Book contents
- Worlds of Byzantium
- Worlds of Byzantium
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Preface
- One Worlds of Byzantium
- I Patterns, Paradigms, Scholarship
- Two East of Byzantium Revisited
- Three Byzantium and the Turn to the East
- Four The Classical Near East
- Five Alternatives to Commonwealth
- II Images, Objects, Archaeology
- III Languages, Confessions, Empire
- Index
- References
Five - Alternatives to Commonwealth
Modes of Connectivity between Byzantium and Medieval Eastern Europe
from I - Patterns, Paradigms, Scholarship
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 October 2024
- Worlds of Byzantium
- Worlds of Byzantium
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Preface
- One Worlds of Byzantium
- I Patterns, Paradigms, Scholarship
- Two East of Byzantium Revisited
- Three Byzantium and the Turn to the East
- Four The Classical Near East
- Five Alternatives to Commonwealth
- II Images, Objects, Archaeology
- III Languages, Confessions, Empire
- Index
- References
Summary
Abstract:The Byzantine Commonwealth has been used as a descriptive category, a tool ofanalysis, and a framework for understanding (and dividing) the medieval world since its creationin the 1970s by Dmitri Obolensky. This article examines the scholarship on the ideaof ByzantineCommonwealth, both positive and negative that have been put forth over the intervening fiftyyears.Following this examination, the article suggests alternatives to this still pervasive ideawhich might expressin new wayssome of the key realities of interaction in this medieval space.Those alternatives include utilizing kinship structures as well as world system theory to look atthe relationship between Byzantium and the medieval eastern European world.
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- Information
- Worlds of ByzantiumReligion, Culture, and Empire in the Medieval Near East, pp. 98 - 120Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024