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Books by Dimitris Krallis
This book is a microhistory of eleventh-century Byzantium, built around the biography of the stat... more This book is a microhistory of eleventh-century Byzantium, built around the biography of the state official Michael Attaleiates. Dimitris Krallis presents Byzantium as a cohesive, ever-evolving, dynamic, Roman political community, built on traditions of Roman governance and Hellenic culture. In the eleventh century, Byzantium faced a crisis as it navigated a shifting international environment of feudal polities, merchant republics, steppe migrations, and a rapidly transforming Islamic world. Attaleiates’ life, from provincial birth to Constantinopolitan death, and career, as a member of an ancient empire’s officialdom, raise questions of identity, family, education, governance, elite culture, Romanness, Hellenism, science and skepticism, as well as political ideology during this period. The life and work of Attaleiates is used as a prism through which to examine important questions about a long-lived medieval polity that is usually studied as exotic and distinct from both the European and the Near Eastern historical experience.
This book is about a unique, rarely studied, contemporary account and interpretation of Byzantine... more This book is about a unique, rarely studied, contemporary account and interpretation of Byzantine decline. It is also a study of history as politics in eleventh-century Byzantium. Focusing on the History, the work of the judge and courtier Michael Attaleiates (c. 1022–c. 1080), I examine the place of historical narratives in Byzantine political and cultural debates of the 1060s and 1070s. My work sees the production of history as a highly political enterprise that allowed Attaleiates to communicate with his contemporaries and express his ideas about the empire’s military and political crisis. At the same time, through his work Attaleiates’ skills as a historian were presented as skills useful in governance.
Intriguingly, Attaleiates’ study of the empire’s decline is coupled with images of Republican Roman glory. This walk down historical memory lane is not, however, evidence of idle antiquarianism. The civic virtue of Attaleiates’ Republican heroes attests to a quest for a new patriotism that was sorely needed in his days. By demonstrating his understanding of that past and its relationship with the empire’s troubled present Attaleiates hinted at his ability to plan the future. The History was therefore proof of his status as an active political man and a competent advisor. The portrait of Attaleiates emerging from this book is one of an ambitious, socially conscious, ‘patriotic’ and entrepreneurial political agent negotiating the pitfalls and intricacies of Byzantine court life while maintaining a dialogue with his contemporaries about the crumbling Roman world around them.
In 1039 Byzantium was the most powerful empire in Europe and the Near East, controlling the Balka... more In 1039 Byzantium was the most powerful empire in Europe and the Near East, controlling the Balkans south of the Danube and all of Asia Minor into Armenia and Syria. By 1079 it had become a politically unstable state half the size, menaced by powerful enemies on all sides. The History of Michael Attaleiates is our main source for this astonishing reversal, and offers a gripping narrative of the foreign and civil wars of those years. Attaleiates was a highly placed legal and military official of the empire with first-hand knowledge of the events he describes. He knew many of the emperors and includes an eyewitness account of the battle of Mantzikert (1071), where the Seljuk Turks crushed the Byzantine armies and opened the door for the permanent Turkish conquest of Asia Minor. He also provides vivid narratives of civil unrest and decries the corruption and economic exploitation of his society, looking to the heroes of the Roman Republic for models of nobility.
Michael Attaleiates’ History has never before been translated into English. The present translation, based on the most recent critical edition, makes the text accessible through its notes, maps, and glossary of Byzantine terms.
Papers by Dimitris Krallis
The Critic’s Byzantine Ploy: Voltairean Confusion in Postsecularist Narratives The debate on b... more The Critic’s Byzantine Ploy: Voltairean Confusion in Postsecularist Narratives
The debate on blasphemy generated by the publication of the Mohamed cartoons and the attendant conversation on the posited injury experienced by the offended religious subject has recently touched the world of Byzantium. The present essay takes on an elegant recent postsecularist engagement with Byzantine iconoclasm and argues that by appropriating elements of Byzantine Aristotelian theology in order to undergird a postsecularist argument, the modern critic de-historicizes ideas that were firmly rooted in East Roman social, political, and cultural contexts in a manner that ultimately reinforces a reading of Byzantine culture firmly rooted in the most regressive Enlightenment distortions of the Byzantine experience.
Furthermore, a properly historical engagement with Byzantium contributes to a critical approach on assumptions regarding the nature of the “modern” and its effect on religion. Ultimately a return to the Byzantine contexts that engender iconoclast theology and politics is also a call for a properly historicized study of Muslim injury; a study that leaves aside quasi-transcendental notions of uniquely Muslim personal injury for a return to the tangible world of modern ideas and political contestation.
