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This book takes a provocative long view of Byzantium, one that begins in the early Roman empire and extends all the way to the modern period, to argue that Byzantium was the most stable and enduring form of Greco-Roman society.
A leading historian argues that in the empire we know as Byzantium, the Greek-speaking population was actually Roman, and scholars have deliberately mislabeled their ethnicity for the past two centuries for political reasons. Was there ever such a thing as Byzantium? Certainly no emperor ever called himself “Byzantine.” And while the identities of minorities in the eastern empire are clear—contemporaries speak of Slavs, Bulgarians, Armenians, Jews, and Muslims—that of the ruling majority remains obscured behind a name made up by later generations. Historical evidence tells us unequivocally that Byzantium’s ethnic majority, no less than the ruler of Constantinople, would have identified as Roman. It was an identity so strong in the eastern empire that even the conquering Ottomans would eventually adopt it. But Western scholarship has a long tradition of denying the Romanness of Byzantium. In Romanland, Anthony Kaldellis investigates why and argues that it is time for the Romanness of these so-called Byzantines to be taken seriously. In the Middle Ages, he explains, people of the eastern empire were labeled “Greeks,” and by the nineteenth century they were shorn of their distorted Greekness and became “Byzantine.” Only when we understand that the Greek-speaking population of Byzantium was actually Roman will we fully appreciate the nature of Roman ethnic identity. We will also better understand the processes of assimilation that led to the absorption of foreign and minority groups into the dominant ethnic group, the Romans who presided over the vast multiethnic empire of the east.
Global Byzantium is, in part, a recasting and expansion of the old ‘Byzantium and its neighbours’ theme with, however, a methodological twist away from the resolutely political and toward the cultural and economic. A second thing that Global Byzantium – as a concept – explicitly endorses is comparative methodology. Global Byzantium needs also to address three further issues: cultural capital, the importance of the local, and the empire’s strategic geographical location. Cultural capital: in past decades it was fashionable to define Byzantium as culturally superior to western Christian Europe, and Byzantine influence was a key concept, especially in art historical circles. This concept has been increasingly criticised, and what we now see emerging is a comparative methodology that relies on the concept of ‘competitive sharing’, not blind copying but rather competitive appropriation. The importance of the local is equally critical. We need to talk more about what the Byzantines saw when they ‘looked out’, and what others saw in Byzantium when they ‘looked in’ and to think about how that impacted on our, very post-modern, concepts of globalism. Finally, we need to think about the empire’s strategic geographical position: between the fourth and the thirteenth centuries, if anyone was travelling internationally, they had to travel across (or along the coasts of) the Byzantine Empire. Byzantium was thus a crucial intermediary, for good or for ill, between Europe, Africa, and Asia – effectively, the glue that held the Christian world together, and it was also a critical transit point between the various Islamic polities and the Christian world.
This text was the first systematic study of what it meant to be 'Greek' in late antiquity and Byzantium, an identity that could alternatively become national, religious, philosophical, or cultural. Through close readings of the sources, Professor Kaldellis surveys the space that Hellenism occupied in each period; the broader debates in which it was caught up; and the historical causes of its successive transformations. The first section (100-400) shows how Romanisation and Christianisation led to the abandonment of Hellenism as a national label and its restriction to a negative religious sense and a positive, albeit rarefied, cultural one. The second (1000-1300) shows how Hellenism was revived in Byzantium and contributed to the evolution of its culture. The discussion looks closely at the reception of the classical tradition, which was the reason why Hellenism was always desirable and dangerous in Christian society, and presents a new model for understanding Byzantine civilisation.
A captivating account of the legendary empire that made Western civilization possible Byzantium. The name evokes grandeur and exoticism—gold, cunning, and complexity. In this unique book, Judith Herrin unveils the riches of a quite different civilization. Avoiding a standard chronological account of the Byzantine Empire's millennium—long history, she identifies the fundamental questions about Byzantium—what it was, and what special significance it holds for us today. Bringing the latest scholarship to a general audience in accessible prose, Herrin focuses each short chapter around a representative theme, event, monument, or historical figure, and examines it within the full sweep of Byzantine history—from the foundation of Constantinople, the magnificent capital city built by Constantine the Great, to its capture by the Ottoman Turks. She argues that Byzantium's crucial role as the eastern defender of Christendom against Muslim expansion during the early Middle Ages made Europe—and the modern Western world—possible. Herrin captivates us with her discussions of all facets of Byzantine culture and society. She walks us through the complex ceremonies of the imperial court. She describes the transcendent beauty and power of the church of Hagia Sophia, as well as chariot races, monastic spirituality, diplomacy, and literature. She reveals the fascinating worlds of military usurpers and ascetics, eunuchs and courtesans, and artisans who fashioned the silks, icons, ivories, and mosaics so readily associated with Byzantine art. An innovative history written by one of our foremost scholars, Byzantium reveals this great civilization's rise to military and cultural supremacy, its spectacular destruction by the Fourth Crusade, and its revival and final conquest in 1453.
