Mobility and migration in Byzantium: who gets to tell the story (original) (raw)
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Mobility and migration were not uncommon in Byzantium, as is true for all societies. Yet, scholarship is only beginning to pay attention to these phenomena. This book presents in English translation a wide array of relevant source texts from ca. 650 to ca. 1450 originally written in medieval Greek: from administrative records, saints’ lives and letters by churchmen to ego-documents by ambassadors and historical narratives by court historians. Each source text is accompanied by a detailed introduction, commentary and further bibliography, thus making the book accessible to both scholars and students and laying the groundwork for future research on the internal dynamics of Byzantine society. Open access - the entire book can be downloaded for free via: https://www.vr-elibrary.de/doi/book/10.14220/9783737013413?fbclid=IwAR1l2K37GzARH1Ts8hTQYaYvAokpjgaf0URlZnvo4gTX1v8KNRzJ6OQLT6c
2023
Holiness on the Move: Mobility and Space in Byzantine Hagiography explores the literary, religious, and social functions of monastic mobility in Byzantine hagiography, touching on aspects of space, narrative, and identity. The ten chapters included in this volume highlight the multifaceted and rich nature of travel narratives, exploring topics such as authorship and audience, narrative structure and function, identity-making and practicalities of and discourse on travel. In terms of geographical span, the case studies cover Constantinople and its hinterland, Asia Minor, mainland Greece, Trebizond, the Balkans, and southern Italy and range chronologically from the end of the sixth to the fourteenth century. The contributions offer novel insights and perspectives on the importance of mobility in the literary construction of holiness in the Byzantine world and the wider medieval Mediterranean, the spatial dimension of sacred mobility, and the ways in which mobility is employed in the narrative construction of hagiographical texts. As such, the volume joins the burgeoning research on sacred mobilities and will interest students and scholars of Byzantine and medieval literature, religion, and history, as well as a wider readership with an interest in the study of space and mobility.
“Studia Ceranea. Journal of the Wal¬demar Ceran Research Centre for the History and Culture of the Mediterranean Area and South-East Europe”, 11, 2021
This article is devoted to the image of a social situation in the eastern parts of the Byzantine Empire during the 5 th-7 th century, which is to be found in the East Christian hagiographical texts. They cannot be treated as a completely reliable source of information, due to exaggerations and simplifications typical for the genre. On the other hand, they testify a long-lasting and vital literary tradition-they were circulating in the Byzantine Commonwealth during the Middle Ages, were translated to several languages (inter alia to the Church Slavic). They formed the basis for stereotypes-specific for the Medieval European imagination-that the eastern frontier of the Empire was rather dangerous territory, its neighbors (Persians, Arabs) were unpredictable pagans and the Christian inhabitants of the region ought to be called their innocent victims.
Presentation for the Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Colloqium "Armenian Scholars in Byzantium and Byzantine Scholarship in Armenian" (3 November 2023), organised by Emilio Bonfiglio: https://www.doaks.org/events/byzantine-studies/colloquium-files/2023-byzantine-colloquium-program.pdf Armenians were among the most important ethno-religious groups both present within and migrating from beyond the borders of the Byzantine Empire before and after the establishment of the Arab Caliphate in the 7th century CE. Their significance especially within the Byzantine elite and the modes and limits of their integration into Byzantine society have been discussed frequently also in very recent scholarship with different interpretations. This paper takes a look at the Byzantine perceptions of the various modes and motivations of mobility of individuals and groups identified as “Armenian” as well as of the networks via which Armenians found their way into the empire. As becomes evident, such descriptions in historiography, but also hagiography or even in legal texts cannot just be read as factual reports, but also reflect certain stereotypes and narrative traditions on the “unsteadiness” of the “Armenians” since antiquity. In the following short draft paper, due to reasons of space and time, I will focus primarily on (secular) legal texts while considering other types of sources in the expanded version of the text for publication.