Archives of the Byzantine Empire (original) (raw)
Related papers
ARCHIVES AND READERS: PRESERVATION AND CIRCULATION OF DOCUMENTS IN BYZANTINE MONASTIC ARCHIVES
Present article deals with the problems of Byzantine monastic archives and its readers. Namely, trough regarding methods of keeping, storing techniques, ways of copying and persons responsible for the archives, I find out the possible readers inside of monasteries, and examine their attitude toward the content of the records. While through analyzing the situations when the monastic documents were used outside of the foundations (during tribunals, border‑delineations etc.), I discover which laic authorities and individuals had access to records, and what was their ways of reading these texts.
Byzantine Kos through the Archival Documents of the Patmos Monastery
published in Greek in: Χάρις Χαίρε, Μελέτες στη μνήμη της Χάρης Κάντζια, Αρχαιολογικό Ινστιτούτο Αιγαιακών Σπουδών, τόμ.Α, Αthens 2004, pp. 405-420, 2004
During Byzantine era, Kos was never found in the heart of historical events and therefore information is scarce. The archive of the monastery of St.John at Patmos is an exception, for it includes thirty published documents concerning the island. They are divided –based on their date- in three groups. The first concerns the time and deeds of the St.Christodoulos, founder of the Monastery in the 11th century (eleven documents). The second comprises sixteen documents covering the second half of the 13th century, while the last three ones are dated between 1329 and 1331. The information included in these documents is quite diverse and the present article is an effort to summarize and categorize it. The first set of data concerns the general history of the island, and its place in the Byzantine administration. The different administration systems of the middle (11th century) and late Byzantine periods (13-14th century) emerge, together with information on enemy raids or change of rule. A second category refers to the ecclesiastical status of Kos. A number of bishops are mentioned, otherwise unknown, while the issue of the promotion of the island to archbishopric in the first half of the 14th century is enlightened through the information of the archive. The third category concerns the island’s agricultural economy and place names. The picture that emerges is of an island divided in small properties with different cultivations (olive trees, wheat, vineyards), and with the inhabitants involved in countless quarrels over their boundaries. Thirty-three place names are mentioned, only a handful of which can be located today. The last category of information involves the society and population of the island. The whole structure is represented, from the great landowners of the 11th century to the small free farmers of the 13th century and the serfs. The people are located in enories (parish, mod.trans.), four of which are mentioned. In a document of 1288 eighty-three names are included, …inhabitants of the whole country, people of the cloth, soldiers and common folk. The data included in these documents is important because it comes from a trustworthy and direct historical source. However in order to interpret it, one must incorporate it in the wider historical framework and combine it with comparative data from other sources. A last remark is made on the issue of the capital city of the island, which is never mentioned in the archive of Patmos, thus arousing questions to its very existence.
The Ottoman Archives of the Athonite Monasteries
Ce volume réunit des études présentées lors du colloque « Lire les Archives de l'Athos » tenu à Athènes du 18 au 20 novembre 2015, ainsi que des contributions et éditions de documents supplémentaires. Ce colloque fut organisé pour célébrer les 70 ans de la col lec tion des Archives de l'Athos, refondée par Paul Lemerle en 1945, dont l'objet est la pu bli ca tion des actes grecs conservés dans les monastères du Mont Athos en Grèce jusqu'en 1500. Vingt-trois volumes de cette édition ont déjà été publiés comprenant les actes de quatorze monastères, la dernière parution étant celle des Actes de Vatopédi III en novembre 2019. Ce livre n'a pas pour objectif de faire le bilan exhaustif de l'apport de la documentation athonite à l'historiographie de Byzance. Cependant, les contributions ici rassemblées démontrent l'importance capitale des actes conservés à l'Athos pour l'étude de domaines de recherche variés, allant de l'archivistique à la société et à la culture. D'autres articles et éditions d'archives modernes rendent hommage aux savants de diverses nationalités qui, depuis le xix e siècle, ont contribué de façon remarquable à l'avancée de notre connaissance du corpus documentaire athonite. Une dernière partie du volume est dédiée aux corpus d'actes écrits dans d'autres langues que le grec, qui demeurent aujourd'hui insuffisamment connus et utilisés par la communauté internationale des byzantinistes. Le colloque « Lire les Archives de l'Athos », organisé par Olivier Delouis, Raúl Estangüi Gómez, Christophe Giros, et Kostis Smyrlis, a bénéficié de l'appui de l'École française d'Athènes et du Musée byzantin et chrétien d'Athènes, qui ont généreusement mis leurs locaux à notre disposition. Le Laboratoire d'excellence « Religions et sociétés dans le monde méditerranéen » (RESMED, Sorbonne Université) a apporté un important concours financier. Par ailleurs, notre manifestation a été honorée de la présence de représentants du Patriarcat oecuménique de Constantinople et de la Sainte Communauté de l'Athos. Que tous soient ici remerciés. Nous voudrions enfin exprimer notre gratitude à Paule Pagès pour sa contribution décisive à la préparation de ce volume, ainsi qu'à Marek Eby, qui a relu les articles en anglais. Lire les Archives de l'Athos, éd. O. Delouis & K. Smyrlis (Travaux et mémoires 23/2), Paris 2019.
lay_archives_in_the_late_antique_and_byzantine_east_the_implications_of_the_documentary_papyri.pdf
2018
A survey of documentary practices in the eastern Mediterranean raises many of the key themes that we will be following throughout the book. Among these are issues of definition, such as of archive, or lay and clerical, or public and private; issues of the institutional contexts for document production and preservation , such as the shifting nature of the late Roman state and its organs, the early institutional Church, or structures of property ownership; and issues of documentary culture, such as the phenomena of destruction and dossierization, the symbolic function of documents, and intentionally ephemeral documents.
2023
We discuss the nature of the Byzantine libraries by examining their degree of accessibility as witnessed by the loan lists of the monasteries of Saint John Prodromos in Patmos and Saint Nicholas in Casole, and by the typikon of Boilas' foundation near Edessa. We also draw on the place occupied by books in some monasteries in Egypt (Shenute's White Monastery in Suhag) and in Byzantine territory, to conclude that their accessibility was non-existent. In the second part of this paper, we review the history and public nature of the Imperial Library of Constantinople: in Late Antiquity it occupied a facility near the Basilike Stoa (centrally located in the city), but later on was replaced by a 'palace library' accessible only to members of the imperial family and to palace officers.
24th International Congress of Byzantine Studies - Venice - Abstract
The History of Photography at St. Catherine’s Library (Sinai) and Its Impact on Scholarship and Monastic Life, 2022
The goal of this paper is to systematically retrace the history of the expeditions which were devoted to the photography of manuscripts at the Monastery of St. Catherine (Sinai) from the 19th to the 20th centuries. This is possible thanks to the analysis of so far neglected archival material such as the private correspondence of the – sometimes unknown – organizers of photographic projects and interview with the various members of the Monastery. In addition to offer new material for the study of the evolution of manuscripts photography (from a technical point of view), this paper also contributes to look into the human side of the cholars’ and monks’ interactions and not just the final product of their expeditions.