Download PDF | (Routledge History Handbooks) Nikolas Bakirtzis (editor), Luca Zavagno (editor) - The Routledge Handbook of the Byzantine City_ From Justinian to Mehmet II (ca. 500 - ca.1500)-Routledge (2024).
508 Pages
THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF THE BYZANTINE CITY
The Byzantine world contained many important cities throughout its empire. Although it was not ‘urban’ in the sense of the word today, its cities played a far more fundamental role than those of its European neighbors. This book, through a collection of twenty-four chapters, discusses aspects of, and different approaches to, Byzantine urbanism from the early to late Byzantine periods. It provides both a chronological and thematic perspective to the study of Byzantine cities, bringing together literary, documentary, and archival sources with archaeological results, material culture, art, and architecture, resulting in a rich synthesis of the variety of regional and sub-regional transformations of Byzantine urban landscapes.
Organised into four sections, this book covers: Theory and Historiography, Geography and Economy, Architecture and the Built Environment, and Daily Life and Material Culture. It includes more specialised accounts that address the centripetal role of Constantinople and its broader influence across the empire. Such new perspectives help to challenge the historiographical balance between ‘margins and metropolis,’ and also to include geographical areas often regarded as peripheral, like the coastal urban centers of the Byzantine Mediterranean as well as cities on islands, such as Crete, Cyprus, and Sicily which have more recently yielded well-excavated and stratigraphically sound urban sites.
The Routledge Handbook of the Byzantine City provides both an overview and detailed study of the Byzantine city to specialist scholars, students, and enthusiasts alike and, therefore, will appeal to all those interested in Byzantine urbanism and society, as well as those studying medieval society in general.
Nikolas Bakirtzis is an Associate Professor at The Cyprus Institute in Nicosia, Cyprus. His research focuses on Byzantine monasticism, medieval cities and fortifications, and the island landscapes of the Byzantine, medieval, and early modern Mediterranean. As the Director of the Andreas Pittas Art Characterization Labs, he leads research on the materiality of medieval and early modern art enhanced through the use of advanced digital and analytical methods. His work has received support from the European Commission, the Cyprus Research and Innovation Foundation, the Princeton Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies, the A.G. Leventis Foundation, and the Getty Research Institute.
Luca Zavagno is an Associate Professor of Byzantine Studies at Bilkent University, Turkey. He is the author of many articles and books on the early medieval and Byzantine Mediterranean. His research focuses on Byzantine urbanism and medieval Mediterranean insularity. He has been awarded the Dumbarton Oaks Summer Fellowship twice (in 2011 and 2016) as well as the prestigious Stanley Seeger Fellowship of the Hellenic Studies Center at Princeton University (2012), the Newton Mobility Grant (2018), and he has been twice a fellowship at Center for Advanced Studies ‘Migration and Mobility in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages’ at the University of Tubingen, Germany (2022 and 2023).
CONTRIBUTORS
Nikolas Bakirtzis is an Associate Professor at The Cyprus Institute in Nicosia, Cyprus. His research focuses on Byzantine monasticism, medieval cities and fortifications, and the island landscapes of the Byzantine, medieval, and early modern Mediterranean. As the Director of the Andreas Pittas Art Characterization Labs, he leads research on the materiality of medieval and early modern art enhanced through the use of advanced digital and analytical methods. His work has received support, among others, from the European Commission, the Cyprus Research and Innovation Foundation, the Princeton Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies, the A.G. Leventis Foundation, and the Getty Research Institute.
Luca Zavagno is an Associate Professor of Byzantine Studies at Bilkent University. Dr Zavagno is the author of many articles and books on the early medieval and Byzantine Mediterranean. His research focuses on Byzantine Urbanism and medieval Mediterranean insularity. He was also twice awarded the Dumbarton Oaks Summer Fellowship (2011 and 2016) as well as the prestigious Stanley Seeger Fellowship of the Hellenic Studies Center at Princeton University (2012), the Newton Mobility Grant (2018), and a Fellow at Center for Advanced Studies ‘Migration and Mobility in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages’ at the University of Tubingen (2022).
Jenny P. Albani holds a diploma in architecture from the National Technical University, Athens, and a Ph.D. in the history of art from Vienna University. She received scholarships from the Hellenic State Scholarship Foundation, the Stiftung FVS, the Katholische Frauenbewegung Osterreichs, and the German Academic Exchange Service. Albani was a research fellow at the Institute of Art History of the National Technical University, Athens, an exhibition curator at the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports, and a teaching associate at the Hellenic Open University. She participated in excavation projects in Greece and Egypt and authored several book reviews, papers, and books on Byzantine art and architecture history, iconology, and museology. Her research focuses on the cult and iconography of transvestite female saints, eschatology in art, and cross-cultural exchanges in the Eastern Mediterranean.
She is the co-editor (with Ioanna Christoforaki) of the recently published collective volume Idvta pei. Change in Thirteenth-Century Byzantine Architecture, Art, and Material Culture (Byzantios. Studies in Byzantine History and Civilization, 20) (Turnhout, 2022). Albani is currently the President of the Friends of the Herakleidon Museum NonProfit Cultural Association and a member of the Administrative Board of the Association for the Dissemination of Greek Letters.
Mabi Angar studied Art History (M.A.) and Byzantine Studies (M.A.) at the Free University Berlin and Princeton University. She received her Ph.D. in 2012 at the University of Cologne, where she taught Byzantine art and cultural history from 2006 to 2022 at the Department of Byzantine Studies. In her dissertation she examined Byzantine head reliquaries and their afterlife in the West following the Latin Conquest of Constantinople in 1204. Her latest research project was dedicated to the urban development and identity of the Genoese settlement Pera/Galata, situated across Constantinople. Her teaching and publications deal with the material culture of the Eastern Mediterranean, the topography of Constantinople, and modern perceptions of Byzantium. Mabi Angar initiated and co-organized international academic formats in Cologne, Florence, and Istanbul. She has received grants from prestigious institutions such as the German Academic Scholarship Foundation, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies — Villa I Tatti, the Kog University Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations, and the Federal Ministry of Education and Research.
Suna Cagaptay is an Associate Professor of Art History and Archaeology at Mugla Sitki Kocman University. She works on late Byzantine, Early Ottoman, Crusader, and principalityperiod architecture and city-making practices in the Eastern Mediterranean, in particular, the circulation and translation of Byzantine and Latin architectural techniques and forms in Islamic contexts and the afterlives of the ancient cities. She is the recipient of numerous fellowships and research grants, among them the Dumbarton Oaks, Aga Khan Islamic Art and Architecture at MIT, ANAMED, Barakat, SOAS, and the Getty Foundation.
