Suchergebnisse

Part I: Modest Vanity, Social IdentityWomen⁰́₉s accessories from a bath house on Santorini (Thira), Cyclades (2th - 4th centuries)Marina Vogkli and Stavroula Papanikolopoulou 2. Unheard voices of Early Byzantine childhood. On the custom of adorning secular girls with earrings as seen through the evidence of burials Susanne Metaxas3. Not even a band on my finger? Rings of non-elite womenFlorentia Evangelatou-Notara and Kalliope Mavrommati Part 2. Working Girls4. Women and beekeeping ⁰́₃a forbidden liaison? Scattered evidence with emphasis on Christian era (Byzantine ⁰́₃ Medieval culture)Sophia Germanidou5. Eve at the forge: Byzantine women and manual labour. Comments on a rare iconographical theme and its connection to realityKonstantina Gerolymou6. Female family status during the Late Byzantine period; evidence from MS Parisinus graecus 135Eleni Barmparitsa7. Ordinary women in Byzantine funerary contexts from Greece; a view from the bonesParaskevi (Voula) TritsaroliPart 3. Earthly delights, holy concerns8. The ⁰́₈transcendental⁰́₉ role of woman in Early Patristics (theological and philosophical insights)Nevena Dimitrova9. Interpreting the female dances of "Ainoi" (Laudes) in the Post-Byzantine painting Madgalini ParcharidouPart 4. An ethnographic glimpse10. Illustrating the daily life of a woman in Mani during the Post-Byzantine period. A small contribution on the subject.Sofia Menenakou11. Womens⁰́₉ work in pre-industrial rural Greece. An ethnographic point of viewAndromachi Ekonomou

Great figures of fascination, eunuchs have mystified ancients and contemporaries alike through their physical mutilation, sexual ambiguity, and distinct roles within civilizations and societies. Underpinning Byzantine imperial court life, eunuchs possessed great influence in domestic and political spheres for much of the empire's history. Following the Latin occupation of Constantinople in the 13th century and extending onwards, however, eunuchs and their influence became increasingly obsolete. This paper explores the broad scope of the Byzantine eunuch's social and political power and the causes for the eunuch's decline nearing the collapse of the Byzantine empire.

1. Looking for the family : the Greek and Roman background / Mary Harlow and Tim Parkin -- 2. Family violence : punishment and abuse in the late Roman household / Julia Hillner -- 3. Family relations and the socialisation of children in the autobiographical narratives of late antiquity / Ville Vuolanto -- 4. The death of the father in late antique Christian literature / Fotis Vasileiou -- 5. Preserving family honor : Gregory of Nyssa's Life of Macrina as theological polemic / Nathan Howard -- 6. The family in the late antique west (AD 400-700) : a historiographical review / Emma Southon, Mary Harlow and Chris Callow -- 7. The family in medieval Islamic societies / Julia Bray -- 8. Age, gender and status : a three-dimensional life course perspective of the Byzantine family / Eve Davies -- 9. Looking at the Byzantine family / Leslie Brubaker -- 10. The Byzantine child : picturing complex family dynamics / Cecily Hennessy -- 11. Social mobility in Byzantium? Family ties in the Middle Byzantine Period / Claudia Ludwig -- 12. The Middle Byzantine house and family : a reappraisal / Simon Ellis -- 13. Family in the Byzantine Greek legend of Saint Alexios, the man of God / Stavroula Constantinou -- 14. La Vie de Theodora de Thessalonique, un ecrit familial / Michel Kaplan -- 15. Imperial families : the case of Macedonians (867-1056) / Shaun Tougher -- 16. An Abbasid Caliphal family / Nadia Maria El Cheikh -- 17. Byzantine monastic communities : alternative families? / Dirk Krausmuller -- 18. Families, politics, and memmories of Rome in the Material for history of Nikephoros Bryennios / Leonora Neville -- 19. Changes in the structure of the late Byzantine family and society / Fotini Kondyli.

"The study of the family is one of the major lacunas in Byzantine Studies. Angeliki Laiou remarked in 1989 that 'the study of the Byzantine family is still in its infancy', and this assertion remains true today. The present volume addresses this lacuna. It comprises 19 chapters written by international experts in the field which take a variety of approaches to the study of the Byzantine family, and embrace a chronological span from the later Roman to the late Byzantine empire."--Preliminary page.

