The roundtable draws from the implications of Actor Network Theory for our understanding of human-nature relations in Byzantium. This framework posits that nonhuman actors (objects, animals, natural phenomena) play significant roles in shaping dynamic and interdependent social networks alongside humans. Concepts derived from this approach, such as “material agency” and “flat ontologies,” have long stimulated the reconsideration of nonhuman participants in historic developments. The idea of agency being distributed “in the world and its myriad relationships,” “networks,” or “assemblages,” has gradually led to a more “symmetric anthropology” among students of cultural history. Less anthropocentric approaches have gradually been introduced in Byzantine studies, yet the role of nonhuman actors in the construction and perception of Eastern Roman history and culture still awaits adequate exploration. At our roundtable, we discuss the implications and affordances posed by a definition of history as more than an exclusively human affair for our research in Byzantine culture, society, art and everyday life. There is no shortage of impulses to shift our perspective (animal turn, ecocriticism, post humanism, etc.). We believe that recognizing history as being constituted by a multitude of heterogenous elements, including animals and plants, can help us grasp the construction of human and non-human identities in Byzantium more profoundly. Whilst the specificities of Byzantine cultural traditions strongly determine how humans in the Byzantine world saw the world and acted in it, we propose that a multitude of seemingly exclusively human activities (literary, artistic, everyday practices, etc.) can be better understood as products of socio-ecological entanglements and multi species interdependencies.
Byzantine Studies has deployed the ‘animal’ and the ‘arboreal’ turns in all too few arenas, but with significant implications nonetheless. This paper contributes to ruminations beyond the human by exploring the potential of ‘plant humanities’ for the field. Specifically, it examines the elaborate and intriguing role of grass in Homily 5 of Basil of Caesarea’s…
Focusing on the waters around Constantinople, this paper explores seaborne relic translation scenes in Early and Middle Byzantine hagiography and homiletics. By scrutinising the underlying type-scene, the study sheds light on the Byzantine conceptions of the sea as a liminal space with quasi-agency. Among the recurring literary motifs are the calming of turbulent waters upon…
In late Byzantine society, hunting and the consumption of game formed a subtle dialogue between nature, hierarchy, and power. Noble prey such as falcons, stags, and cranes symbolised imperial virtue and mastery over the natural world, while hares, partridges, and small birds suggested humility, irony or self-reflection. These contrasts turned hunting into a moral and…