This particular topic has not yet received systematic attention, although the study of Antiochian history has been ongoing since the 1830s and has experienced a real renaissance in the last two decades. In addition to two cross-sectional historical syntheses, covering the Byzantine period (Downey 1961, De Giorgi and Eger 2021), research on Antioch has resulted in monographs on topography and urbanism (Müller 1839, Saliou 2010 et al. ), art (Levi 1947, Campbell 1988), political system and governance (Petit 1955, Liebeschuetz 1972), ethnic composition (Haddad 1947), social and professional groups (Kurbatov 1962, Ceran 1969), religious affairs (Féstugière 1959, Soler 2006, Maxwell 2006, Sandwell 2007), links with the natural history (De Giorgi 2016), or education (Cribiore 2009) – all of which covered internal aspects of the functioning of Antioch. Meanwhile, we can assume that Antioch, as a metropolis of several hundred thousand inhabitants, seat of the state authorities, one of the capitals of the Christian world and—at the same time—a well-known centre of education and science, a great hub of crafts and trade, influenced not only the immediate region of northern Syria, but also far beyond it. What, then, were the forms of this influence? Do political and ecclesiastical missions, military and trade expeditions, journeys of intellectuals and students, originating from Antioch, exhaust the subject? By what routes did Byzantium’s political, economic and religious influence, radiating abroad precisely from Antioch, run and how far did it reach?
This paper seeks to reinterpret the chronicle attributed to John Malalas as a narrative shaped by the experiences of crisis and urban decline, as much as Antiochene cultural memory. During the 5th and 6th century, Antioch was plagued by frequent social unrest, afflicted by natural disasters, sacked and destroyed by Sasanian troops, and ultimately beset…
In the Summer of 540 CE, Khosrow I Anusheruwan reached the city of Antioch after a rather slow march through northern Syria. Following the capitulation of the city, Khosrow’s soldiers started what can only be considered a premeditated and planned process of deporting the entire population of Antioch. It was ‘the whole of Syria that…
Antioch is an invisible city, assumed to have faded out after the Islamic conquests in the early seventh century. Indeed, this perspective persists in scholarship until today. The Princeton archaeologists of the 1930s set Byzantine Antioch as their prize and documented extraordinarily little of the excavated remains of the medieval city. Synthetic analysis of urban…
Antioch, the capital of the Roman province of Syria, was the seat of one of the three, and later one of the five, patriarchs, whose role often went beyond strictly religious issues. The pontificate of Gregory I, who replaced Anastasius I in the office (accused of financial negligence), is a splendid illustration of that. Before…