The History of Michael Attaleiates is one of the most important sources for the study of eleventh... more The History of Michael Attaleiates is one of the most important sources for the study of eleventh- century Byzantium. It is representative of Byzantine efforts to come to terms with the important social and political changes that affected the empire in the course of the eleventh century. In his work Attaleiates often returned to the world of republican Rome in order to seek models of political agency that he then set up against the portraits of his contemporaries. Attaleiates’s fascination with Scipio Africanus, Aemilius Paulus, and Quintus Fabius Cunctator is intriguing to modern readers of the History, but his use of republican lan- guage and democratic terminology in two accounts of violent popular political activity is evidence of an effort to explain and potentially legitimize some form of popular participation in the empire’s politics. This article examines the History’s account of two popular rebellions and argues that Attaleiates’s take on the actions of the Byzantine populace is part of a bold reassessment of the place of the empire’s urban strata in the world of Byzantine politics. Attaleiates’s “republicanism” is examined here next to the work of Psellos, Xiphilinos, Zonaras, and Anna Komnene, to reveal the depth of Byzantine engagement with republican political history and ideology.
Book Reviews by Dimitris Krallis
BYZANTINA SYMMEIKTA, 2014
This book is a microhistory of eleventh-century Byzantium, built around the biography of the stat... more This book is a microhistory of eleventh-century Byzantium, built around the biography of the state official Michael Attaleiates. Dimitris Krallis presents Byzantium as a cohesive, ever-evolving, dynamic, Roman political community, built on traditions of Roman governance and Hellenic culture. In the eleventh century, Byzantium faced a crisis as it navigated a shifting international environment of feudal polities, merchant republics, steppe migrations, and a rapidly transforming Islamic world. Attaleiates’ life, from provincial birth to Constantinopolitan death, and career, as a member of an ancient empire’s officialdom, raise questions of identity, family, education, governance, elite culture, Romanness, Hellenism, science and skepticism, as well as political ideology during this period. The life and work of Attaleiates is used as a prism through which to examine important questions about a long-lived medieval polity that is usually studied as exotic and distinct from both the European and the Near Eastern historical experience.
This book is about a unique, rarely studied, contemporary account and interpretation of Byzantine... more This book is about a unique, rarely studied, contemporary account and interpretation of Byzantine decline. It is also a study of history as politics in eleventh-century Byzantium. Focusing on the History, the work of the judge and courtier Michael Attaleiates (c. 1022–c. 1080), I examine the place of historical narratives in Byzantine political and cultural debates of the 1060s and 1070s. My work sees the production of history as a highly political enterprise that allowed Attaleiates to communicate with his contemporaries and express his ideas about the empire’s military and political crisis. At the same time, through his work Attaleiates’ skills as a historian were presented as skills useful in governance.
Intriguingly, Attaleiates’ study of the empire’s decline is coupled with images of Republican Roman glory. This walk down historical memory lane is not, however, evidence of idle antiquarianism. The civic virtue of Attaleiates’ Republican heroes attests to a quest for a new patriotism that was sorely needed in his days. By demonstrating his understanding of that past and its relationship with the empire’s troubled present Attaleiates hinted at his ability to plan the future. The History was therefore proof of his status as an active political man and a competent advisor. The portrait of Attaleiates emerging from this book is one of an ambitious, socially conscious, ‘patriotic’ and entrepreneurial political agent negotiating the pitfalls and intricacies of Byzantine court life while maintaining a dialogue with his contemporaries about the crumbling Roman world around them.
In 1039 Byzantium was the most powerful empire in Europe and the Near East, controlling the Balka... more In 1039 Byzantium was the most powerful empire in Europe and the Near East, controlling the Balkans south of the Danube and all of Asia Minor into Armenia and Syria. By 1079 it had become a politically unstable state half the size, menaced by powerful enemies on all sides. The History of Michael Attaleiates is our main source for this astonishing reversal, and offers a gripping narrative of the foreign and civil wars of those years. Attaleiates was a highly placed legal and military official of the empire with first-hand knowledge of the events he describes. He knew many of the emperors and includes an eyewitness account of the battle of Mantzikert (1071), where the Seljuk Turks crushed the Byzantine armies and opened the door for the permanent Turkish conquest of Asia Minor. He also provides vivid narratives of civil unrest and decries the corruption and economic exploitation of his society, looking to the heroes of the Roman Republic for models of nobility.
Michael Attaleiates’ History has never before been translated into English. The present translation, based on the most recent critical edition, makes the text accessible through its notes, maps, and glossary of Byzantine terms.