In 'The Byzantine Turks, 1204-1461' Rustam Shukurov offers an account of the Turkic minority in Late Byzantium including the Nicaean, Palaiologan, and Grand Komnenian empires. The demography of the Byzantine Turks and the legal and cultural aspects of their entrance into Greek society are discussed in detail. Greek and Turkish bilingualism of Byzantine Turks and Tourkophonia among Greeks were distinctive features of Byzantine society of the time. Basing his arguments upon linguistic, social, and cultural evidence found in a wide range of Greek, Latin, and Oriental sources, Rustam Shukurov convincingly demonstrates how Oriental influences on Byzantine life led to crucial transformations in Byzantine mentality, culture, and political life. The study is supplemented with an etymological lexicon of Oriental names and words in Byzantine Greek

Book Review: A. Ayvazyan, The Armenian Military in the Byzantine Empire. Conflict and Alliance under Justinian and Maurice. [Alfortville] 2014, pp. 152. ISBN: 9782917329597

This thesis examines the portrayal of outsiders in Michael Psellos's Chronographia, Anna Komnene's Alexiad, and Niketas Choniates's Narrative - using sociological theories of deviancy. The twofold aim is to "treat texts seriously", localized in Jakobson's speech-event nexus of addresser, context, content, contact, code and addressee; and secondly to understand the texts as statements of the ideology of the dominant elite. Outsiders are defined (using the labelling orientation) as people successfully defined as deviants; deviant behaviour is whatever they do. The dominant elite creates cultural boundaries, and places individuals in outsider roles on the other side of those boundaries. Outsiders can be understood only in terms of who defines them as deviant; there is no material reality to deviancy. Stereotypes, which identify social categories of people by evaluative trait-characteristics, are necessary elements of human cognition; they become prejudice only when they are over-generalized, based on too limited data, applied too widely and maintained in the face of contrary empirical evidence. The analysis of the three texts in depth allows the identification of those groups labelled as outsiders by these expositors of the dominant ideology. My conclusion is that these authors portray a picture of the Byzantine outsider, which is coherent between this limited sample group, allowing for individual variation. These authors used stereotypes to conceptualize and encode in the linguistic and lexicographical complexities of their texts the outsiders they identified in their societies. Their presentation uses stereotypes, but does not descend to prejudice.

This volume examines the development and evolution of the war galley known as the Dromon , and its relative, the Chelandion , from first appearance in the sixth century until its supercession in the twelfth century by the Galea developed in the Latin West. Beginning as a small, fully-decked, monoreme galley, by the tenth century the Dromon had become a bireme, the pre-eminent war galley of the Mediterranean. The salient features of these ships were their two-banked oarage system, the spurs at their bows which replaced the ram of classical antiquity, their lateen sails, and their primary weapon: Greek Fire. The book contextualizes the technical characteristics of the ships within the operational history of Byzantine fleets, logistical problems of medieval naval warfare, and strategic objectives. Surviving Byzantine sources, especially tactical manuals, are subjected to close literary and philological analysis

"The presence and importance of same-sex desire between men in the Byzantine Empire has been understudied. While John Boswell and others tried to open a conversation about desire between Byzantine men decades ago, the field reverted to emphasis on prohibition and an inability to read the evidence of same-sex desire between men in the sources. Between Byzantine Men: Desire, Homosociality, and Brotherhood in the Medieval Empire challenges and transforms this situation by placing at centre stage Byzantine men's desiring relations with one another. This book foregrounds desire between men in and around the imperial court of the 900s. Analysis of Greek sources (many untranslated until now) and of material culture reveals a situation both more liberal than the medieval West and important for its rite of brother-making (adelphopoiesis), which was a precursor to today's same-sex marriage. This book transforms our understanding of Byzantine elite men's culture and is an important addition to the history of sex and desire between men. This book will appeal to scholars and general readers who are interested in Byzantine History, Society, and Culture, the History of Masculinity, and the History of Sexuality"--