Byzantinists entered the study of emotion with Henry Maguire’s ground-breaking article on sorrow, published in 1977. Since then, classicists and western medievalists have developed new ways of understanding how emotional communities work and where the ancients’ concepts of emotion differ from our own, and Byzantinists have begun to consider emotions other than sorrow. It is time to look at what is distinctive about Byzantine emotion. This volume is the first to look at the constellation of Byzantine emotions. Originating at an international colloquium at Dumbarton Oaks, these papers address issues such as power, gender, rhetoric, or asceticism in Byzantine society through the lens of a single emotion or cluster of emotions. Contributors focus not only on the construction of emotions with respect to perception and cognition but also explore how emotions were communicated and exchanged across broad (multi)linguistic, political and social boundaries. Priorities are twofold: to arrive at an understanding of what the Byzantines thought of as emotions and to comprehend how theory shaped their appraisal of reality. Managing Emotion in Byzantium will appeal to researchers and students alike interested in Byzantine perceptions of emotion, Byzantine Culture, and medieval perceptions of emotion.

This book examines the gendered dimensions of emotions and the emotional aspects of gender within Byzantine culture and suggests possible readings of such instances. In so doing, the volume celebrates the current breadth of Byzantine gender studies while at the same time contributing to the emerging field of Byzantine emotion studies. It offers the reader an array of perspectives encompassing various sources and media, including historiography, hagiography, theological writings, epistolography, erotic literature, art objects, and illuminated manuscripts. The ten chapters cover a time span ranging from the early to the late Byzantine periods. This diversity is secured by an expanded and enriched exploration of the collection’s unifying theme of gendered emotions. The scope and breadth of the chapters also reflect the ways in which Byzantine gender and emotion have been studied thus far, while at the same time offering novel approaches that challenge established opinions in Byzantine studies.

This volume consists of 15 articles published between 1991 and 2018. It falls into three sections, reflecting different areas of Liz James’s interests. The first section deals with light and colour and mosaics: four articles considering light and colour in mosaics and the making of mosaics, as well as the question of what it means to define mosaics as ‘Byzantine’ are reprinted. The second brings together four pieces on empresses: their relationships with female personifications and the Mother of God; their roles in founding and refounding buildings; and their employment as ciphers by some authors. Finally, seven papers cover a range of topics: what monumental images of saints in churches might have been for; what the differences between relics and icons might have been; how captions to images can be misleading; why touch was an important sense; how words can sometimes ‘just’ be decorative rather than for reading; why the materiality of objects makes a difference. There is also a brief section of additional notes and comments which add to, update and reflect on each piece now in 2024. Mosaics, Empresses and Other Things in Byzantium will be of interest to scholars and students alike interested in material culture, the depiction of regal women, and the use of relics and icons in the Byzantine Empire.

The late Byzantine period (thirteenth to fifteenth centuries) was marked by both cultural fecundity and political fragmentation, resulting in an astonishingly multifaceted literary output. This book addresses the poetry of the empire’s final quarter-millennium from a broad perspective, bringing together studies on texts originating in places from Crete to Constantinople and from court to school, treating topics from humanist antiquarianism to pious self-help, and written in styles from the vernacular to Homeric language. It thus offers a reference work to a much-neglected but rich textual material that is as varied as it was potent in the sociocultural contexts of its times. Contributors are Theodora Antonopoulou, Marina Bazzani, Julián Bértola, Martin Hinterberger, Krystina Kubina, Marc D. Lauxtermann, Florin Leonte, Ugo Mondini, Brendan Osswald, Giulia M. Paoletti, Cosimo Paravano, Daniil Pleshak, Alberto Ravani, and Federica Scognamiglio.

Throughout the history of Byzantium 65 emperors were dethroned and only 39 reigns ended peacefully. How might a usurper get away with murdering his predecessor? And how could a bloody act of regicide lead to one of the most glorious of all eras in Byzantium? These were questions that puzzled Michael Psellos as he looked back at Basil I’s assassination of Michael III and the origin of the Macedonian dynasty. Might the imperial art of Basil, his sons and grandson help to explain how the dynasty overcame its violent beginnings and secured the loyalty of its subjects? It has long been recognised that the early Macedonian emperors were active propagandists but royal art has usually been viewed thematically over the span of centuries. Official iconography has been understood to project imperial power in ways which were impersonal and unchanging. This book instead adopts a chronological approach and considers how Basil justified his seizure of power, and how his successors went on to articulate their own ideas about authority. It concludes that imperial art did at times reflect the personality of the emperor and the political demands of the moment, such as the need for an heir, the nature of court politics or the choice of successor. This innovative account of the forging of the Macedonian dynasty will appeal to those interested in how early medieval kings and emperors used art to create their own image, to differentiate themselves from rivals and to extend the boundaries of their personal power.

Thousands of intact ceramic bowls and plates as well as fragments made in the medieval Byzantine empire survive to this day. Decorated with figural and non-figural imagery applied in a variety of techniques and adorned with colourful paints and glazes, the vessels can tell us much about those who owned them and those who looked at them. In addition to innumerable ceramic vessels, a handful of precious metal bowls and plates survive from the period. Together, these objects make up the art of dining in medieval Byzantium. This art of dining was effervescent, at turns irreverent and deadly serious, visually stunning and fun. It is suggestive of ways in which those viewing the objects used a quotidian and biologically necessary (f)act – that of eating – to reflect on their lives and deaths, their aspirations and their realities. This book examines the ceramic and metal vessels in terms of the information offered on the foods eaten, the foods desired and their status; the spectacle of the banquet; the relationship between word and image in medieval Byzantium; the dangers of taste; the emergence of new moral and social ideals; and the use of dining as a tool in constructing and enforcing hierarchy. This book is of appeal to scholarly and non-scholarly audiences interested in the art and material culture of the medieval period and in the social history of food and eating.

Emotions in Byzantium came to life through hymnody, which invited the faithful to step into a liturgical world of compunction.