Byzantium in the Ninth Century: Dead or Alive?

Ashgate
edited by Leslie Brubaker
ISBN: 0860786862
price: $84.95   hardcover

Ninth-century Byzantium has always been viewed as a mid-point between Iconoclasm and the so-called Macedonian revival; in scholarly terms it is often treated as a 'dead' century. The object of these papers is to question such an assumption.
Studies of specific aspects of the East Roman state and its culture present a picture of political and military developments, legal and literary innovations, artisanal production, and religious and liturgical changes from the Anatolian plateau to the Greek-speaking areas of Italy that are only now gradually emerging as distinct. Investigation of how the 9th-century Byzantine world was perceived by outsiders also reveals much about Byzantine success and failure in promoting particular views of itself; new studies of the 9th-century interactions between the Byzantines, the Carolingians in Francia, and the Islamic cultures in Palestine and in Spain suggest a more accurate picture of Byzantine status than has previously been available. These chapters recover many lost aspects of 9th-century Byzantium and shed new light on the Mediterranean world in a transitional century.
The papers in this volume are by a group of international scholars who provide a synthetic understanding of 9th-century Byzantium, and embody current research in this field.
The papers in this volume derive from the 30th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, held for the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies at the University of Birmingham in March of 1996. Byzantium in the Ninth Century: Dead or Alive? is the fifth volume in the series published by Ashgate/Variorum on behalf of the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies.
Contents: Preface; List of abbreviations; Section I: The Byzantine State; The Byzantine state in the ninth century: an introduction, John Haldon; Reanimation of Roman law in the ninth century: remarks on reasons and results, Marie Theres Fögen; The Paulicians and ninth-century Byzantine thought, Claudia Ludwig; The rehabilitation of the Emperor Theophilos, Athanasios Markopoulos; The imperial thought-world of Leo VI: the non-campaigning emperor of the ninth century, Shaun Tougher; Section II: Byzantine Culture; Byzantine culture in the ninth century: an introduction, Leslie Brubaker; Byzantium: cultural suicide?, Paul Speck; Manifestations de la propagande en faveur de l'orthodoxie, Marie-France Auzépy; Canon and calendar: the role of a ninth-century hymnographer in shaping the celebration of saints, Nancy Patterson Sevcenko; Reconstructing ninth-century Constantinople, Robert Ousterhout; The road from Baghdad to Byzantium and the case of the Bryas Palace in Istanbul, Alessandra Ricci; Away from the centre: 'provincial' art in the ninth century, Robin Cormack; Section III: Byzantium and the Outside World; Byzantine relations with the outside world in the ninth century: an introduction, Jonathan Shepard; What has Constantinople to do with Jerusalem? Palestine in the ninth century: Byzantine orthodoxy in the world of Islam, Sidney Griffith; The road to Baghdad in the thought-world of ninth-century Byzantium, Paul Magdalino; Byzantium and al-Andalus in the ninth century, Eduardo Manzano Moreno; Byzance et Italie méridionale, Guislaine Noyé; Ninth-century Byzantium through western eyes, Chris Wickham; Index.