1st Edition
Italy and the East Roman World in the Medieval Mediterranean Empire, Cities and Elites, 476-1204
Italy and the East Roman World in the Medieval Mediterranean addresses the understudied topic of the Italian peninsula’s relationship to the continuation of the Roman Empire in the East, across the early and central Middle Ages.
The East Roman world, commonly known by the ahistorical term "Byzantium", is generally imagined as an Eastern Mediterranean empire, with Italy part of the medieval "West". Across 18 individually authored chapters, an introduction and conclusion, this volume makes a different case: for an East Roman world of which Italy forms a crucial part, and an Italian peninsula which is inextricably connected to—and, indeed, includes—regions ruled from Constantinople. Celebrating a scholar whose work has led this field over several decades, Thomas S. Brown, the chapters focus on the general themes of empire, cities and elites, and explore these from the angles of sources and historiography, archaeology, social, political and economic history, and more besides. With contributions from established and early career scholars, elucidating particular issues of scholarship as well as general historical developments, the volume provides both immediate contributions and opens space for a new generation of readers and scholars to a growing field.
Introduction: Italy and the East Roman World, 476-1204 Bryan Ward-Perkins
Part 1: Sources & Historiography
1. Cassiodorus and the Reluctant Provinciales of Dalmatia Cristina La Rocca
2. Procopius of Caesarea in Renaissance Italy Brian Croke
3. Ambrosio de Morales and the Codex Vetustissimus Ovetensis Roger Collins
4. Constructing the Enemy: Byzantium in Paul the Deacon Eduardo Fabbro
Part 2: The Exarchate of Ravenna
5. Travels of an Exarch: Smaragdus and the Anastasian Walls Jim Crow
6. Remarks on the Sociocultural and Religious History of Early Byzantine Ravenna in the Light of Epigraphic and Archival Evidence Alessandro Bazzocchi
7. Exarchs and Others: Secular Patrons of Churches in the Sixth to Eighth Centuries Deborah M. Deliyannis
8. The Exarchate, the Empire, and the Elites: Some Comparative Remarks John Haldon
9. Bishops and Merchants: The Economy of Ravenna at the Beginnings of the Middle Ages Enrico Cirelli
Part 3: Ravenna after the Exarchate
10. Renovatio, Continuity, Innovation: Ravenna’s Role in Legitimation and Collective Memory (8th-9th centuries) Nicole Jantzen-Lopez
11. Thomas Morosini, First Latin Patriarch of Constantinople, and the Ravenna Connection Michael Angold
Part 4: Empire & Elites
12. Dux to Episcopus: From Ruling Cities to Controlling Sees in Byzantine Italy, 554-900 Edward M. Schoolman
13. The Duke of Istria, the Roman Past, and the Frankish Present Francesco Borri
14. Hegemony, Elitedom and Ethnicity: "Armenians" in Imperial Bari, 874-1071 Nicholas S. M. Matheou
Part 5: Elites & Cities
15. What Was Wrong with Bishops in Sixth-Century Southern Italy? Patricia Skinner
16. Before the Venetians? Evidence for Slave Trading out of Italy, 489-751 Thomas J. MacMaster
17. Urban Life in Lombard Italy: Genoa and Milan Compared Ross Balzaretti
18. A Dance to the Music of Time: Greeks and Latins in Medieval Taranto Vera von Falkenhausen
The Study of Empire and Cities in the Medieval Mediterranean: Personal Reflections and Conclusions Thomas S. Brown
Biography
Thomas J. MacMaster is teaching at Morehouse College, Georgia. His research focusses on the slave trade and human trafficking in the early medieval Mediterranean, the topic of his forthcoming monograph Slavery and the Making of the Medieval World. He has also published more generally on the transition from late antiquity to the early Middle Ages.
Nicholas S.M. Matheou is programme manager at the Armenian Institute, London. His research focusses on the social, political and economic history of the medieval Middle East and Mediterranean. He has published on East Roman political thought, has a forthcoming study and translation of an eleventh-century Armenian historian and his current research project focusses on the medieval city of Ani.
