Byzantine Studies

https://oe1.orf.at/programm/20210823/648806/Kleine-Eiszeit-langer-Sommer-Schwarzer-Tod

Coverage of recent research on climate change, pandemics and history in the Radio show "Punkt eins" on Austrian Radio Ö1 by Johann Kneihs; guest: Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, on the occasion of the publication of his two books:
Johannes Preiser-Kapeller: Die erste Ernte und der große Hunger. Klima, Pandemien und der Wandel der Alten Welt bis 500 n. Chr.
Johannes Preiser-Kapeller: Der Lange Sommer und die Kleine Eiszeit. Klima, Pandemien und der Wandel der Alten Welt von 500 bis 1500 n. Chr., both published at Mandelbaum Verlag, Vienna 2021

The two icons discussed in the article, which belong to the Benaki Museum collection and come from Egypt, provide interesting evidence about panel painting in the provinces or borderlands of the Byzantine world, in a period of momentous change for both the empire and the Eastern Mediterranean. The fragmentary seventh-century icon of Christ with the Coptic votive inscription must have been intended as a votive offering, and the emphasis on Christ Emmanuel probably proclaims the Miaphysite tendencies of the patron. Its encaustic technique and confirmed Egyptian provenance link it with a group of works of the seventh century preserved at St Catherine's Monastery in Sinai and once again raises the question of the provenance of those icons. The artistically modest yet iconographically surprising two-sided icon, with the apostle Paul on the obverse and St Apa Stephanos on the reverse, adds one more example to the small number of painted panels to have survived from the eighth and ninth centuries. The Greek inscriptions, the iconographic link with the Fieschi Morgan stavrotheke, as well as its similarities with the reliquary-crosses that flooded Byzantium from the ninth century onwards, bear witness to both the common origins of the Coptic art of Egypt under Arab rule and the art of Byzantium and some instances of parallel development. Nevertheless, Coptic painting acquired a life of its own after the region broke away from the political sphere of Byzantium and this new independence gave Coptic painting greater flexibility in handling and adapting the iconography of the saints.

This book analyzes Byzantine examples of witness literature, a genre that focuses on eyewitness accounts written by slaves, prisoners, refugees, and other victims of historical atrocity. It focuses on such episodes in three nonfictional texts-John Kaminiates' Capture of Thessaloniki (904), Eustathios of Thessaloniki's Capture of Thessaloniki (1186), and Niketas Choniates' History (ca. 1204-17)and the three extant twelfth-century Komnenian novels to consider how the authors' positions as both eyewitness and victim require an interpretive method that distinguishes witness literature from other kinds of writing about the past. Drawing on theoretical developments in the fields of Holocaust and Genocide Studies (such as Giorgio Agamben's homo sacer and Michel Foucault's biopolitics) and comparisons with modern examples (Elie Wiesel's Night and Primo Levi's If This is a Man), Witness Literature emphasizes the affective, subjective, and experiential in medieval Greek historical writing.

The article takes up the issue of Anna Komnene’s opinion of Baldwin of Boulogne in her Alexiad. The daughter of Alexius I represents the Byzantine view
of the world, in which the Latins began to play an increasingly greater and more
visible role at the end of the 11 th  c., especially in connection with the crusade
movement  that  began  to  emerge  from  1095.  It  turned  out  to  be  important  to
involve  the  Frankish  states  established  in  Outremer  into  the  orbit  of  imperial
politics.  Baldwin  of  Boulogne,  Count  of  Edessa  from  1097,  who  in  1100  was
crowned the first Latin king of Jerusalem, did not escape Byzantine attention.
Baldwin of Boulogne appears four times in Alexiad, giving the opportunity to formulate the opinion about him on the pages of the work. The article presents the
thesis that Anna Komnene does not present him as a leading figure in her work.
Baldwin of Boulogne plays a rather modest and marginal role, whether related
to narrative needs or in connection with the Byzantine political efforts to regain
Antioch from the hands of the Normans. This suggests that from the point of view
of  Constantinople,  he  was  not  a  particularly  important  player  on  the  political
scene, both during the First Crusade and even after his election as king of Jerusalem. Baldwin emerges from the pages of Alexiad as a character with two faces: on
the one hand, he is a confident, energetic commander, characterized by cunning
and broader strategic thinking, and on the other hand, he is a greedy barbarian,
suffering military defeats. Therefore, Baldwin’s presentation does not differ significantly from the general image of Latins in the Byzantine Empire in the 12 th  c.
Keywords: Baldwin of Boulogne, Alexiad, Anna Komnene, Crusades, Middle Ages.

