41 research outputs found
Cassiodorus and the reluctant provinciales of Dalmatia
No full textLetters from Cassiodorus Variae directed to the provinciales of Dalmatia show a general understanding and description of this area as inhabited by people that try to avoid taxation. This example show how the different area subjected to Theoderic's power are typified through a selection of letters which insist on the same topic
The Duke of Istria, the Roman Past, and the Frankish Present
No full textItaly and the East Roman World in the Medieval Mediterranean addresses the understudied topic of the Italian peninsula’s relationship to the continuation of the Roman Empire in the East, across the early and central Middle Ages.
The East Roman world, commonly known by the ahistorical term "Byzantium", is generally imagined as an Eastern Mediterranean empire, with Italy part of the medieval "West". Across 18 individually authored chapters, an introduction and conclusion, this volume makes a different case: for an East Roman world of which Italy forms a crucial part, and an Italian peninsula which is inextricably connected to—and, indeed, includes—regions ruled from Constantinople. Celebrating a scholar whose work has led this field over several decades, Thomas S. Brown, the chapters focus on the general themes of empire, cities and elites, and explore these from the angles of sources and historiography, archaeology, social, political and economic history, and more besides. With contributions from established and early career scholars, elucidating particular issues of scholarship as well as general historical developments, the volume provides both immediate contributions and opens space for a new generation of readers and scholars to a growing field
Bishops and Merchants: The Economy of Ravenna at the Beginnings of the Middle Ages
No full textThe temporary conquest of Ravenna by king Austulf (751 AD) and the end of the rule of the exarchate is the beginning of a new phase of this Imperial city moving its role towards a new position as centre of the new idea of power during the middle Ages. In the last fifteen years the excavations conducted in Classe, one of the main Adriatic ports, and the last excavations in the centre of the town, give us a new quantitative perspective for the period that follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Despite the fall of the Exarchal administration, the infrastructure and city services were still guaranteed, probably by the Episcopal authority, in the same way that was happening in many other Italian cities from the North to Sicily, and the same was true especially concerning the urban defenses. If we adhere to old-fashioned historical theories the final act of Late Antiquity is in fact during the seventh century, caused by Arab invasions. Certainly, the idea that north-western Europe was cut off from the newly-Islamic Mediterranean from this period, thereby causing it to develop a dynamic economic focus within the Frankish realm of Charlemagne, has been comprehensively disproved not only by archaeology but also by a more inquisitive reading of contemporary documents. In this lecture I will try to demonstrate with archaeological evidence that Ravenna and Classe played a fundamental role in the creation of a new economic system that laid the foundations for the following political asset
Beihammer, Constantinou, and Parani (eds.), Court Ceremonies and Rituals of Power in Byzantium and the Medieval Mediterranean: Comparative Perspectives (Brill, 2013)
No full textRecommended from our members
Kastron, Rabaḍ and Arḍūn: the Case of Artanuji
No full textA famous passage in Konstantinos Porphyrogennetos’s De Adminstrando Imperio (DAI) tells the story of a Byzantine manoeuvre that almost went very wrong. In 923, two deaths exacerbated tensions between different branches of the ruling Bagrationi family in Iberia. On the death of Adarnase, his Georgian title of king, mep‘e of K‘art‘li, passed to his eldest son Davit‘. However, it was unclear who would receive his Byzantine court title of kouropalatēs, which was in the gift of the Byzantine emperor. At the same time, the death of the ruler of the kastron of Artanuji had meant that this crucial centre of Bagrationi power had passed into the hands of a certain Ashot ‘Kiskasis’ (‘the Nimble’). DAI tells us that Ashot the Nimble feared the rising power of his son-in-law Gurgen, who had himself been making overtures to the Byzantines. So Ashot decided to offer his kastron to the Byzantines. This appeared to present the Byzantine emperor Romanos Lekapenos with an opportunity to take direct control of a key potential strategic and economic outpost for Byzantine power in Transcaucasia
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Turning to Another Possible Medieval Millennium
No full textNo abstract provided by the editor
Beihammer, Constantinou, and Parani (eds.), Court Ceremonies and Rituals of Power in Byzantium and the Medieval Mediterranean: Comparative Perspectives (Brill, 2013)
No full textReview of Alexander Beihammer, Stavroula Constantinou, and Maria G. Parani, eds., Court Ceremonies and Rituals of Power in Byzantium and the Medieval Mediterranean: Comparative Perspectives (Leiden: Brill, 2013)
Revisiting Pre-Modern Ethnicity and Nationhood: Preface
No full textIntroduction to special journal edition of Medieval Worlds, focused on revisiting and reframing the debate over ethnicity and nationhood before modernity
