin in Byzantine Art (Benaki Museum, Athens, 2000), Byzantium 330-1453 (with Robin Cormack, Royal Academy of Art, London, 2008), and Domenikos Theotokopoulos (El Greco): From Candia to Toledo. The Footsteps of a European Journey (Leventis Municipal Museum, Nicosia, 2012). Her latest books are The Painter Angelos and Icon-Painting in Venetian Crete (Ashgate 2009) and The Icons of the Tositsa Mansion, Metsovo. The Collection of Evangelos Averof (Athens, 2012).
Vera von Falkenhausen is Professor Emerita of Byzantine History at the Universita di Roma-Tor Vergata. She was Visiting Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks 1968-1970, and a member of the Istituto Storico Germanico in Rome 1971-1975. She taught Byzantine History and Philology at the universities of Pisa, Potenza, Chieti and Roma-Tor Vergata. Her research is focused on Byzantine and post-Byzantine Southern Italy and Byzantine hagiography. Her bibliography is accessible online (Associazione italiana di studi bizantini).
Chris Wickham is Chichele Professor of Medieval History, University of Oxford.
Preface
During the weekend of 15-17 January 2009 a conference was held at King’s College, London, to mark the achievements of Judith Herrin who had recently retired as Professor of Late Antique and Byzantine Studies, and to celebrate the major international exhibition being held at the Royal Academy (25 October 2008-22 March 2009), Byzantium 330-1453. It was thought that a collection of papers focused on the theme of authority but approached from different angles could make a significant contribution to the wider understanding of a society seemingly underpinned by this invisible force, as well as make a fitting tribute to Judith. Accordingly an international quorum of scholars assembled to investigate the ways in which authority was presented and received in Byzantium, as well as how it was perceived and modified through processes of interpretation and remodelling, in order to make it more visible and intelligible to a modern audience.
I have been privileged to edit the contributions to the present volume of papers that were presented at the conference. At the meeting itself each session was chaired by a scholar of the western Middle Ages so that they could bring another perspective to the discussions. Subsequently five of them agreed to write responses to the papers they had chaired for inclusion in the publication. This has enhanced the academic strength of the book, by making it relevant to a wider audience. Correspondingly, an editorial decision was taken to reproduce English translations of passages of Greek in some of the articles so that important primary evidence could be scrutinised by the non-Byzantinist, thereby extending the potential audience further. The final result is a comprehensive enquiry into one of the elemental aspects of Byzantine society set against European models.
In Judith’s Introduction to this volume you can read of her induction into archaeology at the hands of Peter Megaw, and of excavation seasons at Saranda Kolonnes in Paphos. Some years later I followed in her footsteps to go and excavate with Peter on the same site. On one memorable Sunday ekdrome in my time Peter took the team to see the newly cleaned frescoes in the church of the Panagia tou Arakou at the village of Lagoudera in the Troodos mountains. It was on that occasion the photograph of the Pantokrator was taken which appears on the cover of this book. The authority of the subject and the circumstances of its recording seemed to make it a fitting illustration for this volume and for Judith.
Pamela Armstrong Oxford 2013
Introduction
By way of an introduction to the subject of this volume, I would like to record some of my own ‘authorities’, those whose work first attracted me to Byzantium and who influenced my understanding of it. In the way of life, this always has a peculiarly accidental aspect ... what if I'd met ... or if ] hadn't done that ... the delightful serendipity of events that prove decisive. But first, I want to thank my colleagues, Charlotte Roueché, Dennis Stathakopoulos and Tassos Papacostas who organised the original conference in January 2009, and Pamela Armstrong who edited the volume with such skill. It is another tribute to the collective inspiration and energy of Byzantine Studies at King’s College London, which I have been so fortunate to share. So this is not just an acknowledgement of expertise and an appreciation of outstanding ability, but also a very special thank you to them, to the western medievalists who kindly chaired each session and whose comments are also included, as well as all the other contributors and participants in the conference.
I should start by stating that it was all Philip Grierson’s fault — his course “The Expansion of Medieval Europe, 1000-1500’, at the University of Cambridge in 1964-5, introduced me to the value of coins as markers of economic expansion. Sometimes he almost seemed to apologise for using numismatic evidence, producing maps of the distribution of finds of Byzantine gold, Islamic gold and western silver pennies. Seeing how the glistening coins struck in the East Mediterranean were found all over the medieval world brought the Byzantine Empire and the Caliphate into focus in a completely new way: previously I'd only known these societies as regions through which western crusaders marched to relieve Jerusalem. Through their coins, their power and authority became clearer. Philip’s course convinced me that it would be possible to contrast Byzantine and western society by examining some part of the empire before and after 1204. And that led me to the letters and speeches of Michael Choniates, metropolitan of Athens in the late twelfth century.
