Politics And Government In Byzantium

Author : Jonathan Shea
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 0755601947
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.43/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Politics and Government in Byzantium written by Jonathan Shea and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-05-14 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The eleventh century marked a turning point in the history of the Byzantine Empire. At its start Byzantium was the paramount power in the Mediterranean world, by turns feared, respected and admired. By the century's close the empire had lost half of its territory and had managed only a partial recovery under the leadership of the Komnenos family. How did a powerful and famously wealthy empire collapse so quickly? The contemporary accounts of this turbulent 'long' century (taken here as c. 950–1100) attribute the empire's decline to the emperors' reckless and self-serving favouring of civilian bureaucrats and, while these sources are today widely acknowledged as biased and unreliable, modern assessments of the century have hitherto failed to suggest any tangible alternatives. To circumvent this dearth of archival material, Jonathan Shea has meticulously analysed 2,200 unpublished seals from the period (more than a third of the known total extant today) to uncover exactly whom the emperors were favouring and promoting, as well as developing a nuanced and revealing picture of the makeup of the much-chastised civilian bureaucracy. The sigillographic evidence is throughout measured against the written material to give a fresh account of this key transitional century and a rare insight into Byzantine politics.

Author : Nevra Necipoğlu
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1139478621
Total Pages : 351 pages
Book Rating : 4.25/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Byzantium between the Ottomans and the Latins written by Nevra Necipoğlu and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-03-19 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a detailed analysis of Byzantine political attitudes towards the Ottomans and western Europeans during the critical last century of Byzantium. The book covers three major regions of the Byzantine Empire - Thessalonike, Constantinople, and the Morea - where the political orientations of aristocrats, merchants, the urban populace, peasants, and members of ecclesiastical and monastic circles are examined against the background of social and economic conditions. Through its particular focus on the political and religious dispositions of individuals, families and social groups, the book offers an original view of late Byzantine politics and society that is not found in conventional narratives. Drawing on a wide range of Byzantine, western and Ottoman sources, it authoritatively illustrates how late Byzantium was drawn into an Ottoman system in spite of the westward-looking orientation of the majority of its ruling elite.

Author : Anthony Kaldellis
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674967402
Total Pages : 309 pages
Book Rating : 4.03/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Byzantine Republic written by Anthony Kaldellis and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2015-02-02 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although Byzantium is known to history as the Eastern Roman Empire, scholars have long claimed that this Greek Christian theocracy bore little resemblance to Rome. Here, in a revolutionary model of Byzantine politics and society, Anthony Kaldellis reconnects Byzantium to its Roman roots, arguing that from the fifth to the twelfth centuries CE the Eastern Roman Empire was essentially a republic, with power exercised on behalf of the people and sometimes by them too. The Byzantine Republic recovers for the historical record a less autocratic, more populist Byzantium whose Greek-speaking citizens considered themselves as fully Roman as their Latin-speaking “ancestors.” Kaldellis shows that the idea of Byzantium as a rigid imperial theocracy is a misleading construct of Western historians since the Enlightenment. With court proclamations often draped in Christian rhetoric, the notion of divine kingship emerged as a way to disguise the inherent vulnerability of each regime. The legitimacy of the emperors was not predicated on an absolute right to the throne but on the popularity of individual emperors, whose grip on power was tenuous despite the stability of the imperial institution itself. Kaldellis examines the overlooked Byzantine concept of the polity, along with the complex relationship of emperors to the law and the ways they bolstered their popular acceptance and avoided challenges. The rebellions that periodically rocked the empire were not aberrations, he shows, but an essential part of the functioning of the republican monarchy.

