The Byzantine world underwent a remarkable recovery of intellectual energy in the period following the recovery of Constantinople in 1261. The reaction of the emperors and their entourage of well-educated high officials to their political disasters was a deliberate revival of the glories of ancient Greek culture. The main subject of this book is the preservation and dissemination by this learned elite of such ancient literature, philosophy and science as still survived then, the development of editorial techniques which resulted in more complete and less corrupt texts, and their improvement buy the addition of commentaries and other innovations.

The Byzantine world underwent a remarkable recovery of intellectual energy in the period following the recovery of Constantinople in 1261. The reaction of the emperors and their entourage of well-educated high officials to their political disasters was a deliberate revival of the glories of ancient Greek culture. The main subject of this book is the preservation and dissemination by this learned elite of such ancient literature, philosophy and science as still survived then, the development of editorial techniques which resulted in more complete and less corrupt texts, and their improvement buy the addition of commentaries and other innovations.

This is a study of the artistic and political context that led to the production of a truly exceptional Byzantine illustrated manuscript. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, codex grec 54 is one of the most ambitious and complex manuscripts produced during the Byzantine era. This thirteenth-century Greek and Latin Gospel book features full-page evangelist portraits, an extensive narrative cycle, and unique polychromatic texts. However, it has never been the subject of a comprehensive study and the circumstances of its commission are unknown. In this book Kathleen Maxwell addresses the following questions: what circumstances led to the creation of Paris 54? Who commissioned it and for what purpose? How was a deluxe manuscript such as this produced? Why was it left unfinished? How does it relate to other Byzantine illustrated Gospel books? Paris 54's innovations are a testament to the extraordinary circumstances of its commission. Maxwell's multi-disciplinary approach includes codicological and paleographical evidence together with New Testament textual criticism, artistic and historical analysis. She concludes that Paris 54 was never intended to copy any other manuscript. Rather, it was designed to eclipse its contemporaries and to physically embody a new relationship between Constantinople and the Latin West, as envisioned by its patron. Analysis of Paris 54's texts and miniature cycle indicates that it was created at the behest of a Byzantine emperor as a gift to a pope, in conjunction with imperial efforts to unify the Latin and Orthodox churches. As such, Paris 54 is a unique witness to early Palaeologan attempts to achieve church union with Rome.

Famagusta Maritima: Mariners, Merchants, Pilgrims and Mercenaries presents a collection of scholarly studies spanning the thousand year history of the port of Famagusta in Cyprus. This historic harbour city was at the heart of the Crusading Lusignan dynasty, a possession of both Genoa and Venice during the Renaissance, a port of the Ottoman Empire for three centuries, and in time, a strategic naval and intelligence node for the British Empire. It is a maritime space made famous by the realities of its extraordinary importance and influence, followed by its calamitous demise. Contributors are: Michele Bacci, Lucie Bonato, Tomasz Borowski, Mike Carr, Pierre-Vincent Claverie, Dragos Cosmescu, Nicholas Coureas, Marko Kiessel, Antonio Musarra, William Spates, Asu Tozan, Ahmet Usta, and Michael Walsh.

Although the immense importance for the Renaissance of Greek émigrés to fifteenth-century Italy has long been recognized, much basic research on the phenomenon remains to be done. This new volume by John Monfasani gathers together fourteen studies filling in some of the gaps in our knowledge. The philosophers George Gemistus Pletho and George Amiroutzes, the great churchman Cardinal Bessarion, and the famous humanists George of Trebizond and Theodore Gaza are the subjects of some of the articles. Other articles treat the émigrés as a group within the wider frame of contemporary issues, such as humanism, the theological debate between the Orthodox and Roman Catholics, and the process of translating Greek texts into Latin. Furthermore, some notable Latin figures also enter into several of the articles in a detailed way, specifically, Nicholas of Cusa, Niccolò Perotti, and Pietro Balbi.

