Download PDF | Ruth Macrides, J.A. Munitiz, Dimiter Angelov - Pseudo-Kodinos and the Constantinopolitan Court_ Offices and Ceremonies_ 15 (Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman Studies)-Routledge (2013).
579 Pages
About the series
Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman Studies is devoted to the history, culture and archaeology of the Byzantine and Ottoman worlds of the East Mediterranean region from the fifth to the twentieth century. It provides a forum for the publication of research completed by scholars from the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies at the University of Birmingham, and those with similar research interests.
About the book
The work known as Pseudo-Kodinos, the fourteenth-century text which is one of two surviving ceremonial books from the Byzantine empire, is presented here for the first time in English translation. With a facing page Greek text and the first indepth analysis in the form of commentary and individual studies on the hierarchy, the ceremonies, court attire, the Blachernai palace, lighting, music, gestures and postures, this volume makes an important new contribution to the study of the Byzantine court, and to the history and culture of Byzantium more broadly.
About the authors
Ruth Macrides is Reader in Byzantine Studies in the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham, UK. J.A. Munitiz, SJ, is Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham, UK. Dimiter Angelov is Professor of Byzantine History in the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham, UK.
Preface and Acknowledgements
The text presented here, known until now as the Treatise on Offices in the edition by Jean Verpeaux (1966), first attracted my attention by its extensive description of the procedure for the emperor’s riding out in Constantinople to receive petitions from his subjects. The anonymous author gives an account not only of the number of the accompanying horses and types of musical instruments, but also the reasons for both. His explanations draw on a well-documented incident from the reign of the emperor Theophilos and the author’s own conjecture. Until now, however, the anonymous author’s work has been known and most cited for its hierarchical list of offices and the functions attached to them. Verpeaux’s excellent edition, precise and concise commentary, and discussion of authorship and context of the text’s creation have served the scholarly community well.
Since its publication, and especially in the last two decades, studies have appeared on almost every aspect of court life referred to by the text: silk textiles and clothing, insignia, colour, music, ceremonial. This book has been written in an effort to review developments in these areas and others. The English translation of the Book of Ceremonies (2012) and the forthcoming new edition of that text, with French translation and commentary, make the re-examination of the fourteenth century text timely. These texts can now be studied together and not in isolation from each other, as has been the case. The study of ceremonial is central to the study of Byzantium.
The three centuries in which surviving ceremonial protocols were collected, the sixth, the tenth and the fourteenth, are also the three centuries from which legal compilations have survived, the Justinianic corpus, the Basilika and the Hexabiblos. This coincidence of ceremonial collection and legal compilation is by no means fortuitous. Ceremonial, like law, was concerned with the establishment of order, taxis, eutaxia, as the prefaces to the Eisagoge, the Book of the Eparch, the Taktika of Leo VI and the Book of Ceremonies by Constantine VII state.
That ceremonial texts were regarded as imperial ordinances is made explicit in the preface to the ceremony book of Philotheos (899).1 The book began as a weekly text seminar of the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek, University of Birmingham, in 2003. Anthony Bryer, Joseph Munitiz, Dimiter Angelov, Mary Cunningham and Kayoko Tabata contributed, as did the graduate students of the Centre, among whom Savvas Kyriakidis and Polyvios Konis were the most active.
The work of the seminar culminated in May 2005 in a two-day international workshop, generously funded by the British Academy. Contributors were Anthony Bryer, Niels Gaul, Dimitris Kyritses, Paul Magdalino, Arietta Papaconstantinou, Maria Parani, Warren Woodfin. Niels Gaul subsequently published his paper, ‘The partridge’s purple stockings’, as did Paul Magdalino, ‘Pseudo-Kodinos’ Constantinople’. Their contributions have been formative for this book, as has the unpublished paper by Warren Woodfin, ‘The materials make the man’. Joseph Munitiz, Dimiter Angelov and I took the project on to publication. Joseph Munitiz prepared an edition based on that of Verpeaux with a simplified apparatus. Dimiter Angelov wrote the chapter on ‘Hierarchy’ and most of the commentary on that section, as well as Tables I, II, IV, V. Both read over the final draft and contributed many useful observations. I would like to acknowledge the support of institutions and individuals.
In 2005/06 the AHRC granted me funding under the extended leave scheme and in 2010 Dumbarton Oaks awarded me a fellowship. Paolo Odorico invited me to give a series of seminars on Pseudo-Kodinos at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, in May 2008. I tried my ideas out on audiences in Oxford, London, Istanbul, Cologne, Nicosia, Łodz, Belgrade and Drama. For all these opportunities and experiences I am grateful and also express my appreciation and thanks here to Debbie Brown and the library staff at Dumbarton Oaks and at St Andrews. A number of individuals have shared their expertise, their photographs and articles on palaces, headgear, footwear, textiles, insignia, music and the church.
I am indebted to Meg Alexiou, Nathanael Aschenbrenner, Julian Baker, Jonathan Bardill, Jane Bridgeman, Béatrice Caseau, Anna Christidou, John Cotsonis, John Coulston, Slobodan Ćurčić, Albert Failler, Jeffrey Featherstone, Sharon Gerstel, Cecily Hilsdale, Polina Ivanova, David Jacoby, Michael Jeffreys, Jean Johnstone, Savvas Kyriakidis, Alexander Lingas, Master Cobbler (St Andrews), Michael Michael, Ann Moffatt, Rhoads Murphey, Bob Ousterhout, Maria Parani, Amanda Phillips, Günter Prinzing, Father John Raffan, Roderich Reinsch, Alexander Riehle, Alex Rodriguez, Jonathan Shea, Frouke Schrijver, Vlada Stanković, Ida Toth, Carlo Virgilio. For proofreading the Greek text, we are grateful to Eirene Harvalia-Crook. Last but not least I would like to record my appreciation of, and delight with, my first year students for the exuberance they brought to their study of Constantinople in their first semester at university. Ruth Macrides St Andrews and Birmingham December 2012
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