From 2017 to 2022, she worked as a Research Associate for “The Impact of the Ancient City,’ a project based in the Faculty of Classics at the University of Cambridge, funded by the European Research Council. Her publications include The First Ottoman Capital: The Religious, Architectural and Social History of Bursa (London, 2020), as well as numerous book chapters and articles. She also co-edited a volume (with E. Key Fowden, E. CoghillZychowicz, and L. Blanke titled Cities as Palimpsests? Responses to Antiquity in Eastern Mediterranean Urbanism (Oxford, 2022)).
Maria Cristina Carile is an Associate Professor of History of Byzantine Art (L-ART/01 History of Medieval Art) at the Department of Cultural Heritage of the University of Bologna. Since 2003, she has conducted her research working in international research centers specialised in Late Antique and Byzantine culture. Between 2005 and 2008, she was an Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham (UK), where she worked with the Director Leslie Brubaker. In 2006-2007, she was the recipient of a Junior Fellowship at the RCAC-Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations, Kog University, Istanbul (TR).
In 2009, she received an Onassis Fellowship from the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation, Athens. Between 2008 and 2015, she was enrolled as a Research Fellow in the Department of Cultural Heritage of the University of Bologna, where she worked with Luigi Canetti and Alessandro Volpe. There, between 2015 and 2018, she held the position of Senior Assistant Professor (fixed-term) in L-ART/01 History of medieval Art. Currently, her research focuses on the artistic culture and the circulation of visual communication codes in the Late Antique and Byzantine Mediterranean, particularly in the Adriatic and Aegean Sea. She has presented her research at national and international conferences, scientific lectures, and seminars (UK, France, Serbia, Turkey, Russia, Iran, USA).
Enrico Cirelli is a Professor in Archaeology of medieval Europe at the Department of History and Civilizations, Alma Mater Studiorum — University of Bologna. His main research areas cover late Roman and medieval urbanism, fortified settlements, monasteries, archaeology of productions, and material culture. He directs archaeological excavations and surveys in Italy and Croatia and participates in other international research projects in Spain, Albania, Palestine, Jordan, Libya, Tunisia, and Algeria. His book ‘Ravenna: archeologia di una citta’ has got the Ottone d’Assia and Riccardo Francovich prize (2008). His last two books focused on material culture and the economy of the early Medieval Mediterranean Sea, as paired with a new research project on amphorae, glass, and marble trade.
Michael J. Decker specialises in the economic and social history and archaeology of the eastern Mediterranean of the 5th—-12th centuries. He has been an Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow (Rice University) and the recipient of a Fulbright Research Fellowship. His publications include The Sasanian Empire at War (Westholme, 2022); The Byzantine Dark Ages, The Byzantine Art of War, and Life and Society in Byzantine Cappadocia (w/J. Eric Cooper). Decker is currently Maroulis Professor of Byzantine History and Orthodox Religion at the University of South Florida, where he has taught and researched since 2004.
Andrei Gandila is an Associate Professor of Roman History and Director of Ancient and medieval Studies at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (USA), where he teaches a range of courses on Roman, Late Antique, and early medieval civilization. He is a former Junior Fellow at the Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies, a graduate of the Eric P. Newman Graduate Seminar in Numismatics sponsored by the American Numismatic Society, and the recipient of a research grant from the Medieval Academy of America.
His research and publications span Roman-barbarian interaction and identity formation, borderlands and cross-cultural exchange, and the economic history of the Mediterranean world, with a specific focus on monetary circulation. His numerous publications include a monograph, Cultural Encounters on Byzantium’s Northern Frontier, c. AD 500-700: Coins, Artifacts and History (Cambridge, 2018), as well as articles in journals such as Byzantinische Zeitschrift, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Journal of Late Antiquity, Revue Numismatique, and Numismatic Chronicle.
Elisabetta Giorgi is a research fellow in Methodologies of Archaeological Research at the University of Siena. She is the director of the archaeological fieldwork projects on the Roman and Late Antique settlement of Vignale (Tuscany) and co-director of the excavations in the Early Byzantine District of Gortys (Crete).
Her main research interests are the water management connected to the transformations of the ancient Mediterranean cities in the Late Antiquity and Early Byzantine age, the urban and suburban landscapes in times of transition, the excavation of daily life contexts, as well as the public archaeology and the interaction between research and the heritage community. Her most recent monograph is Archeologia dell’acqua a Gortina di Creta in eta protobizantina (Oxford, 2016).
Matthew Harpster is the Director of the Kog University Mustafa V. Kog Maritime Archaeology Research Center at Kog University in Istanbul, Turkey. He received his Ph.D. from Texas A&M University and has held teaching and research posts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Eastern Mediterranean University, and the University of Birmingham. He recently completed a long-term project that demonstrated the value of decoupling the maritime archaeological dataset in the Mediterranean from text-based narratives and interpretive practices, published as Reconstructing a Maritime Past (London-NewYork, 2023). He is presently pursuing a project that restudies the maritime underclass in the ancient Mediterranean with postcolonial and postmodern theories about contemporary mobile and migratory communities. His other research interests include maritime cultural landscapes and the history of maritime archaeological thought, and he has conducted fieldwork in Iran, Cyprus, Turkey, Italy, and Morocco.
Michael R. Jones is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Archaeology and History of Art at Kog University, Mustafa V. Kog Center for Maritime Archaeology. He is a maritime archaeologist whose research focuses on the development of shipbuilding and maritime trade in the late antique and medieval eastern Mediterranean. He has participated in a number of archaeological research projects in Turkey, including the excavation and study of eight Byzantine shipwrecks from the Theodosian Harbor site in the Yenikap1 neighborhood of Istanbul since 2005, archaeological surveys of late antique coastal sites and underwater remains on the Rough Cilician coast of Turkey near Bogsak/Dana Island (Silifke, Mersin province) and Urla (Izmir province), and the post-excavation study of the hull remains and cargo of the Late Byzantine Camalt: Burnu shipwreck from the Sea of Marmara.
Ioli Kalavrezou has been the Dumbarton Oaks Professor of Byzantine Art History at the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University, having earlier taught at UCLA and at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. She has served as Chair of the department for six years and is also a Senior Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks. She is a member of the Executive Committee and Senior Research Associate at Dumbarton Oaks. She also serves as a Trustee at the Cyprus Institute in Nicosia.
Her research focuses on political and ideological history, for example, the relationship between Church and State and the use of King David in imperial propaganda, especially in manuscript illustrations. These questions led her to investigate the visual evidence ranging from monumental wall paintings and mosaics to objects carved in ivory and steatite, icons, and manuscripts. Another topic of special research interest has been the cult of the Virgin Mary. Everyday life and private devotion have also been at the center of her research interests, as published in her book on Byzantine Icons in Steatite (Wien, 1985). The sun imagery in the person of the emperor is her most recent project. She also delved into the study of the role and place of women in Byzantine society, which led to a large exhibition at Harvard entitled Byzantine Women and their World.