The Critic’s Byzantine Ploy: Voltairean Confusion in Postsecularist Narratives The debate on b... more The Critic’s Byzantine Ploy: Voltairean Confusion in Postsecularist Narratives
The debate on blasphemy generated by the publication of the Mohamed cartoons and the attendant conversation on the posited injury experienced by the offended religious subject has recently touched the world of Byzantium. The present essay takes on an elegant recent postsecularist engagement with Byzantine iconoclasm and argues that by appropriating elements of Byzantine Aristotelian theology in order to undergird a postsecularist argument, the modern critic de-historicizes ideas that were firmly rooted in East Roman social, political, and cultural contexts in a manner that ultimately reinforces a reading of Byzantine culture firmly rooted in the most regressive Enlightenment distortions of the Byzantine experience.
Furthermore, a properly historical engagement with Byzantium contributes to a critical approach on assumptions regarding the nature of the “modern” and its effect on religion. Ultimately a return to the Byzantine contexts that engender iconoclast theology and politics is also a call for a properly historicized study of Muslim injury; a study that leaves aside quasi-transcendental notions of uniquely Muslim personal injury for a return to the tangible world of modern ideas and political contestation.
The History of Michael Attaleiates is one of the most important sources for the study of eleventh... more The History of Michael Attaleiates is one of the most important sources for the study of eleventh- century Byzantium. It is representative of Byzantine efforts to come to terms with the important social and political changes that affected the empire in the course of the eleventh century. In his work Attaleiates often returned to the world of republican Rome in order to seek models of political agency that he then set up against the portraits of his contemporaries. Attaleiates’s fascination with Scipio Africanus, Aemilius Paulus, and Quintus Fabius Cunctator is intriguing to modern readers of the History, but his use of republican lan- guage and democratic terminology in two accounts of violent popular political activity is evidence of an effort to explain and potentially legitimize some form of popular participation in the empire’s politics. This article examines the History’s account of two popular rebellions and argues that Attaleiates’s take on the actions of the Byzantine populace is part of a bold reassessment of the place of the empire’s urban strata in the world of Byzantine politics. Attaleiates’s “republicanism” is examined here next to the work of Psellos, Xiphilinos, Zonaras, and Anna Komnene, to reveal the depth of Byzantine engagement with republican political history and ideology.
BYZANTINA SYMMEIKTA, 2014
by Association des Amis du Centre d’Histoire et Civilisation de Byzance ACHCByz, Jean-Michel Spieser, stephanos efthymiadis, Theodora Antonopoulou, Dimitris Krallis, Jean-Claude CHEYNET, Luisa Andriollo, Sophie Métivier, Michel Kaplan, david jacoby, and Isabelle Augé
Autour du Premier humanisme byzantin & des Cinq études sur le XIe siècle, quarante ans après Paul Lemerle, 2017
le colloque « À la suite de Paul lemerle : l’humanisme byzantin et les études sur le xie siècle q... more le colloque « À la suite de Paul lemerle : l’humanisme byzantin et les études sur le xie siècle quarante ans après », qui a eu lieu à Paris du 23 au 26 octobre 2013 et dont le volume que voici est issu, a été organisé avec l’aide du Collège de France, de l’Institut universitaire de France, de l’UMR Orient et Méditerranée et de l’université Paris-Sorbonne.
l’idée de réunir un colloque, ou plutôt deux colloques parallèles autour de deux œuvres majeures de Paul lemerle, Le premier humanisme byzantin, et les Cinq études sur le XIe siècle byzantin, est venue pour nous deux de constatations communes. Il s’agissait de rendre hommage à celui qui, par son enseignement, par ses travaux, par ceux aussi de ses élèves, par les institutions qui lui doivent leur naissance, a façonné les études byzantines en France telles que nous les connaissons. Il s’agissait aussi, pour tous deux, de l’expérience d’un enseignement, historique ou philologique, qui s’était appuyé pendant plusieurs décennies sur ces œuvres. Étaient-elles encore actuelles ? Quels correctifs leur apporter ? Comment, au cours des quarante ans et plus qui s’étaient écoulés, les questions évoquées dans ces deux ouvrages fondamentaux avaient-elles évolué ? Il n’a pas été difficile de trouver, à l’étranger ou en France, des collègues qui, familiers eux aussi avec l’œuvre si influente de Paul lemerle, ont accepté de nous rejoindre à Paris dans les locaux du Collège de France, et d’apporter leur contribution à cet hommage et à cette recherche.