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Τὰ μαθήματα for Byzantinists
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 March 2025
Abstract
This article presents a brief historiographical survey of scholarship on the history of science and history of knowledge in Byzantium since the 1920s and proposes several directions for future research. These include the study of instruments; of the language that Byzantine scientific texts, diagrams, and even instruments employ; the study of the involvement of women and of the knowledge created, transferred, and owned by non-elites. Ultimately, the article argues, a critical historiographical approach enables an understanding of the field of Byzantine studies as an element of the global and multidisciplinary systems of historical knowledge, including the history of science and the history of knowledge.
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham
Footnotes
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I would like to express my gratitude to Ingela Nilsson for challenging me to think about the historiography of the history of science in Byzantium and to Karine Chemla for her careful and considerate reading of this piece before publication. This publication was written as part of DyAs – Lines and Colours: Lunisolar Diagrams in Byzantine Astronomical Manuscripts (9th–15th C). This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 945298. This project has received funding from the Paris Region under the Paris Region fellowship Programme. This publication reflects only the author's views and the European Research Executive Agency and the European Commission are not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.
References
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2 Throughout this short paper I use the expression ‘the history of the sciences’ rather than ‘history of science’ when referring to the Byzantine context. Using this unconventional phrase is my operational solution for suspending the discussion as to how science should be defined for the Byzantine evidence. ‘The sciences’ translates τὰ μαθήματα which can be understood both in a strict sense as standing for the mathematical sciences and more broadly, as disciplinarily defined knowledge domains.
3 Hamburger, J. F., Roxburgh, D. J., and Safran, L. (eds.), The Diagram as Paradigm: cross-cultural approaches (Cambridge MA 2022)Google Scholar.
4 DyAs – Lines and Colours: Lunisolar Diagrams in Byzantine Astronomical Manuscripts (9th–15th C) <https://data.iledefrance.fr/pages/prfp-detail-en/?headless=true&q=id:2022-16#firstdiv> [accessed 22 March 2024]; EIDA – Editing and analysing hIstorical astronomical Diagrams with Artificial intelligence <https://eida.hypotheses.org/> [accessed 22 March 2024]; The Sphere – Knowledge System Evolution and the Shared Scientific Identity of Europe <https://sphaera.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/> [accessed 31 March 2024]; VHS – Computer Vision and Historical Analysis of Scientific Illustration <https://vhs.hypotheses.org/> [accessed 22 March 2024]; VoH – Visualization and Material Cultures of the Heavens in Eurasia and North Africa (4000 BCE–1700 CE) <https://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/research/projects/visualizations-of-the-heavens-working-group> [accessed 22 March 2024].
5 Research on science, technology and medicine in Byzantium does find a place in the pages of Byzantine studies journals (BZ, REB, BMGS, RGBS, DOP, Estudios Bizantinos, to name a few). It is difficult, however, to argue that there has been a consistent, purposeful, and systematic engagement with the promotion of this subfield. History of science journals such as Isis, Centaurus, JHA, Almagest, and so forth also publish studies of Byzantine material.
6 The fourteen articles I singled out are a negligible number in the over six hundred articles, short notes, critical studies, and other pieces (excluding editorials, obituaries, and reviews) published by BMGS to date.
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16 Théodoridès, ‘La science byzantine’, 501.
17 Yushkevich also contributed to the revised 1966 edition of Taton's Histoire.
18 A. P. Yushkevich, Istoriya matematiki v srednie veka (History of Mathematics in the Middle Ages) (Moscow 1961) 319.
19 Yushkevich, Istoriya matematiki, 323–5.
20 K. Vogel, ‘Byzantine science’, in J. M. Hussey (ed.), The Cambridge Medieval History, IV: The Byzantine Empire. Part II: Government, Church and Civilisation, vol. 4.2 (Cambridge 1967) 264–305 (264).
21 Vogel, Byzantine science’, 299.
22 Vogel, Byzantine science’, 300.
23 L. Daston, ‘The history of science and the history of knowledge’, KNOW: A Journal on the Formation of Knowledge 1.1 (2017) 131–54 (133).
24 Decades earlier, Michael Stephanides had taught the history of Byzantine science as Professor of History of Science at the University of Athens (1924–39). Stephanides was the first incumbent of the position which was announced in Isis in 1924 and whose significance was celebrated in the same journal two years later by George Sarton. The chair was abolished in 1939. On this see, G. Katsiampoura, ‘An appraisal of the current status of research on Byzantine sciences’, Centaurus 64.4 (2022) 919–24; F. E. Brasch et al., ‘Notes and correspondence’, Isis 6, no. 4 (1924) 538; and G. Sarton, ‘Notes and correspondence’, Isis 8, no. 1 (1926) 158.
25 A presentation of eCAB and access to the first two uploaded volumes is available at their website <https://uclouvain.be/en/node/108289> [accessed 19 March 2024].
26 Lazaris (ed.), A Companion to Byzantine Science. While of more limited scope, the volume edited by P. Magdalino and M. Mavroudi, The Occult Sciences in Byzantium (Geneva 2006), should also be mentioned here, among the pioneering publications that have had the greatest impact on the studies of the history of science and history of knowledge in Byzantium.
27 A. Tihon, ‘Conclusion’, in S. Lazaris (ed.), A Companion to Byzantine Science, 496–500.
28 Daston, ‘The history of science and the history of knowledge’, 132.
29 J. Renn, ‘From the history of science to the history of knowledge – and back’, Centaurus 57.1 (2015) 37–8.
30 J. Crow, ‘The imagined water supply of Byzantine Constantinople: new approaches’, Travaux et Mémoires 22.1 (2019) 211–35. See also J. Crow, J. Bardill, and R. Bayliss, The Water Supply of Byzantine Constantinople (London 2008).
31 Crow, ‘The imagined water supply’, 234.
32 S. Gerstel, ‘The village woman’, in Rural Lives and Landscapes in Late Byzantium: art, archaeology, and ethnography (Cambridge 2015) 70–101.
33 Mavroudi, M., ‘Learned women of Byzantium and the surviving record’, in Sullivan, D., Fisher, E., and Papaioannou, S. (eds.), Byzantine Religious Culture. Studies in honor of Alice-Mary Talbot (Leiden 2012) 65Google Scholar, n. 52 with bibliography.
34 As Maria Mavroudi notes (‘Learned women of Byzantium and the surviving record’, 6), ‘Matthew Paris knew John of Basingstoke personally and is explicit that his report is based on his friend's oral communications. Yet modern scholars are inclined to dismiss his account of Konstantina as literary fiction.’
35 Matthew Paris, Matthew Paris's English History. From the Year 1235 to 1273, tr. J. A. Giles, II (London 1853) 485.
36 As explored currently by the Necessity by Design: The Mathematics of Rhetoric in Middle Byzantine Culture research project (University of Southern Denmark).
37 The bibliography is extensive. Most recently, see J. Glynias, Z. Chitwood, and J. Pahlitzsch, ‘Laying a framework for Arabo-Greek studies: the translation of Arabic scientific texts into Greek between the ninth and fifteenth centuries’, Mediterranea. International Journal on the Transfer of Knowledge 7 (2022) 137–42 and M. Mavroudi, ‘Byzantine translations from Arabic into Greek: old and new historiography in confluence and in conflict’, Journal of Late Antique, Islamic and Byzantine Studies 2.1–2 (2023) 215–88.
38 I discuss Neophytos’ diagram in detail in my forthcoming monograph.
39 Dalton, O. M., ‘The Byzantine Astrolabe at Brescia’, Proceedings of the British Academy 12 (1926) 133–46Google Scholar.