Volume 9 mainly contains lectures from the 8th International Symposium on Byzantine Sigillography in October 2003, in Berlin. Besides the iconography of seals, much emphasis was placed on questions of Byzantine administration. Further, selected collections are presented, as well as a large number of new finds and new acquisitions.

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For several years now, sigillography as an independent subarea in the field of Byzantine studies has received increasing attention from both Byzantine studies and related disciplines, as it is the only area still able to provide academia with large amounts of material not previously analysed. The articles of Studies in Byzantine Sigillography deal with all aspects of Byzantine sigillography: presentation of new finds, discussion of new methods, questions of the political and ecclesiastical administration of Byzantium, prosopography, historical geography, and art-historical and iconographical problems.

The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Studies presents discussions by leading experts on all significant aspects of this diverse and fast-growing field. Byzantine Studies deals with the history and culture of the Byzantine Empire, the eastern half of the Late Roman Empire, from the fourth to the fourteenth century. Its centre was the city formerly known as Byzantium, refounded as Constantinople in 324 CE, the present-day Istanbul. Under its emperors, patriarchs, and all-pervasive bureaucracy Byzantium developed a distinctive society: Greek in language, Roman in legal system, and Christian in religion. Byzantium's impact in the European Middle Ages is hard to over-estimate, as a bulwark against invaders, as a meeting-point for trade from Asia and the Mediterranean, as a guardian of the classical literary and artistic heritage, and as a creator of its own magnificent artistic style.

In this book the beauty and meaning of Byzantine art and its aesthetics are for the first time made accessible through the original sources. More than 150 medieval texts are translated from nine medieval languages into English, with commentaries from over seventy leading scholars. These include theories of art, discussions of patronage and understandings of iconography, practical recipes for artistic supplies, expressions of devotion, and descriptions of cities. The volume reveals the cultural plurality and the interconnectivity of medieval Europe and the Mediterranean from the late eleventh to the early fourteenth centuries. The first part uncovers salient aspects of Byzantine artistic production and its aesthetic reception, while the second puts a spotlight on particular ways of expressing admiration and of interpreting of the visual.

For several years now, sigillography as an independent subarea in the field of Byzantine studies has received increasing attention from both Byzantine studies and related disciplines, because it is the only area still able to provide academia with large amounts of material not previously analysed. The articles of Studies in Byzantine Sigillography deal with all aspects of Byzantine sigillography: presentation of new finds, discussion of new methods, questions of the political and ecclesiastical administration of Byzantinum, prosopography, historical geography, and art historical and iconographical problems. In addition, the volumes contain a loosely arranged list of Byzantine seals, which have been published in essays and auction catalogues, thus enabling those from more obscure publications to be located and identified.

The eleventh century marked a turning point in the history of the Byzantine Empire. At its start Byzantium was the paramount power in the Mediterranean world, by turns feared, respected and admired. By the century's close the empire had lost half of its territory and had managed only a partial recovery under the leadership of the Komnenos family. How did a powerful and famously wealthy empire collapse so quickly? The contemporary accounts of this turbulent 'long' century (taken here as c. 950–1100) attribute the empire's decline to the emperors' reckless and self-serving favouring of civilian bureaucrats and, while these sources are today widely acknowledged as biased and unreliable, modern assessments of the century have hitherto failed to suggest any tangible alternatives. To circumvent this dearth of archival material, Jonathan Shea has meticulously analysed 2,200 unpublished seals from the period (more than a third of the known total extant today) to uncover exactly whom the emperors were favouring and promoting, as well as developing a nuanced and revealing picture of the makeup of the much-chastised civilian bureaucracy. The sigillographic evidence is throughout measured against the written material to give a fresh account of this key transitional century and a rare insight into Byzantine politics.

The articles republished in this volume are ground-breaking studies that employ a large body of religious figural imagery of Byzantine lead seals ranging from the 6th to the 15th century. A number of the studies present tables, charts and graphs in their analysis of iconographic trends and changing popularity of saintly figures over time. And since many of the seals bear inscriptions that include the names, titles or offices of their owners, information often not given for the patrons of sacred images in other media, these diminutive objects permit an investigation into the social use of sacred imagery through the various sectors of Byzantine culture: the civil, ecclesiastical and military administrations. The religious figural imagery of the lead seals, accompanied by their owners’ identifying inscriptions, offers a means of investigating both the broader visual piety of the Byzantine world and the intimate realm of their owners’ personal devotions. Other studies in this volume are devoted to rare or previously unknown sacred images that demonstrate the value of the iconography of Byzantine lead seals for Byzantine studies in general. This volume includes studies dedicated to the image of Christ, primarily found on imperial seals, various images of the Virgin, and narrative or Christological scenes. A companion volume presents various articles focusing on sphragistic images of saints and on the religious imagery of Byzantine seals as a means of investigating the personal piety of seal owners, as well as the wider realm of the visual piety and religious devotions of Byzantine culture at all levels. (CS1085)

The 30 studies presented here are dedicated to Sophia Kalopissi-Verti, Emerita of Byzantine Archaeology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. They cover a large variety of topics presenting unpublished archaeological material, suggesting new approaches to various aspects of Byzantine archaeology, material culture and art history.

Volume 3 includes seals with place names from west, northwest, and central Asia Minor and the Orient. Each section begins with a short essay on the region's history. Each seal is illustrated and accompanied--where appropriate--by commentary on date, its owner, peculiarities of orthography, and special features of iconography.