Byzantine medicine remains a little known and misrepresented field not only in the context of debates on medieval medicine, but also among Byzantinists themselves. It is often viewed as 'stagnant' and mainly preserving ancient ideas, and our knowledge of it continues to be based to a great extent on the comments of earlier authorities, which are often repeated uncritically. This volume presents the first comprehensive examination of the medical corpus of, arguably, the most important Late Byzantine physician: John Zacharias Aktouarios (c.1275-c.1330). Its main thesis is that John's medical works show an astonishing degree of openness to knowledge from outside Byzantium combined with a significant degree of originality, in particular, in the fields of uroscopy and human physiology. The analysis of John's edited (On Urines and On Psychic Pneuma) and unedited (Medical Epitome) treatises is supported for the first time by the consultation of a large number of manuscripts, and is also informed by evidence from a wide range of medical sources, including those previously unpublished, and texts from other genres, such as epistolography and merchants' accounts. The contextualization of John's corpus sheds new light on the development of Byzantine medical thought and practice, and enhances our understanding of the Late Byzantine social and intellectual landscape. Through examination of his medical observations in the light of examples from the medieval Latin and Islamic worlds, his theories are also placed within the wider Mediterranean milieu, highlighting the cultural exchange between Byzantium and its neighbours.

This book investigates issues of identity and narrativity in late Byzantine romances in a Mediterranean context, covering the chronological span from the capture of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204 to the 16th century. It includes chapters not only on romances that were written and read in the broader Byzantine world but also on literary texts from regions around the Mediterranean Sea. The volume offers new insights and covers a variety of interrelated subjects concerning the narrative representations of self-identities, gender, and communities, the perception of political and cultural otherness, and the interaction of space and time with identity formation. The chapters focus on texts from the Byzantine, western European, and Ottoman worlds, thus promoting a cross-cultural approach that highlights the role of the Mediterranean as a shared environment that facilitated communications, cultural interaction, and the trading and reconfiguration of identities. The volume will appeal to a wide audience of researchers and students alike, specializing in or simply interested in cultural studies, Byzantine, western medieval, and Ottoman history and literature.

The author and six historical characters of his own choosing tell tales and guide you through the artistic and literary maze of Latin-occupied Greece. They show you patterns, influences, and dissimilar evolutions in what appears to be a 13th-14th century cultural conundrum.

Byzantine Media Subjects invites readers into a world replete with images—icons, frescoes, and mosaics filling places of worship, politics, and community. Glenn Peers asks readers to think themselves into a world where representation reigned and humans followed, and indeed were formed. Interrogating the fundamental role of representation in the making of the Byzantine human, Peers argues that Byzantine culture was (already) posthuman. The Byzantine experience reveals the extent to which media like icons, manuscripts, music, animals, and mirrors fundamentally determine humans. In the Byzantine world, representation as such was deeply persuasive, even coercive; it had the power to affect human relationships, produce conflict, and form self-perception. Media studies has made its subject the modern world, but this book argues for media having made historical subjects. Here, it is shown that media long ago also made Byzantine humans, defining them, molding them, mediating their relationship to time, to nature, to God, and to themselves.

This commentary records, through notes taken by Hermias, Syrianus' seminar on Plato's Phaedrus, one of the world's most influential celebrations of erotic beauty and love. It is the only Neoplatonic commentary on Plato's Phaedrus to have survived in its entirety. Further interest comes from the recorded interventions by Syrianus' pupils - including those by Proclus, his eventual successor as head of the Athenian school, who went on to teach Hermias' father, Ammonius. The first of two volumes of Hermias' commentary, the chapters translated here discuss the argument that the soul can be proved immortal as being the self-moving source of eternal motion. Aristotle explicitly disagreed with Plato on this treatment of the soul and Syrianus, having previously (in a commentary on the Metaphysics) criticised Aristotle severely when he disagreed with Plato, feels obliged here, too, to address the apparent disagreement. This new translation is thus vital for understanding Syrianus' attitude to Aristotle.