Theodore Metochites

Theodore Metochites
Author: Ioannis Polemis
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2023-12-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 0755651413

The statesman and scholar Theodore Metochites was one of the most important personalities of the fourteenth-century Byzantine Empire. A close advisor to the emperor Andronikos II and restorer of the famous monastery of Chora in Constantinople, Metochites left various writings including orations, poems, essays and commentaries on classical and religious texts, in which he discusses the numerous problems that troubled him and his contemporaries, such as the decline of the state and the tension between public life and that of the philosopher. In this book, Ioannis Polemis provides the first in-depth study of Metochites' oeuvre, revealing the complex way he represented the authorial self to critique the politics and mores of his day, whilst at the same time shielding himself from potential criticism. Polemis details the way Metochites deftly manipulated figures and tropes from classical antiquity and early Christianity to justify his role in public life, which was traditionally shunned by scholars in the pursuit of 'logos'. The book provides unique insights into one of the late Empire's most important figures, as well as more widely deepening our understanding of classical reception in Byzantium and the social, political and intellectual climate of Constantinople in the fourteenth century.

Introduction To Astronomy By Theodore Metochites: Stoicheiosis Astronomike 1.5-30

Introduction To Astronomy By Theodore Metochites: Stoicheiosis Astronomike 1.5-30
Author: Emmanuel Paschos
Publisher: World Scientific
Total Pages: 403
Release: 2017-02-23
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9813207507

Stoicheiosis Astronomike ('Elements of Astronomy') is a late Byzantine comprehensive introduction to Astronomy. It was written by an outstanding figure in Byzantine culture and politics, who served also as prime minister. This volume makes available for the first time a large part of its astronomical contents, offering the original text with an English translation, accompanied by an introduction and analysis.This book describes the celestial spheres, the rotation of the planets, and especially the apparent trajectory of the sun with its uniform and anomalous rotations, which are used to determine the length of the year. Metochites proposed a new starting date for the calendar (6th of October 1283) specifying the position of the sun on that date. The work revived the interest in studies of Ptolemaic astronomy as attested by numerous annotations in the margins of the manuscripts.Besides its astronomical content there are statements on the epistemological method and other issues elucidating the spirit of that age. It will be of interest as an introduction to Byzantine astronomy for historians of science and philosophy, for astronomers, and those interested in the development of calendars.

Sight, Touch, and Imagination in Byzantium

Sight, Touch, and Imagination in Byzantium
Author: Roland Betancourt
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 419
Release: 2018-04-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108657273

Considering the interrelations between sight, touch, and imagination, this book surveys classical, late antique, and medieval theories of vision to elaborate on how various spheres of the Byzantine world categorized and comprehended sensation and perception. Revisiting scholarly assumptions about the tactility of sight in the Byzantine world, it demonstrates how the haptic language associated with vision referred to the cognitive actions of the viewer as they grasped sensory data in the mind in order to comprehend and produce working imaginations of objects for thought and memory. At stake is how the affordances and limitations of the senses came to delineate and cultivate the manner in which art and rhetoric was understood as mediating the realities they wished to convey. This would similarly come to contour how Byzantine religious culture could also go about accessing the sacred, the image serving as a site of desire for the mediated representation of the Divine.

A Companion to the Intellectual Life of the Palaeologan Period

A Companion to the Intellectual Life of the Palaeologan Period
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 531
Release: 2022-11-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004527087

Focuses on the scholarly interests of the intellectual elites during the last two centuries of Byzantium and the cultural environment in which they flourished, as well as the interaction between secular and church circles in Constantinople, Thessaloniki, Athos and beyond.

Mobility and Migration in Byzantium: A Sourcebook

Mobility and Migration in Byzantium: A Sourcebook
Author: Claudia Rapp
Publisher: V&R unipress
Total Pages: 501
Release: 2023-06-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 3737013411

Mobility and migration were not uncommon in Byzantium, as is true for all societies. Yet, scholarship is only beginning to pay attention to these phenomena. This book presents in English translation a wide array of relevant source texts from ca. 650 to ca. 1450 originally written in medieval Greek: from administrative records, saints’ lives and letters by churchmen to ego-documents by ambassadors and historical narratives by court historians. Each source text is accompanied by a detailed introduction, commentary and further bibliography, thus making the book accessible to both scholars and students and laying the groundwork for future research on the internal dynamics of Byzantine society.

Byzantine and Renaissance Philosophy

Byzantine and Renaissance Philosophy
Author: Peter Adamson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 508
Release: 2022
Genre: PHILOSOPHY
ISBN: 0192856413

Peter Adamson presents an engaging and wide-ranging introduction to two great intellectual cultures: Byzantium and the Italian Renaissance. First he tells the story of philosophy in the Eastern Christian world, from the 8th century to the 15th century, then he explores the rebirth of philosophy in Italy in the era of Machiavelli and Galileo.

The Byzantines

The Byzantines
Author: Averil Cameron
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 311
Release: 2009-11-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 1405198338

Winner of the 2006 John D. Criticos Prize This book introduces the reader to the complex history, ethnicity, and identity of the Byzantines. This volume brings Byzantium – often misconstrued as a vanished successor to the classical world – to the forefront of European history Deconstructs stereotypes surrounding Byzantium Beautifully illustrated with photographs and maps

The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Literature

The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Literature
Author: Stratis Papaioannou
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 785
Release: 2021-07-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 0197567118

This volume, the first ever of its kind in English, introduces and surveys Greek literature in Byzantium (330 - 1453 CE). In twenty-five chapters composed by leading specialists, The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Literature surveys the immense body of Greek literature produced from the fourth to the fifteenth century CE and advances a nuanced understanding of what "literature" was in Byzantium. This volume is structured in four sections. The first, "Materials, Norms, Codes," presents basic structures for understanding the history of Byzantine literature like language, manuscript book culture, theories of literature, and systems of textual memory. The second, "Forms," deals with the how Byzantine literature works: oral discourse and "text"; storytelling; rhetoric; re-writing; verse; and song. The third section ("Agents") focuses on the creators of Byzantine literature, both its producers and its recipients. The final section, entitled "Translation, Transmission, Edition," surveys the three main ways by which we access Byzantine Greek literature today: translations into other Byzantine languages during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages; Byzantine and post-Byzantine manuscripts; and modern printed editions. The volume concludes with an essay that offers a view of the recent past--as well as the likely future--of Byzantine literary studies.

The Occult Sciences in Byzantium

The Occult Sciences in Byzantium
Author: Paul Magdalino
Publisher: La Pomme d'or
Total Pages: 469
Release: 2006
Genre: History
ISBN: 9548446022

This volume represents the first attempt to examine occult sciences as a distinct category of Byzantine intellectual culture. It is concerned with both the reality and the image of the occult sciences in Byzantium, and seeks, above all, to represent them in their social and cultural context as a historical phenomenon. The eleven essays demonstrate that Byzantium was not marginal to the scientific culture of the Middle Ages, and that the occult sciences were not marginal to the learned culture of the medieval Byzantine world.