This Introduction lays the foundation for the book by showcasing the interdisciplinary methods and parameters employed in this study of the marriage process from late antiquity through medieval Byzantium.

Translated Byzantine lives of saints occupied considerable space in the hagiographic corpus of Rus and medieval Russia. But original (non-translated) vitae differ significantly from their Greek models in several respects: the very causes of their subjects’ sanctity (the Rus corpus emphasises saintly princes and founders of monasteries); their extremes of self-mortification (as in the case of Varlaam of Keret); and the extravagance of their feats (such as those of Andrew of Crete, or Petr and Fevroniia). Compared to Byzantine hagiography, the Lives of holy fools are overrepresented in the repertoire of medieval Rus, while female saints are underrepresented in it. In the modern era, Russian literature has drawn heavily on the medieval vitae. This tradition became pronounced in the mid-nineteenth century, but communist writers of the twentieth century also fashioned their heroes in the hagiographic mould.

A short epilogue brings together the themes of the book, inviting us to look at the period not as a ‘Dark’ or ‘Golden Age’ but as a period of great complexity and transformation. As Gregory of Tours himself wrote: many things happened, both good and bad.

This chapter introduces the key themes and characters in Byzantine literary reconfigurations of epic. After some introductory remarks about the reception of ancient Greek epic in Byzantium, the chapter is divided into two main parts: the first is dedicated to the only Byzantine epos Digenis Akritis (twelfth century CE), the other to late Byzantine romances which contain Homeric themes, especially the Byzantine Iliad, and Byzantine Achilleid, both from the fourteenth century. Kulhánková’s discussion also pays close attention to the question of genre, probing the overlapping of romance and epos in these works, and revealing their mutual influences.

This chapter locates a shift in beginning in the seventh century in which the power to halt quakes began to move away from collective repentance and toward saintly intercession. First, it examines the seventh-century Life of St. Symeon Stylites the Younger, a Syrian pillar saint with ties to Constantinople. It focuses in particular on hymns recorded in the Life for earthquakes that purportedly caused them to cease when sung by the holy man. The chapter shows how seventh-century Byzantines could have constructed the role of the saintly intercessor when faced with natural disasters. Next, it analyzes changes in Constantinople’s earthquake commemoration rite in the eighth century, specifically the introduction of the Theotokos as the city’s chief protection against earthquakes. Eighth-century liturgical editors borrowed from the rites commemorating the enemy invasions of Constantinople in 623, 626, and 717–18, in which the Theotokos was remembered to play a prominent role in protecting the city. It shows how the earthquake commemoration liturgy no longer saw earthquakes as divine judgment against the sin of the city, but as outside threats to the city for which powerful heavenly intercessions were needed.

This chapter discusses how East Roman emperors utilized the theology of divine chastisement, particularly the efficacy accorded to repentance, to their advantage. During the earthquakes of 396 and 447, Emperors Arcadius and Theodosius II, respectively, led mass penitential rituals and performed public acts of humility until the quakes ceased. Such public acts of repentance posed a political risk to emperors since they could appear to confirm their responsibility for the disasters. However, imperial supporters like bishop Severian of Gabala and historian Socrates Scholasticus highlighted the quakes’ cessation rather than their cause, and located the power to halt quakes in the humble prayers of the rulers themselves rather than worshippers as a collective. In the aftermath of these earthquakes, authorities framed Roman emperors as “New Davids” – effective spiritual intercessors as well as military protectors – inaugurating a biblical typology for emperors that would continue throughout Byzantine history.

This chapter concerns Constantinople’s liturgical rite for the commemoration of earthquakes in its original, fifth-century form. Celebrated each year on the anniversary of certain quakes, worshippers ritually reenacted local earthquakes, performing a long, penitential procession that retraced the earthquake evacuation route. The rite was structured by biblical readings, hymns, and prayers that framed the people of Constantinople as the sinful, biblical people of God. In ritual performance, worshippers could envision quakes as manifestations of divine wrath against the sins of the city, and their collective repentance as effective in restoring stability to the earth and balance within the human-environment-divine relationship. After discussing the liturgical rite, its performance, and theology, the chapter locates the origins of its theology of divine chastisement in local homilies and ritual responses to earlier quakes, focusing in particular on the archbishop John Chrysostom’s Constantinopolitan homilies on earthquakes from the early fifth century.

This chapter examines the ways in which Byzantine political and ecclesiastical elites recast local earthquakes as divine blessing upon the city rather than manifestations of divine wrath as evinced in the liturgical commemoration rite. First, it examines a legend that arose in connection with the earthquake of 438 that framed it as a divine theophany. Following the divisive Council of Chalcedon in 451, ecclesiastical authorities in Constantinople’s imperial church used the legend against their miaphysite opponents to cast the quake as divine approval of Constantinople’s political and theological claims. Next, it turns to the earthquake of 557, which partially destroyed the famous church of Hagia Sophia built by the emperor Justinian in 537. Justinian rebuilt the church in 562 and held an elaborate ceremony complete with a liturgy of rededication for the church. This ceremony and its liturgy eschewed the theology of divine chastisement and framed the quake as a temporary setback, an opportunity for Justinian to display his prowess over the destructive effects of nature by rebuilding the church to be more magnificent than before.

This chapter describes how medieval Constantinople ceased to commemorate new local earthquakes on its liturgical calendar and instead crafted new ways of responding liturgically to seismicity. First it discusses new liturgical hymnography added to the commemoration rite for the quake of October 26, 740, and the establishment of that day as an annual “earthquake day” on which worshippers could reflect on natural disaster in the abstract, even as the hymns presented an incoherent set of conflicting theologies of earthquakes. It then examines how earthquakes from the distant past became potent ideological symbols in this period. It concludes with an examination of a prayer from the late eighth century created for use whenever earthquakes struck, a form of liturgical response that came to replace the practice of commemorating new quakes.

As the recovery of the rich history of the expansive Byzantine Commonwealth pushes forward, we must renew our emphasis on the sturdy multi- and cross-cultural foundation upon which it was constructed. Christian Caucasia was a charter member of the Byzantine Commonwealth, but its social fabric and cultural orientation remained locked on the Iranian world for centuries to come. The fundamentally Iranic, or Persianate, nature of Christian Caucasian society is a reminder of the intense cross-cultural connections of Rome-Byzantium and Iran across late antiquity and into the medieval period.

Terms like “Classical Arabic,” “Classical Armenian,” “Classical Syriac,” and “Classical Persian,” though not entirely unproblematic, arouse minimal controversy and are widely used. These Near Eastern languages have their classical traditions of learning, all arising in the same region, all interacting with one another. Let us therefore envision a “Classical Near East” to foster modern scholarly exchange between specialists in pre-modern Near Eastern history and philology. This essay explores the prospects of a broader arena of ancient and medieval research for specialists in the premodern Near East that transcends the specializing delimitation of modern identities and religions

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.

This chapter sets the scene for a reorientation of thinking about the scope of Byzantium and Byzantine Studies for a new generation of scholarship. It charts the changes in the field since the seminal *East of Byzantium* volume of 1982 and argues for the inclusion of the broader Christian East under the umbrella of Byzantine Studies. To what degree is “East Rome” too limiting a concept for the vibrant fields of Eastern Christian Studies that find themselves often adjacent to Byzantium in modern scholarship? At the same time, real connections and disconnections must be explored across political and imperial lines, and the value of Global History is assessed as a tool for understanding the field holistically. The Byzantine Near East is a burgeoning field that brings many new questions and a host of literary, artistic, and material evidence to bear on what “Byzantium” meant in the early Middle Ages.