Nikolaos Karydis is a practicing Architect and Senior Lecturer at the University of Kent specializing in the fields of Architectural History, Urban Design, and Conservation. He studied Architecture at the National Technical University of Athens, and Building Conservation at the University of Bath. The doctoral thesis he carried out in Bath from 2006 to 2009 was distinguished with the 2010 R.I.B.A. President’s Commendation and resulted in his book on Early Byzantine vaulted construction. From 2010 to 2012, Karydis was Assistant Professor of Architecture in the Rome Studies Program of the University of Notre Dame. In 2012, he moved to Kent where he founded and directs the MSc Program in Architectural Conservation.
He has recently published a new graphic reconstruction of Justinian’s church of the Holy Apostles (2019), as well as two articles retracing the phases of construction of the churches of St. John and St. Mary at Ephesos (2016 and 2019, respectively). Karydis has also published on other topics, including vernacular architecture, the revival of Classical Architecture in nineteenth-century Athens, and the discovery of Byzantine architecture in nineteenth-century England. He is currently working on a book retracing the development of Ripa Grande, the lost river port of early modern Rome.
Tonia Kiousopoulou is a Professor of Byzantine History in the History and Archaeology Department at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Her research focuses on the social history during the late Byzantine period. She has published several books like: O Geauds THs oiKoyévelas otnv ‘Hre1po Kath tov 130 awva (Athens, 1990) (The Family Institution in Epirus during the 13th Century); Xpovoc Koa nAucies orn BuCavtivy Kowwvia.
H KAiuaKo Twv nA and to oytodoyiKd Keiueva to uéons emoyrs (70¢-110¢ ot.) (Athens, 1997) (Time and Ages in Byzantine Society through the Hagiography of the Middle Byzantine Period); Baotrevs ry Orxovouos: MoAitucr} eovata or Weodoyia now tyv ‘AAwon (Athens, 2007) (Emperor or Manager: Power and Political Ideology in Byzantium before the Fall]; and, Ou ‘adpates’ Bufavewvés rdAEtc atov EAAadiKd xwWpo (1306-1 S0¢ owdvac) (Athens, 2013) (The Invisible Byzantine Cities in the Greek Area 13th-15th Centuries).
Athanasios Koutoupas is a PhD candidate at The Cyprus Institute. He received his degree from the Department of Theology of the Theological School of Aristotle at the University of Thessaloniki. He received a Master’s degree specializing in Religious Studies from the same department, and he also holds a Master’s degree in the History of Hellenistic and Roman times from the Center for Hellenistic Studies of Bibliotheca Alexandrina. He collaborates with Société Archéologique d’Alexandrie on various projects. His main research interest focuses on religion, history, and archaeology, especially in the Graeco-Roman and Early Christian eras in the Eastern Mediterranean. During his studies, he had the chance to participate in numerous projects, allowing him to become increasingly engaged in the practical application of technology in studying, analyzing, and disseminating archaeological material and sources. He is co-editor of the Cultural Exchanges in the Eastern Mediterranean (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2022).
Ian Randall received his Ph.D. from Brown University in 2018 and is currently a postdoctoral research fellow with the Database of Religious History at the University of British Columbia. A Byzantine archaeologist who specialises in identity construction and foodways, he excavates at the site of Kourion in the Republic of Cyprus and at the site of Vlochos in western Thessaly. He has a chapter in The Archaeology of Medieval Islamic Frontiers (University Press of Colorado, 2019) on conceptualizing the Byzantine-Islamic maritime frontier and is currently working on a project exploring the heterochronic perceptions of material life in early medieval port societies.
Helen Saradi specialises in Byzantine and Late Antique studies. Her research and publications span Byzantine urbanism and related historical, archaeological, and literary issues, especially the rhetoric of the Byzantine city and the deeds of private transactions and pertaining social topics. She is the author of three monographs: The Byzantine City in the Sixth Century: Literary Images and Historical Reality (Athens, 2006); I] sistema notarile bizantino (VI-XV secolo) (Milan, 1999); Le notariat byzantin du IXe au XVe siécles (Athens, 1991). She is the author of 80 articles.
Professor Saradi taught at Universities in Greece and Canada and lectured at graduatefaculty seminars of many academic institutions, including Dumbarton Oaks, Mac Master University, Simon Fraser, University of Athens, of Thessaloniki, School of Law and Center of Byzantine Studies, Exeter College, Oxford, King’s College, London, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, and Paris. She was awarded Summer Fellowships from Dumbarton Oaks and grants from the Research Council of Canada. Her teaching included classical and Byzantine history, civilization, and literature. She also held many high academic administrative positions.
Ufuk Serin currently is an Associate Professor of architecture at the Middle East Technical University (METU). After graduating from the Department of Architecture at METU, she obtained her MS in Cultural Heritage Conservation at the same university. She received her Doctoral Degree in Early Christian Art and Archaeology from the Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana (PIAC), Vatican City. She has been the recipient of doctoral and postdoctoral research grants and fellowships from distinguished institutions, such as the Alexander S. Onassis Foundation, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection (Harvard University), Fiat International and Kog¢ Foundation, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz/Max-Planck-Institut, the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA)/Cotsen Institute of Archaeology in association with the School for Advanced Research (SAR), and the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America of Columbia University.
She has decades of professional experience in archaeological field survey and excavation. She coordinated the Turkish component of the partnership in the Byzantium-Early Islam Project (BYZelIS) of the Euromed Heritage III Program, funded by the European Commission. Her research interests mainly cover Late Antique and Byzantine architecture and urbanism, Early Christian and medieval archaeology, combined with studies in archaeological conservation, contested heritage, and the interpretation and presentation of heritage sites.
Myrto Veikou is an Assistant Professor of Byzantine Archaeology at the Department of History and Archaeology, University of Patras. She is also researcher for the Department of Linguistics and Philology, Uppsala University (Research Program ‘Retracing Connections — Byzantine Storyworlds in Greek, Arabic, Georgian, and Old Slavonic (c. 950-c. 1100)’ and research collaborator for the Austrian Academy of Sciences (Project ‘Medieval Smyrna/Izmir: The Transformation of a City and its Hinterland from Byzantine to Ottoman Times [MESMY]’).
