Byzantine Culture In Translation

This collection on Byzantine culture in translation, edited by Amelia Brown and Bronwen Neil, examines the practices and theories of translation inside the Byzantine empire and beyond its horizons to the east, north and west, from Late Antiquity to the present.

Julian, the last pagan emperor of the Roman empire, died in war in 363. In the Byzantine (that is, the Eastern Roman) empire, the figure of Julian aroused conflicting reactions: antipathy towards his apostasy but also admiration for his accomplishments, particularly as an author writing in Greek. Julian died young, and his attempt to reinstate paganism was a failure, but, paradoxically, his brief and unsuccessful policy resonated for centuries. This book analyses Julian from the perspectives of Byzantine Culture. The history of his posthumous fortune reveals differences in cultural perspectives and it is most intriguing with regard to the Eastern Roman empire which survived for almost a millennium after the fall of the Western empire. Byzantine culture viewed Julian in multiple ways, first as the legitimate emperor of the enduring Roman empire; second as the author of works written in Greek and handed down for generations in the language that scholars, the Church, and the state administration all continued to use; and third as an open enemy of Christianity. Julian the Apostate in Byzantine Culture will appeal to researchers and students alike in Byzantine perspectives on Julian, Greco-Roman Paganism, and the Later Roman Empire, as well as those interested in Byzantine Historiography.

What happened to ancient Greek thought after Antiquity? What impact did Abrahamic religions have on medieval Byzantine and Islamic scholars who adapted and reinvigorated this ancient philosophical heritage? Reason and Revelation in Byzantine Antioch tackles these questions by examining the work of the eleventh-century Christian theologian Abdallah ibn al-Fadl, who undertook an ambitious program of translating Greek texts, ancient and contemporary, into Arabic. Poised between the Byzantine Empire that controlled his home city of Antioch and the Arabic-speaking cultural universe of Syria-Palestine, Egypt, Aleppo, and Iraq, Ibn al-Fadl engaged intensely with both Greek and Arabic philosophy, science, and literary culture. Challenging the common narrative that treats Christian and Muslim scholars in almost total isolation from each other in the Middle Ages, Alexandre M. Roberts reveals a shared culture of robust intellectual curiosity in the service of tradition that has had a lasting role in Eurasian intellectual history.

During the ninth century the Saracen Arabs, who had been expelled from the caliphate of Spain, became an increasing threat to the Byzantine empire, particularly after they established themselves on the island of Crete. In 904 a Saracen force led by Leo of Tripoli sailed to the northern Aegean, captured Abydos and prepared to assault Constantinople, but then in a sudden change of plan sailed westward and captured Thessaloniki after a brief siege. The defences of the city had been neglected and the last-minute attempts which were made to improve them had little effect. The victors sacked the city for ten days, then departed taking as many prisoners as they could hold on board their ships. One of these prisoners was Kaminiates, who was later set free in an exchange of prisoners. He subsequently wrote a detailed account of the siege. This book presents the Greek text (as established by Gertrud Böhlig, reprinted by permission of the publisher, W. De Gruyter), together with the first English translation, made by David Frendo, and an introduction and notes by David Frendo and Thanos Fotiou.

The Christian culture of Rus (the medieval precursor of modern Russia, Ukraine and Belarus) is sometimes presented either as a reflection of an indigenous spirituality wrapped in borrowed (Byzantine) forms or, by contrast, as merely a provincial version of its Byzantine original. The essays in this volume start from the premise that neither view is adequate. The history of culture - even of a self-consciously imitative culture - involves a continual process of inevitable 'mistranslation', as the imported models are reshaped and reinterpreted according to local resources, circumstances and preconceptions. These essays explore aspects of the 'translation of culture' on several levels: from the semantic processes of the actual translation of written texts from Greek into Slavonic, through to larger issues of ideology and identity. They consider both the initial stages of such 'translation' (from Byzantium to Rus) and some of the subsequent 'retranslations' of the Byzantine heritage in the culture of Rus and - eventually - of Russia.

A presentation of translated Greek sources in English.

Studies on the reception of the classical tradition are an indispensable part of classical studies. Understanding the importance of ancient civilization means also studying how it was used subsequently. This kind of approach is still relatively rare in the field of Byzantine Studies. This volume, which is the result of the range of interests in (mostly) non-English-speaking research communities, takes an important step to filling this gap by investigating the place and dimensions of ’Byzantium after Byzantium’. This collection of essays uses the idea of ’reception-theory’ and expands it to show how European societies after Byzantium have responded to both the reality, and the idea of Byzantine Civilisation. The authors discuss various forms of Byzantine influence in the post-Byzantine world from architecture to literature to music to the place of Byzantium in modern political debates (e.g. in Russia). The intentional focus of the present volume is on those aspects of Byzantine reception less well-known to English-reading audiences, which accounts for the inclusion of Bulgarian, Czech, Polish and Russian perspectives. As a result this book shows that although so-called 'Byzantinism' is a pan-European phenomenon, it is made manifest in local/national versions. The volume brings together specialists from various countries, mainly Byzantinists, whose works focus not only on Byzantine Studies (that is history, literature and culture of the Byzantine Empire), but also on the influence of Byzantine culture on the world after the Fall of Constantinople.

Byzantium, that dark sphere on the periphery of medieval Europe, is commonly regarded as the immutable residue of Rome's decline. In this highly original and provocative work, Alexander Kazhdan and Ann Wharton Epstein revise this traditional image by documenting the dynamic social changes that occurred during the eleventh and twelfth centuries.