1st Edition
Inscribing Texts in Byzantium Continuities and Transformations
In spite of the striking abundance of extant primary material, Byzantine epigraphy remains uncharted territory. The volume of the Proceedings of the 49th SPBS Spring Symposium aims to promote the field of Byzantine epigraphy as a whole, and topics and subjects covered include: Byzantine attitudes towards the inscribed word, the questions of continuity and transformation, the context and function of epigraphic evidence, the levels of formality and authority, the material aspect of writing, and the verbal, visual and symbolic meaning of inscribed texts. The collection is intended as a valuable scholarly resource presenting and examining a substantial quantity of diverse epigraphic material, and outlining the chronological development of epigraphic habits, and of individual epigraphic genres in Byzantium. The contributors also discuss the methodological questions of collecting, presenting and interpreting the most representative Byzantine inscriptional material, and addressing epigraphic material to make it relevant to a wider scholarly community.
Opening Address, Cyril Mango
Part I. After Late Antiquity: Traditions and Transitions
1 The process of ‘Byzantinization’ in Late Antique epigraphy, Sylvain Destephen
2 Village churches and donors at the end of Antiquity, Ine Jacobs
3 Reading, viewing and inscribing faith: Christian epigraphy in the early Umayyad Levant, Sean Leatherbury
4 The epigraphy of the Abgar Story: Traditions and transitions, Ida Toth
Part II. Legibility and Readability
5 Inscriptions and the Byzantine beholder: The perception of script, Andreas Rhoby
6 Non-exposed funerary inscriptions and the cult of the cross between Italy and Byzantium, 6th–9th c., Antonio Felle
Part III. Church and State
7 The house of inscriptions: The epigraphic world of the middle Byzantine church, Georgios Pallis
8 State, strategy, and ideology in monumental imperial inscriptions, Nicholas Melvani
9 Inscriptions of church and state officials on Byzantine lead seals, Alexandra Wassiliou-Seibt
Part IV. Formal and Informal Inscriptions in Athens
10 The (in)formality of the inscribed word at the Parthenon: Legibility, script, content, Maria Xenaki
11 Byzantine funerary inscriptions on the Hephaisteion (Church of St George) in the Athenian Agora, Anne McCabe
Part V. Objects, Texts and Images
12 Towards a typology for the placement of names on works of art, Brad Hostetler
13 Word of image: Textual frames of early Byzantine icons, Maria Lidova
14 Short texts on small objects: The poetics of the Byzantine enkolpion, Ivan Drpic
Part VI. Case Studies
15 A Byzantine verse inscription from Konya, Marc Lauxtermann and Peter Thonemann
16 The church of Sts Theodoroi (formerly St Kournatos) in Myrtia, Laconia, and its inscriptions, Christos Stavrakos
17 A Lombard epigram in Greek, Marc Lauxtermann
Biography
Marc D. Lauxtermann, Stavros Niarchos Foundation Bywater and Sotheby Professor of Byzantine and Modern Greek Language and Literature, Exeter College, University of Oxford
Ida Toth, University Research Lecturer and Fellow, Wolfson College, University of Oxford