She studied History and Archaeology (BA — University of Athens) and further specialised in Byzantine History, Archaeology, Philology, and Literary Studies (M.Phil. - University of Birmingham; MA —- University of Paris I- Sorbonne; PhD — University of Athens; PhD - Uppsala University). Her first Ph.D. thesis in Byzantine Archaeology was published in 2012 (Byzantine Epirus: A topography of transformation. Settlements from the 7th to the 12th Centuries in Southern Epirus and Aetoloacarnania, Greece, the Medieval Mediterranean 95 (Leiden, 2012). Her second Ph.D. thesis in Byzantine Philology and Literary Studies will be published within 2023 (Spatial Paths to Holiness — Literary ‘Lived Spaces’ in Eleventh-Century Byzantine Saints’ Lives, Studia Byzantina Upsaliensia 22 [Uppsala, 2023). She has been teaching Byzantine history and archaeology since 2007, as well as Byzantine philology and literary studies since 2017.
Joanita Vroom is a Professor of the Archaeology of medieval and early modern Eurasia at the Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University (NL), specializing in Medieval and Post-Medieval archaeology in the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East (including the Byzantine, Islamic, Crusader, and Ottoman periods). She takes a particular interest in the socio-economic (production and distribution) and cultural aspects (cuisine and eating habits) of material culture (including ceramics) in these societies. She is the series editor of the Medieval and Post-Medieval Mediterranean Archaeology Series (MPMAS) at Brepols Publishers (Turnhout).
Earlier she published After Antiquity: Ceramics and Society in the Aegean from the 7th to the 20th Century A.C. (Leiden, 2003), Byzantine to Modern Pottery in the Aegean: An Introduction and Field Guide (Utrecht, 2005; Turnhout, 2014, Medieval and Post-Medieval Ceramics in the Eastern Mediterranean: Fact and Fiction (MPMAS 1; Turnhout, 2015), Medieval MasterChef: Archaeological and Historical Perspectives on Eastern Cuisine and Western Foodways (MPMAS 2; Turnhout, 2017), Feeding the Byzantine City: The Archaeology of Consumption in the Eastern Mediterranean (MPMAS 5, Turnhout, 2023), as well as many book chapters and articles in academic journals.
INTRODUCING THE BYZANTINE CITY, ITS HISTORIES, IDEAS AND REALITIES!
Nikolas Bakirtzis and Luca Zavagno
“The emperor wise in all things was not unaware of why the Roman cities are sickening and indeed the majority have already died and passed away.”* Writing on the eve of the catastrophic Fourth Crusade, the newly appointed Metropolitan of Athens, Michael Choniates (brother of the more famous chronicler and historian Niketas), seem to utter a nostalgic lamentation of the fate of the once-prosperous urban centers that had once showcased the political, social, cultural, and economic preeminence of the Eastern Roman Empire.
’ Michael’s point of view was shaped by his education in Constantinople where he spent most of his formative years under the tutorship of another famous intellectual, Eusthatios of Thessaloniki, who also lamented the fate of his native city sieged and conquered by the Normans in 1185.4 When Choniates found himself leading the Church of the city of Athens, which he had idealised as the epitome of Classical antiquity, philosophical and moral, he reflected on the realities he encountered while showing concern for the fading legacy of ancient cities and the related socioeconomic transitions in the Byzantine Empire.°
One can only sympathise with Michael, who grew up in the town of Chonai developed in the shadow of a fortress, which inherited the functions of the nearby ancient city of Kolossai (where Saint Paul preached), to eventually find his way to the capital.6 Chonai was a fortified outpost on the frontier with the Seljuk Sultanate as well as an important center along Anatolian pilgrimage routes. It boasted an important cult site dedicated to Archangel Michael, whose panegyris (a fair that reminds us of similar gatherings in Euchaita and Ephesos) periodically turned the quiet fortified settlement into a bustling commercial and economic hub benefitting the broader region.’ In a sense, Michael’s words could be ideally paired with the verses of his brother Niketas (who became the interlocutor in Umberto Eco’s famous fictional Baudolino) lamenting the loss of Constantinople: “O City, City, eye of all cities, universal boast, supramundane wonder, wet nurse of churches [...].”® Niketas’ words of ominous praise echo the devastation of Constantinople as the Franks and the Venetians destroyed and looted the wealth and glory of the empire’s capital. All was irredeemably lost for Byzantium.
On the one hand, the abovementioned passages, rhetorically fictional (Michael’s) and dramatically real (Niketas’), echo their understanding of the trajectory as well as the central role of Byzantine cities. A once-powerful empire that looked like a mosaic carpet dotted with urban sites from which the socio-cultural, political, religious, and administrative life pulsed along with its provinces, to a transformed and in-transition empire, organised around nuclei of provincial urban life in the form of castles until its demise in 1204, and the continuing resilience of fortified cities in the fragmented political and economic realities of the late Byzantine period until the arrival of the Ottomans and beyond.’ On the other hand, it’s important to highlight the juxtaposition that emerges from the Choniates brothers’ writings between the “reality” of the Byzantine city and its “idea and ideal,” often expressed in relation to Classical stereotypes and topoi used by contemporary sources.!”
The rationale and content of the present volume address the history and the realities of the Byzantine city proposing a multifaceted overview of the Byzantine urban phenomenon rather than singling out the trajectories and development of specific sites and regions. In doing this, the different contributions deliberately move away from the “exceptional,” which Constantinople represented as the “Queen of Cities” and rather delve into an epistemology of Byzantine urbanism and urbanites across space (the provinces and regions constituting the empire) and time (as represented by the traditional periodization: early, middle, and late Byzantine era).
As this book is about the Byzantine city, its definition can raise all sorts of primary questions: what does one mean by Byzantine? Should this be regarded as having a preeminent political, military, and administrative meaning? And therefore, shall we Byzantinists dedicate our attention simply to those times (long or short) in which a city was part of the Byzantine Empire? Or should it be regarded as one of those “phases” in a longue durée of the history of a site in an interrupted dialogue with other moments of city life? Could a city be regarded (at least partially) Byzantine also when it was part of the cultural and religious sphere of Roman-Christian influence (like, for example, in Amalfi and Comacchio in early medieval Italy or later Prousa-Bursa in the Ottoman era)?!" Partially stemming from this, is Byzantine an adjective that entailed the same functional, urbanistic, and architectural heuristics across more than a thousand-year? In other words, could we define the urban phenomenon and its ontological characteristic in the same way across the Byzantine millennium? Or did Byzantine cities simply occur and recur — and therefore experience ebbs and flows, golden ages followed by an inevitable decline, or, rather, their transformations captured in a timeless snapshot? Finally, should the Byzantine city be realistically interpreted as a layered palimpsest in order to “avoid imposing distinctions that satisfy our own assumptions about historical periodization and cultural practice, but which bear little relation to the experience of ancient, medieval, or early modern persons?” ”
In order to answer at least some of those questions, it is important to alert readers to what they will not find in this volume, for although broad in its geographical perspective, it is not intended to be a catalog of “Byzantine” cities organised geographically. In fact, previous scholarly contributions on the issue of Byzantine urbanism mainly centered on the historical trajectories of single provincial sites selected mainly on the very basis of their Classical heritage or political/military importance.’ Far from it, the contributions included in this volume are arranged around selected and rather “transversal” themes, which, in our opinion, will help the reader to move beyond the abovementioned chronological barriers imposed by the changing fate of cities.
