1st Edition

Italy and the East Roman World in the Medieval Mediterranean Empire, Cities and Elites, 476-1204

Edited By Thomas J. MacMaster, Nicholas S.M. Matheou Copyright 2021
400 Pages 22 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

400 Pages 22 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

400 Pages 22 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

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... Read more

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.

‘In sum, this festschrift is a harmonious reflection of the broad and excellent work of Tom Brown as a teacher, a rightfully renowned scholar, and, maybe most importantly, a friend to so many people. The collection of course caters mostly to scholars working in the field of early medieval Italy but, given the inclusiveness of its chapters, will also find an audience among students and the historically interested general reader’ - Early Medieval Europe, 2024: 32 (3).