The Twilight Of Byzantium

The centuries-long economic and military decline of the Byznatine Empire, which culminated in its political disappearance as a state in 1459, was, paradoxically, accompanied by high levels of cultural achievement. Aimed at broadening our understanding of the final phase of the empire, this collection explores how Byzantine ideological, spiritual, and artistic traditions transcending the economic and political realities of the time. The papers, delivered at an interdisciplinary colloquium held in May 1989 at Princeton University, deal with hagiographic, monastic, literary, architectural, and artistic questions, as well as the general cultural and social issues, of this fascinating period. Along with the editors, the contributors are Smilkjka Gabelic, Thalia Gouma-Peterson, Angela Hero, Robert Ousterhout, Marcus Rautman, Steven Reinert, Alice Mary Talbot, SPeros Vryonis, and John J. Yiannias. Slobodan Curcic is Professor of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University. Doula Mouriki teaches at the Technical University of Athens. Publications of the Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University. Originally published in 1991. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

For 250 years the Vikings sailed the oceans of the world. Their exploits are legendary. They reached far into Russia, sailed the Mediterranean from one end to the other, and crossed the Atlantic to North America. At one point they ruled much of England and Ireland. Few cities, even those far from the coastline were safe from them. But it was not all raiding, they were also settlers, explorers. and soldiers. This is the story of one of these men, Erik Sigvaldsson, who like many before and after him, ended up in the service of the emperor of Byzantium.

The Byzantine Empire, fragmented and enfeebled by the Fourth Crusade in 1204, never again recovered its former extent, power and influence. Its greatest revival came when the Byzantines in exile reclaimed their capital city of Constantinople in 1261 and this book narrates the history of this restored empire from 1261 to its conquest by the Ottoman Turks in 1453. First published in 1972, the book has been completely revised, amended, and in part rewritten, with its source references and bibliography updated to take account of scholarly research on this last period of Byzantine history carried out over the past twenty years.

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.

The fourteen essays in this collection demonstrate a wide variety of approaches to the study of Byzantine architecture and its decoration, a reflection of both newer trends and traditional scholarship in the field. The variety is also a reflection of Professor Curcic’s wide interests, which he shares with his students. These include the analysis of recent archaeological discoveries; recovery of lost monuments through archival research and onsite examination of material remains; reconsidering traditional typological approaches often ignored in current scholarship; fresh interpretations of architectural features and designs; contextualization of monuments within the landscape; tracing historiographic trends; and mining neglected written sources for motives of patronage. The papers also range broadly in terms of chronology and geography, from the Early Christian through the post-Byzantine period and from Italy to Armenia. Three papers examine Early Christian monuments, and of these two expand the inquiry into their architectural afterlives. Others discuss later monuments in Byzantine territory and monuments in territories related to Byzantium such as Serbia, Armenia, and Norman Italy. No Orthodox church being complete without interior decoration, two papers discuss issues connected to frescoes in late medieval Balkan churches. Finally, one study investigates the continued influence of Byzantine palace architecture long after the fall of Constantinople.