Author : Anthony Kaldellis
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674365402
Total Pages : 309 pages
Book Rating : 4.07/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Byzantine Republic written by Anthony Kaldellis and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2015-02-02 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although Byzantium is known to history as the Eastern Roman Empire, scholars have long claimed that this Greek Christian theocracy bore little resemblance to Rome. Here, in a revolutionary model of Byzantine politics and society, Anthony Kaldellis reconnects Byzantium to its Roman roots, arguing that from the fifth to the twelfth centuries CE the Eastern Roman Empire was essentially a republic, with power exercised on behalf of the people and sometimes by them too. The Byzantine Republic recovers for the historical record a less autocratic, more populist Byzantium whose Greek-speaking citizens considered themselves as fully Roman as their Latin-speaking “ancestors.” Kaldellis shows that the idea of Byzantium as a rigid imperial theocracy is a misleading construct of Western historians since the Enlightenment. With court proclamations often draped in Christian rhetoric, the notion of divine kingship emerged as a way to disguise the inherent vulnerability of each regime. The legitimacy of the emperors was not predicated on an absolute right to the throne but on the popularity of individual emperors, whose grip on power was tenuous despite the stability of the imperial institution itself. Kaldellis examines the overlooked Byzantine concept of the polity, along with the complex relationship of emperors to the law and the ways they bolstered their popular acceptance and avoided challenges. The rebellions that periodically rocked the empire were not aberrations, he shows, but an essential part of the functioning of the republican monarchy.

Author : Michael Angold
Publisher : Longman Publishing Group
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.74/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Byzantine Empire 1025-1204 written by Michael Angold and published by Longman Publishing Group. This book was released on 1984 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Dimiter Angelov
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 0521857031
Total Pages : 23 pages
Book Rating : 4.31/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Imperial Ideology and Political Thought in Byzantium, 1204-1330 written by Dimiter Angelov and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-02-08 with total page 23 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study investigates Byzantine imperial ideology, court rhetoric and political thought after the Latin conquest of Constantinople in 1204.

Author : Peter Charanis
Publisher : Variorum Publishing
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 464 pages
Book Rating : 4.85/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Social, Economic and Political Life in the Byzantine Empire written by Peter Charanis and published by Variorum Publishing. This book was released on 1973 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Michael Angold
Publisher : London : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 362 pages
Book Rating : 4.02/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Byzantine Government in Exile written by Michael Angold and published by London : Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1975 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Byzantine Government in Exile Government and Society under the Laskarids of Nicaea (1204-1261)

Author : Anthony Kaldellis
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 110821021X
Total Pages : 1438 pages
Book Rating : 4.18/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Cambridge Intellectual History of Byzantium written by Anthony Kaldellis and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-11-30 with total page 1438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings into being the field of Byzantine intellectual history. Shifting focus from the cultural, social, and economic study of Byzantium to the life and evolution of ideas in their context, it provides an authoritative history of intellectual endeavors from Late Antiquity to the fifteenth century. At its heart lie the transmission, transformation, and shifts of Hellenic, Christian, and Byzantine ideas and concepts as exemplified in diverse aspects of intellectual life, from philosophy, theology, and rhetoric to astrology, astronomy, and politics. Case studies introduce the major players in Byzantine intellectual life, and particular emphasis is placed on the reception of ancient thought and its significance for secular as well as religious modes of thinking and acting. New insights are offered regarding controversial, understudied, or promising topics of research, such as philosophy and medical thought in Byzantium, and intellectual exchanges with the Arab world.

Author : Elizabeth Jeffreys
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 0199252467
Total Pages : 1053 pages
Book Rating : 4.66/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Studies written by Elizabeth Jeffreys and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 1053 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Studies presents discussions by leading experts on all significant aspects of this diverse and fast-growing field. Byzantine Studies deals with the history and culture of the Byzantine Empire, the eastern half of the Late Roman Empire, from the fourth to the fourteenth century. Its centre was the city formerly known as Byzantium, refounded as Constantinople in 324 CE, the present-day Istanbul. Under its emperors, patriarchs, and all-pervasive bureaucracy Byzantium developed a distinctive society: Greek in language, Roman in legal system, and Christian in religion. Byzantium's impact in the European Middle Ages is hard to over-estimate, as a bulwark against invaders, as a meeting-point for trade from Asia and the Mediterranean, as a guardian of the classical literary and artistic heritage, and as a creator of its own magnificent artistic style.