These should also help to avoid a rather traditional taxonomical dissection of the urban phenomenon along clear-cut political, economic, administrative, and military interpretative lines. The absence of dedicated chapters focusing entirely on one or more of those aspects might be surprising at first; however, we did envisage a full incorporation of these within diachronic and interdisciplinary frameworks that address both the imaginary and the perceived, the ideal and the pragmatic, the monumental and the socio-cultural flows of life as they characterised the Byzantine urban experience. Moreover, chapters focused on the urban economy or administrative structures would have fallen short as fully fledged narratives of those changes would be inevitably required to relate them to the complex transformations of the imperial super-structure at large. Rather, this volume proposes to interject these very changes through the examination of their architectural, material, built, and visual manifestations as they presented themselves in regional and sub-regional incarnations across the Byzantine Mediterranean.
For instance, three relatively recent contributions breathe new life into issues of Byzantine urbanism, although limited in geographical (Andrea De Giorgi and Asa Eger’s volume on Antioch in the longue durée from the Classical to the Ottoman era) and chronological (Henry Dey’s book on the post-Roman City as focused on the seventh to tenth century period and Kiousopoulou’s work focusing on the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries).'* The first presents us with a compelling overview of the history of the third most populous and wealthiest city in the whole Imperial and Late Antique Mediterranean as relying on both literary sources and — above all — archeological evidence.
The authors not only stressed the impossibility of writing a conclusive biography of a city that remained vibrant, dynamic, and densely inhabited from its foundation (in the fourth century BCE) to the contemporary era’; in fact, they also scrutinise Antioch’s uninterrupted history as revolving around four themes that repeated themselves from period to period: resilience, conquest, cosmopolitanism, and foundation and legacy.'® They allow the author to sketch a picture of a city, capable of surviving disasters and in a constant and incessant dialogue with its past; a city whose archeology proves the restructuring and reshaping of buildings and spaces, urban narratives and memories for “its medieval and [...] modern incarnations, consciously expressed, remembered, and etched into the buildings and walls themselves. This constant awareness of Antioch’s history was for some periods a longing for the past, for others a legitimizing of its importance in the present.” !” In showcasing Antioch as a de facto urban palimpsest in a diachronic superposition (physical and metaphorical) of thematically linked socio-cultural, religious, and political layers, the authors echoed another recent analytical and interdisciplinary effort to read the history of cities (in particular those of the eastern Mediterranean as ‘multi-synchronic’ entities) both as we walk through their jumbled present, and as we penetrate the formations and transformations of their past."
Of course, the long continuity of major urban centers like the capital of Constantinople and Thessaloniki, among other examples, present instructive examples to probe inquiries related to the resilience mechanisms that allowed their societies to transition, adopt to and navigate through major political and economic changes during the so-called dark ages.” Key urban functions and institutions helped to anchor social, economic, and cultural life, which now relied on the ability of Byzantine authorities to control space and to offer protection through the construction and more importantly the maintenance of fortification works.”°
Henry Dey’s work attempts to stress the resilience of urban lifestyle and the centrality of fabric and architecture to the political and social life of cities in the Medieval period and beyond. The Byzantine Empire certainly survived by hinging on a diminished number of urban sites in comparison to the Late Antique era, and we should take it as natural that cities can survive or die as entities linked to administrative, military, religious, and macro-economy needs of larger polities.”! In light of this, Dey concludes that “the ideological resonance and practical function of monumental topography never entirely disappear even in tumultuous periods [as it] had a visual, concrete, and paradigmatic implications. [In particular] the fact that civil and ecclesiastical office holders continued to imagine the execution of their public mandates, display of authority within the backdrop of the Late Roman city and its spectators.
””” As Leslie Brubaker has recently shown, the very fact that literary sources made this background more visible in Medieval Constantinople (where ceremonial processions dictated the political and religious tempo of city life) does not exclude that a similar socio-cultural, religious, and ceremonial apparatus remained central to the urban life and fabric elsewhere across the empire.”? Processions and ceremonies as staged along the main porticoed streets and city squares could have funerary, memorial, or celebratory meanings; nevertheless, they characterised the sensorial and spatial interactions between the city dwellers and the urban fabric and architecture. In this light, archeology has recently paired with the Byzantine literary sources to help us conceptualise the processional routes and the diverse functional types of the peripatetic urban ceremonies staged in both Medieval Constantinople as well as in provincial cities like eleventh-century Thebes.”4
Indeed, we can now document a previously unsuspected resilience of urban street grids in different cities across the empire like Gortyn in Crete, Naples, Syracuse, Ephesos, Cherson, and Amorium.”* This is not to deny that — as Tzivikis concludes — cities went through dramatic changes across centuries, but rather to stress that the Byzantine urban space — as a distinctive analytical category and a lived space — bore the fruits of a constant and transformative negotiation between the various elements of urban societies.”° It is not by chance that Tzivikis writes with the city of Amorium in mind. Located almost at the center of the Anatolian plateau, Amorium developed from a backwater Late Antique town to an impressive provincial capital and military (thematic) and religious center.
It provides us with one of the best examples of Byzantine urban archeology as well as an interesting case of resilient urban life reaching out to the late eleventh century when the city was abandoned.’’ In fact, the physical changes in the urbanscape of Amorium over the duration of almost seven centuries reflect the history of the empire as “it also had been transformed: in the seventh and eighth centuries it stood as a major fortress city against the frequent Arab invasions of Anatolia, but by the second half of the tenth century it [....] served as an important supply base on the route to the frontier in northern Syria. Had it survived the transition to Seljuk rule, it may have developed into an Ottoman and later modern Turkish city as did Iconium or Ankara.””*
Amorium points to the importance of addressing the regional diversity of Byzantine urban life as well as carefully navigating through what has been hastily labeled as the ruralization, militarization, and decline of the city in the so-called Dark Ages of Byzantium. Sailing through these problematic centuries should get us to the safe haven of the revival of Byzantine urbanism in the tenth-to-twelfth-century period.” In fact, over the entirety of the Byzantine millennium, cities remained nuclei of intensification of human landscape and contact points between stable micro-ecology and ever-changing macro-economies at the Mediterranean scale. In light of these changes, they acquired new prevalent functionalities shaped by urban planning, fabric, and infrastructure.*’ In the end, it was the reality of the fragmentation of the Late Antique Mediterranean exchange system followed by the catastrophic loss of large swath of the Late Roman imperial provinces (Syria, Egypt, and North Africa) and a dramatic military and administrative reorganization, which led to the creation of new urban entities like Monemvasia (as well as Kastoria, Dazimon, Nafpaktos, and Mystras) and the transformation and restructuring of ancient ones around new urbanistic, functional, and fortification priorities too often simply defined as “castralization” (like in Corinth, Abdera-Polystylon, Nicaea, Serres, Veroia, Athens, Syracuse, and Catania to name some examples).*!