I wrote to Donald Nicol, who was then at Edinburgh, for advice and we arranged to meet at the University Library in Cambridge; at that time you could still have coffee in the garden on a sunny day. He stressed the importance of going to Greece, learning Modern Greek, and suggested the British School at Athens as a base. That was a most helpful pointer to the basic problem of learning classical Greek, as I hadn't had any opportunity to go beyond Latin at school. After graduating from Newnham College I started looking for ways to study the ancient language and found out that Birmingham University taught a course of Greek from Homer to the present day. Ron Willetts was the person who replied to my enquiry, saying ‘You'd better hurry up as you've missed the first weeks’.
So in October 1965 I went to Birmingham and found him taking a class of four beginners through The Odyssey and the story of Nausicaa (these four were a mathematician, two lecturers in French and an American graduate, united only by their desire to learn Greek). For one year I was allowed to join this intensive course without paying any fees. Later George Thomson taught us grammar from his book on the Greek language (I still have a proof copy), and introduced us to the Dodekalogo tou gyphtou, which he was translating into English. With Meg Alexiou we read some of the hymns of Romanos and the poems of Theodoros Prodromos, learning erudite vocabulary, and with Sebastian Brock we studied the Gospel according to St Mark. It would have been difficult not to be infected with the general enthusiasm for all types of Greek, with Christos Alexiou teaching modern Greek to many graduates, including four from China who had been sent to Birmingham to be trained as classicists. And apart from all the experts in Greek, Birmingham was also home to historians Rodney Hilton, Douglas Johnson and Wendy Davies, and Bob Smith over in the Russian centre, while Stuart Hall was creating his pioneering Centre for Contemporary Culture. It was an exciting time and place.
Of course, the key person at Birmingham for me was Anthony Bryer (always known by his surname), a research fellow straight from Oxford when I arrived, but he was already building the coalition that later founded the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies. His contacts with authorities beyond Birmingham — Sir Steven Runciman, the Talbot Rices and particularly Philip Whitting — strengthened his plans and secured the first endowments that brought books, journals and eventually the Whitting Coin collection to the university. More numismatics. Bryer was the most helpful supervisor; he read and corrected everything, all the spelling and punctuation, as well as my interpretation, and his energy was infectious. I do not think he was greatly interested in Michael Choniates but he supported my efforts to find out more about the social and economic situation of central Greece prior to the Fourth Crusade. He despaired of my participation in the great sit-in of 1969 but we survived that and continue to be the best of friends — I am only sorry that he wasn’t able to attend the conference to be hailed as the foremost of my authorities.
When Bryer won a fellowship at Dumbarton Oaks and disappeared for a year to Washington DC, he arranged for Robert Browning to take over my supervision. We didn’t meet often, but his interest in the text of Choniates helped my understanding of the Greek and shaped the outline of the thesis. It must have been that contact which led later to my recruitment to the editorial board of Past and Present, a seminal point in my education as a historian. As Elizabeth Jeffreys has written a rich appreciation of Robert’s achievement as a Byzantinist, I would just like to confirm that his quietly commanding influence both as supervisor and colleague was profound.
Thanks to Donald Nicol, in 1966 I was able to spend six months at the British School in Greece when Peter Megaw was Director. It was most fortunate that Peter was then excavating at Saranda Kolonnes in Cyprus and needed people with an interest in Byzantine matters. For several seasons I worked on the Frankish castle built on top of a series of medieval and early Christian structures, although I was more useful with a camera than a trowel. For the real work Peter persuaded experts like Geoff Waywell and Lisa Ramsden to come, though there were always other volunteers like Catherine Froux, Charlotte Wrinch, Margaret Mullett and Demetra and Charalambos Bakirtzis. I realised that there was no limit to the expansion of Byzantium whenever you dig in places like Cyprus. Thus began my fascination with archaeology. Peter and Elektra were the kindest hosts and the best teachers: after a week’s work, when many excavators would take a rest, they planned a Sunday ekdrome to some interesting site, and we all crammed into the car. After inspecting a church, a Neolithic tomb or visiting another dig, we would eat our picnic in a forested area where Elektra hoped we might find a particular plant she wished to draw, and we often got a swim on the way home. Peter knew every corner of Cyprus, where he had served as Director of Antiquities, and I learned a lot from his guided tours as well as asides and off-the-cuff comments. Without insisting in a pedagogic fashion, he gave very clear instructions which proved invaluable.
