Poetry Antonopoulou, T. (2010) “On the Reception of Homilies and Hagiography in Byzantium: The Recited Metrical Prefaces,” in Imitatio–aemulatio–variatio: Akten des internationalen wissenschaftlichen Symposiums zur byzantinischen Sprache und Literatur (Wien, 22.–25. Oktober 2008), eds. A. Rhoby and E. Schiffer. Vienna: 57–79. Bernard, F. (2014) Writing and Reading Byzantine Secular Poetry (1025–1081). Oxford. Bernard, F., and…

Latin Aerts, W. J. (1986) “Proverbial Passages Taken from Vincent of Beauvais’ Speculum Doctrinale Translated into Medieval Greek: The Methods of Translation Used by the Anonymous Greek Author,” in Vincent of Beauvais and Alexander the Great: Studies on the ‘Speculum Maius’ and Its Translations into Medieval Vernaculars, eds. W. J. Aerts, E. R. Smits, and…

Agapitos, P. A. (2012) “Late Antique or Early Byzantine? The Shifting Beginnings of Byzantine Literature,” Istituto Lombardo. Accademia di Scienze e Lettere. Rendiconti: Classe di Lettere e Scienze Morali e Storiche 146: 3–38. Agapitos, P. A. (2015) “Contesting Conceptual Boundaries: Byzantine Literature and Its History,” Interfaces: Journal of Medieval European Literatures 1: 62–91. Agapitos, P.…

Religious conflict of various sorts plagued the Byzantine Empire. In particular, doctrinal disputes between different Christian groups divided the empire and caused headaches for a succession of emperors. The earliest and most long-lasting religious dispute, however, was between Jews and Christians. Jews perceived Christians as heretics, as misguided Jews or, worse, as Gentiles, who had…

One of the periods in late antiquity most fraught with religious conflict is that between the death of Emperor Justinian in 565 CE and the first three decades of the seventh century. This was an era that witnessed the separation of the anti-Chalcedonian churches and the creation of their own clergy and hierarchy (Volker L.…

Article Revisiting Byzantine Society’s Roman Origins The premise that “Byzantium around the year 1000 had become a medieval Greek Empire” (Papoulia, Das Ende der Antike (as footnote above)) has been refuted with the plausible argument that the Byzantine élite did not identify itself as Greek, whereas Arabs, Armenians, Bulgars, Slavs and other ethno-cultural collectivities resided…

Article It has often been observed that Constantine’s faith was never an obstacle to his ambition, and that in his political acts he treated pagans with a moderation bordering on indulgence. Hence it has been surmised that he was dishonest in his profession of Christianity, or that he failed to grasp what his new religion…

Article The Emergence of Imperial Monotheism and the Changing Nature of Religious Multiplicity in the (Eastern) Roman Empire, Fourth to Sixth Century CE The significance of the so-called “Constantinian turn”, which initiated the transformation of the Imperium Romanum into a Christian empire, is undisputed. Under Emperor Constantine (r. 306/324–337 CE), the Christian churches turned from…

Article The reign of the emperor Heraclius (610 –641) is often perceived as a distinctive transformative phase in the history of Byzantium marked by external and internal threats to the state on a military, political and ideological level (J. Haldon, Byzantium in the seventh century. The transformation of a culture. Cambridge; J. Koder, “Zeitenwenden”. Zur…

Article Definitions It is well known that Twelver Shiʿite legal doctrine entertains several fundamental ideas, which stand in sharp contrast to the Sunnite system as a whole and cannot be explained merely by a divergent theological approach to legal matters. On the divergences between the two systems see overview in Coulson 1964, 109‒119. One of…