The wolves of Odin sail to the centre of the world: Constantinople. AD 1041. After successfully avenging the death of his father, Halfdan and the crew of the Sea Wolf seek adventure in strange new lands, far from their Scandinavian home. They join the fleet of Harald Hardrada, the legendary Viking commander, sailing back to Constantinople from the battlefields of Georgia. There they join the Varangians, the personal bodyguard of the Byzantine Emperors populated almost exclusively by Viking warriors. But Constantinople has changed during Hardrada’s long absence. The Emperor, Michael IV, is ailing visibly, and powerful factions in his court are setting their plans in motion ahead of his inevitable demise. While courtiers scheme, elements even within the Varangian Guard are picking sides. Gunnhild, the seer among the Sea Wolf crew, has struck out on her own in the big city. Unable to join the all-male Guard alongside her friends, she establishes herself in a small side-street near the port as a healer and soothsayer, offering cures to the sick and glimpses of the future to the desperate, or the conspiratorial. But in all her visions she sees a wolf, a boar and a golden bear fighting together to support the Byzantine throne. The Norns aren’t finished with them yet... The epic second instalment in the Wolves of Odin series, taking us to the heart of power in Constantinople and the desperate machinations of the Byzantine emperors. Perfect for fans of Bernard Cornwell, Giles Kristian and Angus Donald.
Explores Byzantine perceptions of creation and different types of natural environments, and the principles underpinning such perceptions.
This volume examines the prevalence, function, and socio-political effects of slavery discourse in the major theological formulations of the late third to early fifth centuries AD, arguably the most formative period of early Christian doctrine. The question the book poses is this: in what way did the Christian theologians of the third, fourth, and early fifth centuries appropriate the discourse of slavery in their theological formulations, and what could the effect of this appropriation have been for actual physical slaves? This fascinating study is crucial reading for anyone with an interest in early Christianity or Late Antiquity, and slavery more generally.
Although Byzantium is known to history as the Eastern Roman Empire, scholars have long claimed that this Greek Christian theocracy bore little resemblance to Rome. Here, in a revolutionary model of Byzantine politics and society, Anthony Kaldellis reconnects Byzantium to its Roman roots, arguing that from the fifth to the twelfth centuries CE the Eastern Roman Empire was essentially a republic, with power exercised on behalf of the people and sometimes by them too. The Byzantine Republic recovers for the historical record a less autocratic, more populist Byzantium whose Greek-speaking citizens considered themselves as fully Roman as their Latin-speaking “ancestors.” Kaldellis shows that the idea of Byzantium as a rigid imperial theocracy is a misleading construct of Western historians since the Enlightenment. With court proclamations often draped in Christian rhetoric, the notion of divine kingship emerged as a way to disguise the inherent vulnerability of each regime. The legitimacy of the emperors was not predicated on an absolute right to the throne but on the popularity of individual emperors, whose grip on power was tenuous despite the stability of the imperial institution itself. Kaldellis examines the overlooked Byzantine concept of the polity, along with the complex relationship of emperors to the law and the ways they bolstered their popular acceptance and avoided challenges. The rebellions that periodically rocked the empire were not aberrations, he shows, but an essential part of the functioning of the republican monarchy.
This book demonstrates how the political economy of mercantilism was not simply a Western invention by various cities and kingdoms during the Renaissance, but was the natural by-product of perpetually limited growth rates and rulers’ relentless pursuits of bullion. It contributes to discussions of the economic history surrounding the so-called “Great Divergence” between East and West, which would consequently lend context and credence to differences of economic thought in the world today. Additionally, it seeks to explain present economic thought as tacitly derived from implicit antique paradigms. This book advances fields of research from numismatics and sigillography to historical materialism and historical political economy. Divided into three parts, Orthodox Mercantilism first examines the political theology (the sovereignty) of the œcumene from the early 11th century. Second, it analyzes its peripheral legislation from the customary laws of newly Christianized dynasties up to the Kormčaja Kniga’s adoption (the Nomokanon) by 13th-century Orthodox dynasties across Eastern Europe. Third, it explores how these dynasties (and their own satellite dynasties) hoarded finite bullion to pay for defense, resulting in the 11–14th-century coinless period across Eastern Europe and Western Eurasia. Appealing to students and scholars alike, this book will be of interest to those studying and researching economic and mercantile history, particularly in the context of Byzantine and Eastern European societies.