The book investigates how the concept of time was understood in the period between the second and the seventh centuries. It also focuses in chapter 8 on the manner in which this notion was reconsidered by some modern and contemporary scholars, in particular Paul Tillich.

When Sinop was founded by the the people Miletos, it became the main colony in the Southern Black Sea. Many wrecks dating from the Antiquity to the present day are present under water around Sinop and a new wreck can be discovered every day. Some of the submerged wrecks can be dived with SCUBA, however, the sheet metal shipwrecks on the shores of Sinop are particularly attractive for those who want to dive deep underwater. The dives in the shallow waters from 40 meters described in this article were made with SCUBA system. Dives that are deeper than 40 meters are carried out with mixed gas trimix equipment. These wrecks are at the ideal depth for diving tourism with technical diving, ie diving with mixed gas trimix equipment and the wrecks are in perfect condition. Diving with trained guide divers will be a protective feature for some of our underwater cultural elements, since it is easy to determine whether there are any losses when compared to the previous day, by the controlled photographed and videos taken each day. The protected area on the Sinop coast and the prohibition of sportive diving practices have caused more destruction than preserving our underwater cultural heritage, since, when well-meaning people and scientists who obey the prohibitions moved away from the prohibited areas in the sea; underwater sites where cultural assets are left to the disposal of malicious people then these cultural assets were looted. Some submerged wrecks, which may be damaged by divings, must immediately be underwater excavations done then exhibiting them in the museum will be accurate and this will add value to Sinop tourism.

Обект на изследването е начинът на изобразяване на библейския концепт за Божията слава в късновизантийската иконографска традиция. Предмет на изследването е произходът и семантиката на новия тип мандорла, използвана като основен иконографски символ за визуализация на Божията теофания в късновизантийското изкуство от XIV в. нататък. Целта е да се очертае мястото и времето на възникване на усложнената форма на мандорлата, появила се паралелно с развитието на духовното движение на исихазма, както и да се изясни функционирането й като визуална екзегеза на теологическата концепция за нетварната светлина в късновизантийската иконография.
С помощта на case study относно хронологията и интервизуалността на иконографските програми на храма „Св. Апостоли“ в Солун и храма „Иисус Христос Спасител“ на манастира Хора се формулира хипотезата, че т. нар. „исихастки тип“ мандорла се е появил в Константинопол, а не в Солун или Мистра. Като допълнителен довод в полза на столичния произход на модела служат изводите от проведеното case study на иконографската програма на Гробница Е от външния нартекс на манастира Хора. Фреската „Св. Богородица Влахернитиса“ тук има акатистово значение и би следвало да бъде сюжетно определена като „Св. Богородица Достойно ест“. Композицията й показва вероятна връзка между възникналата ок. 1300 г. в Константинопол иконографска схема на цикъла на Богородичния Акатист и формирането на „исихасткия тип“ мандорла.
Линията на разпространение на новия модел може да бъде проследена от Константинопол, през Солун и Атон към цяла Византия, а от там към България, Сърбия, Румъния и Русия.

We present here a sample of the preliminary study and critical 'editio princeps' of the Latin version of Gregory of Nyssa’s Homilies on the Lord’s Prayer (De oratione dominica), completed in the second half of the 15th century by the Byzantine scholar Athanasius Chalkeopoulos and dedicated to Pope Paul II. The critical text of the homilies and of the translator’s prologue, based on four different manuscripts, is preceded by an introduction to the figure of Athanasius and the historical context of his Latin versions and bilingual editions of ancient Pagan and Christian authors. Besides, we describe some of the peculiarities of his translating style and his Greek and Latin calligraphy. Finally, the preliminary study also includes an English translation and commentary of Athanasius’ dedicatory letter, as well as a section of critical notes regarding our edition.

