Nicholas Melvani - Böcker

This study of Constantinople's monasteries within their urban framework during the last decades of Byzantium (1394–1453) explores the activity of monks, nuns, and affiliated laypeople such as patrons just before the city’s Ottoman conquest and transformation into the capital of an Islamic Empire.The book captures aspects of Byzantine institutions, social and economic networks, scholarly and artistic activity, spiritual trends, and the city’s appearance during its final phase as the capital of the Byzantine Empire, when culture and religious life were caught between the Italian Renaissance and the Ottoman expansion. The Byzantine capital was merely the nucleus of a city-state, but still preserved a part of its imperial heritage and memories of its past glory. The chapters tell the story of Constantinople at the moment the city’s monuments and built environment left their final mark on the landscape on the shores of the Bosporus.These fresh insights into Byzantine religious, cultural, and urban history – and updated picture of one of the most legendary cities of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period – will appeal not only to scholars and students of Byzantine and Ottoman culture, but also to anyone interested in the entangled world of the Eastern Mediterranean.

The fact that elements of the tangible and intangible heritage of Byzantine Constantinople were preserved as the city’s urban layout was gradually transformed during the decades after the Ottoman conquest of 1453, is well known to international scholarship. Yet, the nature of this transformation and the degree to which the Byzantine background affected 16th-century realities is possible through the thorough study of an array of texts, careful examination of the material remains still visible in modern Istanbul, and a close focus on the diverse institutions active in the Ottoman capital.The contributors to the present volume investigate diverse aspects of the urban physiognomy and cultural activity of Constantinople/Istanbul during its early Ottoman phase by concentrating on the urban and institutional framework, the theological, antiquarian, and political interests of travelers and scholars active in the city, the religious life of local Christians, the appearance, use, and appropriation of the Byzantine monuments and public spaces, and the ways the image of the city was captured by artists and mapmakers.