This latter point can be explicated when we indeed examine the historical trajectories of Monemvasia, a city de facto re-founded as centered on a massive rocky outcrop along the eastern coast of the southern Peloponnese in the late seventh century.* As Kalligas asserts, “the existence of a port and other installations predating the founding of Monemvasia determined the planning of the new city with three components: the bridge surrounded by the parts of the port, the Upper City and the Lower City.”*’ The latter were enclosed by two separate sets of walls, a layout that reminds us of Amorium, as well as Ephesus.
** Monemvasia was indeed ontologically defined by its harbor (as strategically located along the socalled Trunk Route linking the Aegean to Constantinople*>) and its role as a natural outlet for the agricultural produce of its hinterland as well as a convenient hub for the Byzantine fleet; so, it was not simply its fortified urban landscape to characterise and connotate the urban life of Monemvasia. The peculiar role of socio-political elites bound to Constantinople, but also capable of exploiting the commercial opportunities offered by its strategic location and benefitting from tax exemptions on land properties, led to the creation of a dense urban landscape with windy roads crisscrossing the rocky outcrop and small squares focusing on religious buildings and possibly monastic institutions.*° As the Upper city fulfilled the main political, administrative, and religious functions of the city, the resilience of a mercantile elite led to nurturing a sense of local identity even recognised by the central government as local archontes ruled the city.°”
The archontate of Monemvasia, which seems to have been developing from the tenth century on should remind us of similar governmental structures, which betray the ability on the part of Byzantium to navigate through the interstices of Mediterranean politics in the longue durée; we indeed find archontes (as well as duchies) appearing in the so-called coastal-insular Byzantine koine both in the distant provinces like the Balearics (till the early tenth century) as well as in cities like Late Antique Palermo and Medieval Dyrrachium and Trabzon.** The history of Monemvasia reveals a city that pierced through the historiographical barriers of the Dark Ages and the collapse of the Empire post-1204.
The archetypical merchant city dominated by a group of families vying for political prominence, Monemvasia reminds us of Amalfi (as well as Comacchio) and Venice; the preeminence of fortifications reminds us of thematic capitals like Ankara and Attalea (present Antalya); the fluidity of local administrative structures puts it in the same league as Zadar, Butrint, and Cagliari.*’ Finally, the resilience of Monemvasia at the socio-political and economic levels is exemplary of the historical trajectories of Byzantium from the eleventh century onward, in particular in the post-1204 period.
In this respect, it allows us to catch a glimpse of the development of Byzantine cities during a period when the empire shrank around the Aegean and became more integrated into the commercial networks of the West and its monetary systems.*° Jonathan Shea has suggested that contrary of its Western counterparts, Monemvasia, as well as other cities like Thessaloniki, Joannina, Thebes, Arta, and Corinth, show us how the Byzantine city profited from the fragmentation of the empire as well as from their own pre-1204 realities.*' Late Byzantine urban developments were driven by economically vibrant communities and were defined by fortification architecture, which became a defining aspect of the very experience and cultural identity of the Byzantine city.”
The work of Tonia Kiousopoulou looks at the last centuries of Byzantium through its cities, thus highlighting their central role through the arrival of the Ottomans and beyond.
More importantly, she focuses on the realities of fortified cities and towns attempting to understand the socioeconomic and cultural drivers of their organization, planning, development, and relation with their rural surroundings. The analysis of urban topographies is used as a methodological mirror to shed light on the daily lives of their societies and inhabitants. Thus, the multifaceted experience of Byzantine cities is best explored through the synthetic study of variable aspects of urban life. The critical treatment of textual and material evidence can contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the realities and the development of local urban identities was already in progress from the tenth century on, as shown for instance in sigillographic evidence and in the revival of literary genres like the enkomia and ekphraseis.“* These aimed at promoting and projecting new “urban” narratives and identities on the part of the Late Byzantine urban elites engaging with the expansion of the Ottoman Turks and, above all, vis-a-vis an Empire no more regarded as a unifying point of reference.* Indeed, contrary to Amorium, Monemvasia did not vanish with “the arrival of the Turks” as the Aegean remained at the nexus of political, economic, and socio-cultural interactions among Venice, Genoa, Latins, Turkic beyliks, and (later) the rising Ottoman power from the thirteenth century onward.*°
As Byzantine urbanism remained constantly engaged in a dialogue with a cumbersome Roman past and the ever-changing Mediterranean-oriented present, Amorium and Monemvasia reveal two possible outcomes of a large spectrum of regional incarnations (and changes) of the Byzantine idea, functions, planning, and aesthetic of the city. Indeed, as Decker cogently remarks, Byzantine cities may fail or resurge, but as Decker remarks: “the question remains what exactly we make of the fabric of these cities [...] and what these [...] tell us of forms of public, private, and sacred spaces, and economic activity as well as civic and social life.”*” Following the end of the Byzantine state, it is important to consider the legacy of Byzantine urbanism both in relation to the growth of Ottoman power and in relation to its influence in the making of national narratives in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The foundations of the Ottoman state were largely set following the capture and control of key cities like Prousa, Andrianoupolis, and Thessaloniki, while the fall of Constantinople and its transformation into the Ottoman capital shaped the ambitions of the new empire.*® Centuries later, the remnants of Byzantine cities, whether religious monuments or fortification walls, helped the construction of heritage traditions aimed to integrate Byzantine heritage into national narratives, such as in the case of Thessaloniki.”
As already mentioned, the aim of the volume is not simply to move and locate a set of urban pieces across the chessboard of Byzantine provinces, but rather to describe their socioeconomic, political, and cultural continuities and discontinuities against the strategic, tactical, and expedient challenges in the different periods of Byzantine history. These stem from the various attack and defense moves chosen by the players, as a hierarchy of pieces is constantly changed and adapted to development of the battlefield. It would therefore make less sense to focus on the range of movements of — let’s say — the bishop or any pawns, than to analyze and present snapshots of the chessboard during different times of the game. In fact, the contributions of this volume present the reader with four grand diachronic snapshots of Byzantine urbanism from an interdisciplinary perspective.
