RGZM/LEIZA - Byzanz zwischen Orient und Okzident – serie

The contributors to this volume examine the complex dynamics which arose between the Byzantine Empire and the Near East. Moving beyond the tradition of histoire événementielle, the contributions collected here highlight the passing of artistic practices, ideas and interlocutors between Byzantium and the Islamicate world. In this way, the book seeks to nuance and contextualize our understanding of the relationship between these two medieval cultural spheres.

This volume contains thirteen papers from a conference held in the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum in Mainz in 2015. The contributions primarily deal with the material culture of goldsmiths’ works, such as crosses, reliquary caskets, jewellery, enamel works, and precious stones, spanning the wide geographical area of Byzantium and many of its neighbours, from Russia via Trebizond and Serbia to Crete. Furthermore, written sources on Byzantine goldsmiths, their craft and the provenance of precious metals provide evidence for goldsmithing in Byzantium throughout its history.

This study reveals the artistic and cultic multiplicity of arrangements, consisting of archaism and modernization, ahead of the crystallization of the Iconostasis as the »distinctive feature of churches of the Byzantine rite«. Thus it demonstrates a material proof of cultural identity and religious consciousness of the Orthodox populace in an area (Crete) and a period (Venetian rule) that is characterized by both osmosis and conflict.The book researches the Bema display of Cretan churches in a time period spanning from the Byzantine re-conquest of the island (11th century) until the middle of the Venetian dominance (15th century). It focuses on the apparition and distribution of the Templon-barrier, the function of a certain group of frescoes as prostration images and the (partial) establishment of fresco-painted masonry screens at the Orthodox churches of the island, just before the prevalence of the »wooden wall of icons« – known as Iconostasis.

Jerusalem is a city holy to three world religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. From the early Byzantine period, Christian pilgrimage here and to other holy sites became a »mass phenomenon«. Thousands of Christians set out to holy sites in Palestine, Egypt and other places in order to physically experience salvation history and seek divine intervention in their lives. Numerous travel reports, pilgrim guides and other written sources highlight important aspects of pilgrimage. In addition, many well-preserved churches, monasteries, hostels and other buildings, as well as rich archaeological findings, provide us with a vivid and synthetic picture of the history of pilgrimage to the Holy Land. This volume presents the contributions of a conference held at Jerusalem in 2017. They address the phenomenon of the pilgrimage to Jerusalem from very different approaches using written and material sources. On the one hand, they ask how pilgrims travelled to the Holy Land, what was the infrastructure that made pilgrimages possible, what did they see and what impressed them. On the other hand, they approach the pilgrims themselves, their origins, their motivations and their itineraries.

General phenomena such as the organisation of the Byzantine navy and its operations or lighthouses are discussed in this volume as well as new geoarchaeological research methodologies in harbour archaeology. Most contributions in the present volume examine case studies for the most important maritime core region of the Byzantine Empire, the Aegean. This sea connected the remaining provinces of the empire in Southeastern Europe and Asia Minor after the loss of Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and North Africa to the Arabs in the 7th century A.D. In addition to technical and geographical aspect, the studies in this volume make clear that we need to explore more and more the social embedding of the seasides of Byzantium to understand their dynamics in all their complexity.The conference »Seasides of Byzantium. Harbours and Anchorages of a Mediterranean Empire«, from which the papers collected in the present volume emerged, took place in Athens in 2017 as part of a cooperation between the DFG-funded Special Research Programme (SPP-1630) »Harbours from the Roman Period to the Middle Ages« and the National Hellenic Research Foundation. It united historians, archaeologists and geoarchaeologists to explore harbours and anchorages as core maritime infrastructure to the Late Roman and Byzantine Empire.

The Preslav Treasure is one of the most important jewellery hoards of the Middle Ages and comprises over 180 pieces of jewellery and appliques, coins, and spoons, made from gold, silver, precious stones, pearls and enamels. The treasure was unearthed in 1978 near the town of Preslav in Bulgaria, which was the capital of the First Bulgarian State (681-1018) from the late ninth century to 971. The objects cast a light on the relations between medieval Bulgaria and its neighbour Byzantium: most of the valuable pieces would have come from Constantinople, perhaps on the occasion of the marriage between the Bulgarian Tsar Peter I (927-969) and the Byzantine princess Marie-Irene in 927.For the first time since its excavation, the Preslav Treasure has been subject to scientific analyses, conducted in the Leibniz-Zentrum für Archäologie Mainz, with a restoration and photographic documentation. This book comprises fourteen papers presented during the conference organised in collaboration with Musée du Louvre, Paris, in 2018.

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.

The exhibition "Byzantium – Splendour and Everyday Life" of the Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany in Bonn and the Römisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseums in Mainz (2010) opened up new perspectives for Byzantine research.This conference volume takes up the approach of the exhibition and deepens the discussion of its themes in an interdisciplinary framework. The focus is on everyday life within the urban and rural regions of the empire. The contributions in this volume bring together the results of the Mainz conference. They are dedicated to the capital Constantinople, the cities and their surroundings in the Balkans and Asia Minor, as well as everyday life at sea, in monasteries and in the countryside.

What do we know about the environments in which the Byzantine Empire unfolded in the eastern Mediterranean? How were they perceived and how did man and the environment mutually influence each other during the Byzantine millennium? Which approaches have been tried up until now to understand these interactions? And what could a further environmental-historical research agenda look like?The present volume brings together contributions from researchers who have approached these issues from very different perspectives. They focus on the explanatory power of traditional as well as “new” sources and the methods of Byzantine Studies and Byzantine archaeology for this hitherto little-explored sphere.