Studies in Byzantine Cultural History
About the Book Series
The series brings the insights of art, archaeology and text to create a new cultural history of Byzantium. Studies in all three of the disciplines are invited but especially those works which bring together the three disciplines to create something new. The series includes some comparative works with neighbouring subjects such as classics, medieval studies, Islamic studies, Ottoman studies, Renaissance studies, Modern Greek studies, to allow Byzantine studies to be infused with new energy and to respond to its neighbours.
For further information about contributing to the series please contact the series editors or Michael Greenwood at Routledge ([email protected]).
Fashioning Sixth Century Constantinople: Text, Translation and Commentary of Buildings, Book I by Procopius of Caesarea
1st Edition
By Max Ritter, Elodie Turquois, Marlena Whiting
December 16, 2025
The Buildings is a sixth-century text by Prokopios of Kaisareia (Caesarea Maritima) on the building works attributed to the eastern Roman emperor Justinian I (r. 527–565 CE), extolling the virtues of good rulership through praise of architecture. Book I centres on the imperial capital ...
Isaac Komnenos Porphyrogennetos: Walking the Line in Twelfth-Century Byzantium
1st Edition
Edited
By Valeria Flavia Lovato
October 01, 2024
Twelfth-century Byzantium is characterized by a striking artistic vitality and profound socio-political changes. The Constantinopolitan elites, led by the Komnenian dynasty initiated by Alexios I, were the driving force behind the renewed intellectual landscape and power dynamics of the century. ...
Managing Emotion in Byzantium: Passions, Affects and Imaginings
1st Edition
Edited
By Margaret Mullett, Susan Ashbrook Harvey
May 27, 2024
Byzantinists entered the study of emotion with Henry Maguire’s ground-breaking article on sorrow, published in 1977. Since then, classicists and western medievalists have developed new ways of understanding how emotional communities work and where the ancients’ concepts of emotion differ from our ...
The Sion Treasure Reconsidered: The Biographies and Multivalence of Sacred Silver Objects in Sixth-Century Byzantium
1st Edition
By Ahmet Arı
March 14, 2024
In 1963 a collection of fifty-seven silver vessels was discovered during illegal excavations by villagers in Antalya Province, Turkey. The Sion Treasure, named after the inscription ‘Holy Sion’ on several vessels in the hoard, is now divided between five collections: Antalya Museum (Turkey), ...
Power and Representation in Byzantium: The Forging of the Macedonian Dynasty
1st Edition
By Neil Churchill
December 29, 2023
Throughout the history of Byzantium 65 emperors were dethroned and only 39 reigns ended peacefully. How might a usurper get away with murdering his predecessor? And how could a bloody act of regicide lead to one of the most glorious of all eras in Byzantium? These were questions that puzzled ...
The Art of Dining in Medieval Byzantium
1st Edition
By Lara Frentrop
November 16, 2023
Thousands of intact ceramic bowls and plates as well as fragments made in the medieval Byzantine empire survive to this day. Decorated with figural and non-figural imagery applied in a variety of techniques and adorned with colourful paints and glazes, the vessels can tell us much about those who ...
Experiencing the Last Judgement
1st Edition
By Niamh Bhalla
May 31, 2023
Experiencing the Last Judgement opens up new ways of understanding a Byzantine image type that has hitherto been considered largely uniform in its manifestations and to a great extent frightening, coercive and paralysing. It moves beyond a purely didactic understanding of the Byzantine image of the...