Introduction to (and editor of) roundtable on Patrick Boucheron (ed.), France in the World: A New Global History (original) (raw)

France and the French from the Perspective of a 15 th -century

E. Juhász (Hrsg.): Byzanz und das Abendland VII. Studia Byzantino-Occidentalia. Budapest, Eötvös-József Collegium., 2021

Apodeixis, the encyclopaedically sweeping work by Laonikos Chalkokondyles, "the last Athenian historiographer, " has a significance in world history that elevates it way above the status of a summary of the decline of Byzantium and the rise of the Ottomans. In his magnum opus comprising ten books, composed some time in the last third of the 15 th century, the author goes beyond his main theme and gives a detailed account of nearly all parts of the inhabited world for the period between 1298 and 1463. Although it is an academic commonplace that the chief model for Chalkokondyles in his treatment of world history was Herodotus (while in formal terms, the influence of Thucydides must also be accounted for), 1 we agree with the claim that, in addition to identifying the parallels in content and form, an exploration of the deeper layers of imitatio ought also to be undertaken. 2 Thus, we do not necessarily have the appropriation of the conceptual basis (Greeks versus Barbarian [Persian] or "heathen" [Turkish] people), the hardly accidental similarity between various stories, geographical descriptions, and characters, or textual borrowings in mind, but rather general features in the structure and, concomitantly, the broader world view, which connect Chalkokondyles more tightly * This paper was supported by the project framework NKFIH NN 124539.