Sailing to Byzantium brings together ten probing and pertinent critical papers, presented at the First and Second Postgraduate Forums in Byzantine Studies, held at Trinity College Dublin on 17-18 April 2007 and 15-16 May 2008 respectively. These essays engage with various facets of Byzantine history and culture. Many of them seek to shed new light on frequently controversial subject matters relating to history, historiography, and religion (the contentious nature of Jerusalem in Byzantine imperial ideology; medieval Western attitudes and perceptions of the Byzantine Empire; and the translation and use of Greek theologians in the West). Elsewhere, there are papers that tackle aspects of Byzantine literature (Encyclopaedism; the circulation of poetry; and a case study of political rhetoric in Manuel II’s Dialogue with the Empress-Mother on Marriage). Finally, history of art and cult come under the microscope in the last two essays of the volume (the meaning of the eight-century apsidal conch at Santa Maria Antiqua in Rome and the origins of the cult of Saint Martin in Dalmatia). Sailing to Byzantium is a provocative, wide-ranging collection and a must for students and academics who wish to broaden their understanding of one of history’s most fascinating civilizations.

Audiences are among the dominant elements of courtly life and may be referred to as a central aspect of representation of power in many societies. Audiences also served as a stage for negotiation and political decision-making. Beyond that, the ceremonial of audience acted as an integrative factor, strengthening the connections between the ruler and his subjects, the élite and his dynastic background. It thus reflects the structure, or at least the intended structure of rule, and allows us to get insight into the perception of the ruler in the respective society. This volume offers an approach to forms and structures of audiences in different epochs and regions. Choosing a transcultural and diachronic perspective, it aims at delineating similarities and differences as well as possible lines of development of the ceremonial on a broad basis of case studies. Audienzen gehören zu den prägenden Bestandteilen höfischen Lebens und können als zentraler Aspekt der Herrschaftsrepräsentation bezeichnet werden. Sie dienten aber nicht nur der Repräsentation, sondern waren auch Ort von Verhandlung und politischer Entscheidung. Hinzu trat die integrative Funktion der Audienz: Durch den Vollzug des Zeremoniells wurde auch die Verbindung des Herrschers zu seinen Untertanen, Vertrauten und zu seiner Dynastie dargestellt und gefestigt. Das Zeremoniell der Audienz spiegelt somit das (intendierte) Gefüge der Herrschaft, und lässt Rückschlüsse auf das Herrscherbild der jeweiligen Gesellschaft zu. Der Sammelband behandelt Formen und Strukturen des Audienz-Zeremoniells in transkultureller und diachroner Perspektive, in dem Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschiede, sowie Entwicklungslinien des Audienz-Zeremoniells auf einer breiten Basis von Fallbeispielen. Dazu versammelt er Beiträge zu unterschiedlichen Teilaspekten des Audienz-Zeremoniells in vormodernen Gesellschaften Europas, Asiens und des nördlichen Afrikas.

The Late Byzantine period (1261–1453) is marked by a paradoxical discrepancy between economic weakness and cultural strength. The apparent enigma can be resolved by recognizing that later Byzantine diplomatic strategies, despite or because of diminishing political advantage, relied on an increasingly desirable cultural and artistic heritage. This book reassesses the role of the visual arts in this era by examining the imperial image and the gift as reconceived in the final two centuries of the Byzantine Empire. In particular it traces a series of luxury objects created specifically for diplomatic exchange with such courts as Genoa, Paris and Moscow alongside key examples of imperial imagery and ritual. By questioning how political decline refigured the visual culture of empire, Cecily J. Hilsdale offers a more nuanced and dynamic account of medieval cultural exchange that considers the temporal dimensions of power and the changing fates of empires.

Few Byzantine emperors had a life as rich and as turbulent as Manuel II Palaiologos. A fascinating figure at the crossroads of Byzantine, Western European and Ottoman history, he endured political turmoil, witnessed no less than three sieges by the Ottomans and travelled as far as France and England. He was a prolific writer, producing a vast corpus of literary, theological and philosophical works. Yet, despite his talent, Manuel has largely been ignored as an author. This biography constructs an in-depth picture of him of as a ruler, author and personality, as well as providing insight into his world and times. It offers the first analysis of the emperor's complete oeuvre, focusing on his literary style, self-representation philosophical/theological thought. By focusing not only on political events, but also on the personality, personal life and literary output of Manuel, this biography paints a new portrait of a multifaceted emperor.

In the mid-eleventh century, secular Byzantine poetry attained a hitherto unseen degree of wit, vividness, and personal involvement, chiefly exemplified in the poetry of Christophoros Mitylenaios, Ioannes Mauropous, and Michael Psellos. This is the first volume to consider this poetic activity as a whole, critically reconsidering modern assumptions about Byzantine poetry, and focusing on Byzantine conceptions of the role of poetry in society. By providing a detailed account of the various media through which poetry was presented to its readers, and by tracing the initial circulation of poems, this volume takes an interest in the Byzantine reader and his/her reading habits and strategies, allowing aspects of performance and visual representation, rarely addressed, to come to the fore. It also examines the social interests that motivated the composition of poetry, establishing a connection with the extraordinary social mobility of the time. Self-representative strategies are analyzed against the background of an unstable elite struggling to find moral justification, which allows the study to raise the question of patronage, examine the discourse used by poets to secure material rewards, and explain the social dynamics of dedicatory epigrams. Finally, gift exchange is explored as a medium that underlines the value of poetry and confirms the exclusive nature of intellectual friendship.

This volume commemorating the late Armenian scholar Karen Yuzbashyan comprises studies of mediaeval Armenian culture, including the reception of biblical and parabiblical texts, theological literature, liturgy, hagiography, manuscript studies, Church history and secular history, and Christian art and material culture. Special attention is paid to early Christian and late Jewish texts and traditions preserved in documents written in Armenian. Several contributions focus on the interactions of Armenia with other cultures both within and outside the Byzantine Commonwealth: Greek, Georgian, Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopic, and Iranian. Select contributions may serve as initial reference works for their respective topics (the catalogue of Armenian khachkars in the diaspora and the list of Armenian Catholicoi in Tzovk’).