The Post–1204 Byzantine World: New Approaches and Novel Directions Papers from the Fifty-First Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies

List of Figures

List of Tables

List of Maps

List of Abbreviations

Preface

Notes on Contributors

Note on the Spelling of Names

Introduction: Entering the Post-1204 Byzantine World
Niels Gaul, Mike Carr and Yannis Stouraitis

PART I
Defining a Period: Key Dates

1                Did the Fall of Constantinople in 1204 Transform Byzantium?
Michael Angold

2                1261 – A Historical Break?
Dimiter Angelov

3                The Reconquest of Constantinople Did Not Take Place:
Towards an Unintelligible Historiography of Late Byzantium
Matthew Kinloch

4                Ottoman Perspectives on Byzantium around 1453
Dimitri J. Kastritsis

PART II
Key Concepts and Novel Approaches

5                Trebizond – a ‘Successor State’? (De)Constructing a Constantinopolicentric Concept
Annika Asp

6                Byzantine Canon Law in Southern Italy after the Fourth Crusade:
From Legal Culture to Cultural Identity
James Morton

7                Captives, Slaves, and Latin Categories of Greekness
Alasdair C. Grant                                                                                                                                                        

8                The Empire of Nicaea Goes Digital
Possibilities and Constraints

Ekaterini Mitsiou

PART III
Constantinople (and Beyond): Theatre of Power, Site of Memory

9                The Byzantios of Theodore Metochites
Paul Magdalino

10             Mehmed II’s Patria, Byzas’s Palace, and the Topkapı Palace:
Ottoman Hellenism in the Fifteenth Century
Aslıhan Akışık-Karakullukçu

11             The Poetics of Ruin and Reuse in Late Medieval Antiquarian Culture:
A Cross-Cultural Perspective
Ida Toth

PART IV
Empire of Rhetoric

12             From Oral to Written and Back Again: Late Byzantine Rhetoric at the Interface between Performance and Book Culture
Alexander Riehle

13             Nicholas Kabasilas, the Juridical School of Thessalonike, and the Context of his Treatise Against the Archons
Marie-Hélène Congourdeau

14             A Brief Note on an Unknown Work by Nicholas Kabasilas in Codex Vaticanus Graecus 16
Anna Gioffreda

15             Eloquence as a Gift: The Rhetoric of Piety in Donation Documents of Three Palaiologan Ladies
Anna Adashinskaya

16             Ioseph Bryennios’s Chapters: Enhancing the Effects of Didactic Authority
Florin Leonte

PART V
Workings of Empire

17             Petition, Philanthropia and Networking in Palaiologan Constantinople
Christos Malatras

18             Rome Is Where the Emperor’s Portrait Is: Anna Christidou’s ‘Via Egnatia Project’ and the Boundaries of Empire in Palaiologan Byzantium
Niels Gaul

19             Anna of Savoy in the History of Ioannes Kantakouzenos: A Persuasive Paradox?
Brian McLaughlin

20             Male Fashion in Late Byzantine Funerary Portraits: Threading Connections in Fifteenth-Century Mystras (Case Studies)
Andrea Mattiello

21             Imperial Orators as Power Brokers in Fifteenth-Century Byzantium
Nathanael Aschenbrenner

PART VI
Ruth Macrides: Sharing the Throne

22             Sharing the Throne: Succession in Late Byzantium
Ruth Macrides (†)

23             Blood or Election? The Imperial Office in the Thirteenth Century
Ruth Macrides (†)

           Index

Biography

Niels Gaul is the A. G. Leventis Professor of Byzantine Studies and currently Head of Classics at the University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom. His recent publications include The Greek Revolution of 1821: European Contexts, Scottish Connections (2024), co-edited with Roderick Beaton.

Mike Carr is Senior Lecturer in Late Medieval History at the University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom. His work focuses on the interactions between Latins, Byzantines, and Muslims in the medieval Mediterranean, especially the role of mer­chants and religious institutions in cross-cultural trade and con­flict. He is the author of Merchant Crusaders in the Aegean, 1291–1352 (2015). His recent books include Military Diasporas: Building of Empire in the Middle East and Europe (550 BCE–1500 CE) (2022), co-edited with Georg Christ and Patrick Sänger, and Crusading Against Christians in the Middle Ages (2024), co-edited with Nikos Chrissis and Gianluca Raccagni.

Yannis Stouraitis is Senior Lecturer in Byzantine History at the University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom. His research focuses on collective identifications, war ethics and the social aspects of warfare, migration, and mnemohistory. His most important recent publications are Identities and Ideologies in the Medieval East Roman World (2022) and War and Collective Identities in the Middle Ages: East, West, and Beyond (2023).