The Benaki Museum was founded by Antonis Benakis, a visionary collector and cosmopolitan Greek patriot born and raised in Alexandria, Egypt. Since opening to the public in April 1931, the museum has grown into one of the most innovative cultural organisations in Europe, and today includes several branches: a museum dedicated to Greek culture from prehistory to the 1940s; a gallery on modernism in Greece; a museum of Islamic art; a twentieth-century sculptor’s studio; a collector’s home; a museum of toys from around the world; a celebrated writer’s seaside retreat; a passementerie factory; and an exhibitions centre. Across this network of venues all over Athens – and beyond – diverse cultures from all historical periods meet contemporary art movements, enabling ‘the Benaki’ to situate the Greek world within a global context.

https://scalapublishers.com/benaki-museum/

Highlights
- One of the most innovative cultural organisations in Europe, with venues all over Athens, and beyond.
- Contains 39 treasures selected and described by the Museum's academic director George Manginis.
- The first Greek institution in the Director’s Choice series.

Eupraxia’s Life was popular among monks, both in the Byzantine and post-Byzantine periods. For example, the monk John Zonaras wrote in the 12th century a reworking of the ancient Life [BHG 631m] discussed here, and Ignatios, a 17th-century monk of the Dionysiou monastery on Mount Athos, translated the 5th-century text into the koine of the time in order to make it accessible to wider monastic audiences. The Life of Eupraxia, which, despite its recognition in Byzantium, has not received much scholarly attention, is examined here in its own right from a literary perspective, and not in relation to other monastic texts concerned with female friendship. The reason for this is threefold.
First, while in other hagiographical works recording female friendships the protagonist’s relationship with God is presented as the supreme friendship, Eupraxia’s Life establishes a world of (female) friendship that is prioritized. Eupraxia’s friendship with the nun Ioulia lies at its very centre while the heroine’s relationship with Christ, her spiritual spouse, as she sees him, acquires a somewhat less importance.
Second, the Life examined here, in contrast to other Lives celebrating female friendships, includes a male non-monastic relationship – that between Eupraxia's father Antigonos and the emperor Theodosios I – which anticipates the one between Eupraxia and Ioulia. Furthermore, Eupraxia’s Life contains some additional female friendships, which take up less narrative space and thus appear to be less significant. These are, for example, the relationship between the Eupraxia's mother and the empress and the relationship between the abbess Theodoule and the protagonist. Despite their lesser importance in the narrative – as compared to the text’s two predominant friendships (Antigonos-Theodosios and Eupraxia-Ioulia) – these secondary relationships contribute to the establishment of friendship as the Life's principal theme.
Third, enmity is central in Eupraxia’s Life whereas this is not the case with other hagiographical narratives with female friendships. Thus the Life of Eupraxia is unique in that it is a narrative of both (female) friendship and enmity, in which friendship is to a large extent defined in opposition to enmity and vice-versa. The text teaches how to do the work of friendship, and how both to recognize and to deal with the work of enmity in order to achieve a self-fulfilment which might lead to holiness.
For reasons of space, the present chapter focuses only on the three key human relationships depicted in the examined text (Antigonos-Theodosios, Eupraxia-Ioulia and Germana-Eupraxia) and their interconnections, with the intention of achieving a double aim: first, to bring to light an understudied, yet remarkable, hagiographical narrative and its workings; and second, to show how worldly relationships, such as friendship and enmity, acquire meaning in a religious text that has attracted the interest of Byzantine and post-Byzantine monks. For the chapter’s purposes, both Aristotle’s theory of the perfect friendship as formulated in his Nicomachean Ethics and Jacques Derrida’s work on the nature of friendship are used.

This chapter deals with an apoptropaic prayer in Arabic, the prayer of Mar Cyprian, which is found on the reverse of a long Byzantine Greek amulet roll (University of Chicago Library MS 125 and Pierpont Morgan Library MS 499). This is a long strip of parchment combining images, prayers and the Abgar legend in Greek from Trebizond, with designs and prayers in Arabic from the Middle East. Together these facets evoke a whole word in magic, pious devotion and intercultural dialogue. Now divided between collections in Chicago and New York, this amulet roll is here fully situated in the long tradition of such powerful objects.