The first part focuses on the historiography of Byzantine cities, and therefore of the way, Byzantinists have embraced the trajectories of the urban phenomenon, as well as the ways in which the Byzantine city has been theorised and conceived. Luca Zavagno’s Historiography of the Byzantine Cities examines how Byzantinists have only slowly moved away from a long debate that has often been framed within the opposition between “continuists” and “discontinuists.”°° Zavagno points out how this juxtaposition must be regarded as largely ineffectual, for it is not conducive to effectively analyzing the causes and effects of the transition of urban sites in terms of social structures, planning, and fabric.
He also shows how new methodologies have enormously contributed to an all-encompassing analysis of the urban in Byzantium. In the following chapter (Theorizing the Byzantine City), Myrto Veikou sheds light on the changing ideas of the city and urbanity in pace with social transformation, as she also tries to examine the reasons behind the lack of Byzantine clear definitions of a city. In doing so, and by examining an important source like the middle Byzantine Parastaseis Syntomoi Chronikai, Veikou points to the importance of memories as constitutive of urban space and the history of urbanism (in Byzantium and beyond).
Memories are constructed through the relation between city narratives and the materiality of the urban places. Indeed, the material aspects of the city and the various ways of exploring it lie at the heart of Michael Decker’s chapter on the Methodologies of Byzantine Urban Studies, for it explores the exciting possibilities offered by new technological (digital and virtual) tools as well as the opportunities presented by ecological, paleo-climatical, archeozoological, and paleo-epidemiology approaches to better survey urban spaces and settlement patterns.
In addition, literary and documentary sources are of central relevance to our understanding of Byzantine cities as discussed in Helen Saradi’s and Tonia Kiousopoulou’s contributions. Saradi proposes an overview of the different forms in which the scanty literary sources had been presenting Byzantine cities pointing to the fact that the “factual” is often distorted by rhetoric and fiction. Nevertheless, she concludes that ambiguities aside, the terms used and their frequency in sources reflect urban change such as in the decline of Late Antique cities between the seventh and the twelfth centuries and the growth of Byzantine urbanism post-1204, as cities flourished, and many became regional centers for competing dynasts and rivals. Focusing on the last two centuries of the Byzantine state (the thirteenth and the fourteenth), Kiousopoulou stresses the narrative sources’ ambivalence regarding urban topography, public and private spaces, and planning with regard to cities like Ioannina, Arta, and Serres. She concludes that Byzantine authors can be deceitful sources of information for they often described cities along with urban ideals with references to walls, residences, churches, and charitable institutions being the necessary attributes of the emperor’s or despot’s power.
The regional focus of Kiousopoulou’s contribution is in tune with the second rationale of this volume, which addresses the fate of the Byzantine city through a comparison between different regions of Byzantium and the broader Mediterranean world within the framework of structured economic systems driven by production and exchange. In this light, the second, and larger, part of the volume focuses on expanding and enriching the geopolitical scope of the debate on the Byzantine city. The part entitled “Geographies of the Byzantine City” encompasses both “traditional” regional areas as well as those too often regarded as simply marginal to the trajectories of the heartland of Byzantine urbanism, for example the so-called insular-coastal koine and continental Italy.*! However, as already mentioned, a counterthrust to the centripetal gravity of Constantinople permeates most of the volume’s contributions.
In this vein, Andrea Gandila focuses on the Black Sea at large (from Lazica to the Danube) as he examines the role of the sea in unifying cultural micro-regions that betray distinctive elements of diversity and commonality; his essay dwells upon these in a comparative perspective using coins and their distributive patterns of circulation to reveal the vibrant urban network crisscrossing the Black Sea in the sixth century and beyond. Moving to the other constitutive region of the so-called Byzantine heartland (Asia Minor), Ufuk Serin’s chapter proposes a more “traditional” overview of the urban developments in Anatolia. Her survey looks at the main urban sites in the region from a diachronic perspective, while considering the challenges of urban archeology in the Eastern Mediterranean. Archeological sites often remain neglected, submerged by densely built contemporary buildings. In the end, she concludes that Byzantine urban heritage can remain politically sensitive, if not vulnerable, in regions where — contrary to Greece or the Balkans — there are no continuing cultural, religious, or linguistic links with Byzantium.
The last three contributions of the part address issues related to the multifaceted influence of Byzantium on changes experienced by urban structures, fabric, planning, and sociopolitical organization in territories that were not continuously part of Byzantine control and its influence. Luca Zavagno examines the urban trajectories of large Byzantine islands of the Empire; Enrico Cirelli analyzes the urbanisms of “Byzantine Italies”°* by comparing some of the urban sites along the Byzantine (and Lombard) Adriatic coast. Indeed, his overview focuses mainly on Ravenna, the capital of the exarchate until it fell to the Lombards in 751, and then follows the trajectories of the cities of the so-called Pentapolis and Apulia (Otranto).
Finally, Ian Randall’s attention is drawn to a region that was lost to Byzantium from the mid-seventh century, namely Syria and Palestine: by looking at their smooth transition from Byzantine to Islamic rule, one can indeed realise that political and military events did not always cause catastrophic changes to the urban social life and fabric. Indeed, in this case, urban archeology and material culture not only point to continuities of city life but also provide us with comparative perspectives to better grasp the economic resilience (as centered around commercial-artisanal functions) of the urban landscape boasted by Byzantine cities like Amorium, Gortyn. Cherson or Ephesus (in the Dark Ages) and Athens, Thebes, Corinth, Nicaea, and Pergamon (in the Middle to Late Byzantine periods).*?
The focus on archeology and urban cityscapes characterises the third and fourth parts of the volume, where an array of contributions explore the dialogue between the archeology of people and the archeology of monuments as well as between material culture and literary sources.** Part III is dedicated to architecture and urban spaces, for it proposes an overarching approach to the changing functional role of different Byzantine cities across time and alerts the reader to the diverse and complex spatial, topographical, and monumental consequences of change. Nikolas Bakirtzis centers on the multifaceted role of urban fortifications in the diverse experience of cities in Byzantium, moving beyond their defensive purposes. His essay shows how in cities like Thessaloniki, Ankara, Christoupolis, and Monemvasia, among numerous other examples, the aesthetic, iconographic, and spatial aspects of fortified enclosures, as perceived and experienced by the local population, became an essential part of civic culture and came to denote self-assurance and civic pride.
Walls could, however, be visible as well as psychological and ideological barriers; in this light, Nikos Karydes examines the importance of ecclesiastical buildings as dotting the urban landscape and marking the city skyline. His focus on the important Constantinopolitan church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus allows him to draw a comparative picture of the evolution of religious architecture (with a focus on the domes as they punctuated the skyline of many Byzantine cities) and their importance as reference points for residential, economic, socio-political, and cultural functions of urban lives.
