From "Bounteous Flux of Matter" to Hellenic City: Late Byzantine Representations of Constantinople and the Western Audience (original) (raw)

Late Byzantine encomia of Constantinople provide insight into the ways in which Hellenism was gradually adopted by some Byzantine intellectuals to provide a historicizing narrative to questions of identity when the Byzantine empire had transformed into a territorial city-state. Comparing "Byzantios or Concerning the Imperial Megalopolis" by the early Palaeologan statesman and intellectual Theodore Metochites (1270-1332) with the famous "Comparison of Old and New Rome" by Manuel Chrysoloras (c.1350-1415), this paper charts the ways in which these two intellectuals engaged with the idea of Hellenism in the Constantinopolitan context. The progressive shifting away from a predominantly religious representation of Constantinople and the increased emphasis on the city's pre-Christian past in these rhetorical compositions delineate a continuous intellectual tradition in late Byzantium. I also argue that Manuel Chrysoloras' and Laonikos Chalkokondyles' western orientation in the fifteenth century help explain their significant departure from Byzantine tradition in primarily representing Constantinople as a secular locus in contrast to Metochites' earlier portrayal of the city as holy space.