The same delight in history, ancient, medieval and modern, was shared by other archaeologists whom I had the good fortune to meet in Athens, such as George Huxley and Nicholas Coldstream, who invited me to Kythera and Crete, where we made the same sort of wide-ranging trips to sites like Kato Zakro. It was also during these summers devoted to archaeology that I first climbed up the Acrocorinth, the castles at Mistras and Monemvasia, tramped round ‘Thessalonike, and made so many friends. This implanted a great love of Greece.
In August 1966 Oxford hosted the International Congress of Byzantine Studies and many British students were recruited to help with the organisation. ‘This was a great moment for witnessing the pre-eminent authorities, such as George Ostrogorsky, and making contacts like Cécile Morrisson, David Jacoby and Paul and Eleanor Alexander, who became great friends. Madame Ahrweiler was resplendent wearing a yellow trouser suit and encouraged me to go and study in Paris. With Bryer’s support, I got time off from Birmingham to witness how Byzantium was taught and practised there. La belle Héléne, as she was generally called, instructed me to register for her ‘maitrise’ course, where I found a large crowd of enthusiastic Greeks and French students. Some of them remain among my closest friends. Much more authoritative, however, were the seminars at the Collége de France run by Paul Lemerle, who was just beginning the systematic study of the Athos archives, and the classes of Nikos Svoronos, preparing his translation of the Macedonian land legislation. Lemerle was terrifying: all-knowing and bluntly critical of incorrect translations or hesitant suggestions, clearly a master. It was not pleasant to watch him testing Denise Papachryssanthou’s interpretations, but she produced a brilliant edition of the Acts of the Protaton, and in those seminars I learned how difficult the process of editing Byzantine texts could be. Svoronos was more encouraging and very helpful in the analysis of some of the more obscure phrases of Michael Choniates. Where Lemerle was always impressively well groomed in dark blue suits, Svoronos was tanned and rather untidy. Both had an amazing range of skills, which they shared. Paris also had another wonderfully generous authority in the form of Father Jean Darrouzés, an Assumptionist Father who edited the Revue des études byzantines and guided many young researchers in the Order’s magnificent library. I drank in the scholarship of Paris at the height of its influence.
When I went on a Humboldt scholarship to Munich, the next authority was Hans-Georg Beck. He ran a different sort of Institute with an international cast of colleagues and students: Italians, Greeks, Americans, a Japanese professor and representatives of all Balkan countries. It was a truly global experience that evoked the spirit of Krumbacher. Established German traditions were observed: lectures at the same time, 8.00 am on Monday mornings; palaeography, the essential tool, was taught by Paul Speck, the Byzantinische Zeitschrift continued to be prepared. All were features of Beck’s authority, which Vera von Falkenhausen has drawn together in her admirable contribution to this volume.
At the time I regretted, and even now I still regret, that I could not stay longer in Munich, where the conditions for learning unusually favourable. But an opportunity to work in Constantinople called me away. With a fellowship at Dumbarton Oaks that was divided between Washington and the ‘Queen City’, now Istanbul, I was employed to study the pottery finds from Kalenderhane Camii. Constantinople became an inspiration in itself — and there I met a teacher and mentor of a different quality, Ernest Hawkins. I had visited him in 1966 on my first visit to Istanbul, when he invited me to Kariye Camii and introduced me to the delights of Moda, a suburb on the Asian side of the Bosphoros. In the 1970s we both worked at Kalenderhane and shared the Dumbarton Oaks apartment in Cihangir. His authority extended to practical matters, like buying yoghurt from the street vendor and soaking the beyaz peynir overnight before eating it, as well as Byzantine problems. With his exhaustive knowledge of the city, Ernest introduced me to many unfamiliar markets, mosques and inaccessible monuments, Turkish as well as Byzantine. Once he took me up to the catwalk around the base of the dome of Hagia Sophia to see the apse mosaic close to, and he made sure I witnessed the Italian restorers rehanging the bronze doors of Theophilos. One evening we were rowed across the Bosphoros to a party given by Russian aristocrats in a yali on the Asiatic side. We spent a long time in the monastery of Studios, and everywhere we went Ernest talked about all the mosaics and frescoes he had worked on. If only I had been able to record all his observations about their execution and likely dating.