Elisabetta Giorgi’s essay focuses on the archeology of water to offer insights into the Byzantine urban landscape and social fabric. In Gortyn, in particular, archeological work has shown how water was collected, stored, and redistributed within single parceled properties.
Within this organizational scheme of urban islets, communities relied less on the existing Roman and Byzantine monumental structures and networks as water distribution and availability were more localised and/or privatised. In a rather similar vein, exploring the relation between the city and its waters, Michael Jones and Matthew Harpster examine the economic (commercial and artisanal) and social centrality of harbors in coastal cities like Constantinople and Amalfi. The shipwrecks discovered at the Yenikapi excavations (the former harbor of Julian in Constantinople) provide us with unique glimpses of the Mediterranean maritime networks connected with the Byzantine capital. The key study of Amalfi sheds light on the importance of adopting strategies other than military conflicts or religious conversions across the Byzantine maritime frontiers. Evidently, Amalfitan merchants seem to have relied on cooperation and economic interests transcending traditional political and cultural boundaries.
Beyond commercial, productive, organizational, and public service infrastructures, the long urban traditions of Byzantine cities were characterised by aspects of a residual monumentality, which laid at the very center of the social, political, administrative, and religious life. Maria Cristina Carile’s essay examines the architectural landscape and fabric of the Byzantine city in the framework of the modern discourse on monumentality. In time, the Byzantine city changed in its basic structures reflecting in its social transformations the expression of monumentality; for instance, it abandoned the grandeur of Classical amenities and acquired numerous churches, which defined the social and cultural experiences of urban societies. Nevertheless, although ancient buildings often did not survive and were replaced by new ones, they were still considered the most prominent urban features well thus contributing to a sense of monumentality, which persisted through space and time. Chiming with Carile’s conclusions, Suna Cagaptay introduces the reader to the importance of Byzantine urbanism in molding and shaping the later Ottoman urban idea, landscape, and fabric. By focusing on Bursa (the Byzantine Prousa) on the north-western fringes of the Anatolian plateau, her contribution explores the spatial and visual strategies of Ottoman city-making and architectural enterprises, often relying on pre-existing urban and spatial configurations. A comparable perspective is offered by Thanasis Koutoupas whose essay discusses the fate of the Mediterranean metropolis of Alexandria as it transitioned between Byzantine and Arab control in 641. This is an instructive example of an important city, the transition and transformation of which after the end of antiquity took place in a neighboring yet competing and different to Byzantium socioeconomic and political context.
The last and final part of the volume moves from discussions of monumental landscapes to more focused approaches to the different socioeconomic actors who lived and operated in the urban physical world. Secular architectural structures, religious buildings, fortifications, residential areas, infrastructures serving the primary needs of the population (like aqueducts or fountains), as well as houses and private and public spaces shaped urban perceptions, the experience, and the socioeconomic and cultural lives of urban communities. They constituted integral elements of urban landscapes and through their use “they propose [an ever-changing] reality as a composite of humans and things, kitted together in an infinitely convoluted mesh [of] relations between them which create the physical world.”** Visual representations and material expressions as well as daily cultural interactions were central to the socio-political life of a Byzantine city. Ioli Kalavrezou discusses the perception and the related experience of art in Byzantine cities. Her essay looks at what was understood as art by city inhabitants and what it meant in the daily experience of their urban environments.
As art, architecture, and culture can tell us a lot about the socioeconomic life of the city, relics (and saints’ bodies) can similarly provide us with hints on their ritual and processional use.*° Relics could coalesce political meanings, supernatural protection, and religious connotations as their veneration (peripatetic through ceremonies and processions or static in churches and monasteries) helped to sanction and express local urban identities.*” These, on the one hand, contributed to the creation of distinctive images of the city — as Jenny Albani stresses — mirrored in topographic motifs or personifications in public and private contexts and speak of meanings and perceptions they could convey to their contemporary viewers. On the other hand, they could also find expression in the social life of the suburbs of the Byzantine city. Moreover, as Mabi Angar pans out, this distinctiveness abetted western communities to look for immediate internal and external recognition.
A distinguishable quarter of its own right, like in the case of the suburban quarter of Pera-Galata in Constantinople, developed as a specific spatial entity with particular features, including religious buildings, specialised commercial and artisan functions, and even a peculiar soundscape, enhanced by the bell towers of its churches. The latter point is relatable to the last two contributions of the part, where Joanita Vroom investigates the role of ceramics to illuminate the activities of production, trade, consumption, and cultural interaction in Byzantine cities and towns. Focusing her attention on Constantinople in the centuries before the Fourth Crusade, she uses ceramic evidence (as both vessels for trade as well as fine and table wares) to look at the Byzantine capital as a parasitic-consumption-oriented city. She nevertheless revises this role for the city in light of the centrality of Constantinople within an interregional network of production and distribution, which was based around the Aegean but could reach out to the Western (Sicily and the Tyrrhenian Sea) and the Eastern (Cyprus and the Levant) Mediterranean.
In tune with a conclusion to this introduction to the volume, our last assertion allows us to view the Byzantine city not simply through the established historiographic labels (polis vs. kastron) or by following the extensive and varied types of literary sources documenting different definitions of urban entities across the long Byzantine millennium. Building on existing work and by making generous use and reference to material culture, archeology, architecture (secular, military, and ecclesiastical), and arts, the contributors of this volume revisit a wide array of theories, ideas, fabrics, and textures of the Byzantine urban phenomenon. Moreover, the present collection of essays also attempts to explore the changing perceptions, practices, and experiences of the inhabitants of the cities of Byzantium. Of course, this collective effort does not aspire to provide a complete and final overview of Byzantine cities.
For instance, some regions remain untouched, and a full-fledged analysis of the “economics of the urban” is not presented in the volume. This is only a step forward as we remain positive to have moved beyond the duplicitous and seemingly inescapable contradictions the Choniates brothers may have forced upon us. Roman cities and their legacies were not moribund corpses, and the Queen of cities was not the only light of urban splendor until Mehmet II blew its enduring shine off as the last move in a nostalgic “candlewaltz.”
The centuries between Late Antiquity and the beginning of the Ottoman era included endless geopolitical, territorial, administrative, military, cultural, socioeconomic, and religious transitions and transformations across and beyond the world of Byzantium. One should indeed talk of interacting worlds, which led to different and transforming traditions, ideals, and interpretations of the physical experience and the imaginary and spiritual perceptions of Byzantine cities. After all, to paraphrase Baudolino, the hero of Umberto Eco’s homonymous novel, when he bids farewell to Nicetas Choniates in Constantinople, what scholars aim at is not to simply record the truth, but to be able to seek the great history, where little (urban) truths can be challenged and altered in order to allow the greater truth to emerge.
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