Other frequent visitors to the Dumbarton Oaks apartment included John Hayes, who was already ¢he world authority on Late Roman pottery, and Michael Hendy, ze authority on imitation Byzantine coins, who was completing his masterly study of the Byzantine economy. John was wonderfully helpful on the pottery finds from Kalenderhane, and Michael established a serious dating sequence from the coin finds. Sadly, this work is still not fully available, as the two published volumes excluded much of our detailed analysis. Since the two men didn't get on well, life in Cihangir was always a bit edgy but we managed to agree on the need to enjoy eating and drinking, an easy matter in Istanbul, which proved a great leveller. And I was challenged by their expertise, the result of total concentration and commitment to their raw materials.
Back in London, the Warburg Institute was my home for four years; I always love working in the library arranged by topic rather than Dewey call numbers, and was delighted to share an office with Patricia Crone, already an authority on the history of early Islam. In the late 1970s Averil and Alan Cameron were organising a reading group here at King’s, which gathered many of my contemporaries, authorities in the making — notably Charlotte, now Roueché, and Robin Cormack. Working on the Parastaseis syntomoi chronikai with Averil was a deeply enriching experience — proof that in the right hands collective effort could produce striking results. Years later I was proud to be her successor here.
Then I met a great Russian authority, Alexander Kazhdan, en route from Moscow to Dumbarton Oaks in America — what a dramatic change. At my insistence he came to lecture at the Warburg Institute, which contained his earliest published work on ancient Greek cults, as well as his Byzantine masterpieces, Agrarian Society in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (1952); Village and City in Ninth and Tenth Century Byzantium (1960); and Social Analysis of the Ruling Classes in Byzantium (1974). As usual he stood without notes and spoke in his then poor English about theories of continuity and discontinuity in the history of Greece. He was a very special authority, deeply rooted in the Russian tradition of Byzantine Studies, yet anxious to open new fields, explore different ways of studying this civilisation. Once established at Dumbarton Oaks he persuaded the Director, Giles Constable, to undertake the gigantic work of compiling the dictionary of Byzantium (the ODB, published in three volumes in 1991), as well as the hagiography and typika projects. Yet his judgement was severe: he condemned the Parastaseis as a joke, a nonsense, not worth studying, and characterised the Byzantine attitude towards women as ‘ambiguous’ — expressions that provoked my angry dissent. Arguing with Alexander was tough because his authority was overwhelming but he was also affectionate and playful.
In addition to such inspiring authorities and challenging possibilities, there were the times of hard knocks as well, periods of unemployment when I couldn't find a job. In the 1980s while I was cherishing an ambitious plan to write a book, my closest companion and partner, Anthony Barnett, insisted that when I finished it things would change. He also introduced me to Norbert Elias with whom I enjoyed discussing the civilising aspects of Byzantium, for instance, the fork. Norbert took me to visit to the island of Reichenau, an important trip which I recalled in the afterward to The Formation of Christendom. This was the book that Anthony helped me to complete, and then things did indeed change: the Davis Center at Princeton University provided a six-month visit, and the Press agreed to publish the manuscript.
At Princeton I witnessed another great authority, not Byzantine: Lawrence Stone, whom I first met at editorial board meetings of Past and Present. As Director of the Shelby Cullom Davis Center, Lawrence developed methods of extracting maximum value from the Friday morning seminars, always followed by an extravagant lunch, which created highly stimulating meetings. He frequently opened his comments on the pre-circulated paper with a fairly devastating attack though his summing up was usually helpful and positive. I owe him a great debt for challenging my ideas about charity in Byzantium, the subject that first took me to Princeton.
After several later visits to Princeton it was Lawrence who persuaded the Program in Hellenic Studies and the History Department to jointly create the Stanley J. Seeger Chair in Byzantine History and I was deeply honoured to be the first occupant. It was an extraordinary time to join these thriving institutions, particularly because of the large and inspiring presence of Peter Brown. Many years before we had met at what became identified as the first Spring Symposium in Birmingham — it was a one-day event of a few lectures, quite modest in comparison with the present, annual three-day conference. In 1991 it was a tremendous privilege to become one of his colleagues, and to learn from him as we taught together and shared in the training of some particularly brilliant graduates, two of whom have contributed to this volume. My students have also been authorities in their own way, and I have learnt much from their generous and thoughtful support.
This brings me to the dreadful process of finding that many of my most influential authorities are no more. Worse still, some of my contemporaries, or scholars only slightly older, are also missing — I think particularly of the recent, profound loss of Evelyne Patlagean and Angeliki Laiou. The sense of feeling that I am now an authority is discomforting, for I know that there is always so much more to learn. In that spirit, the conference whose proceedings are published in this volume created an opportunity to appreciate the work of the experts gathered together, their very varied approaches to the term ‘authority’, and what it means in their field of Byzantine Studies.
Judith Herrin London December 2011.
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