In the title of their masterful edited volume published in 2017, Marc Lauxtermann and Marc Whittow described Byzantium in the eleventh century as “being in between”. Lauxtermann describes the sense of this almost disorienting betweenness in his introduction: “between the anvil and the hammer, between Basil II and Alexios Komnenos, between the forces of the Normans, the Pechenegs and the Turks, or between different social groupings, cultural identities and religious persuasions”. The best remedy for disorientation is to find more reference points. As Byzantinists we habitually refer to those “between whom” Byzantium was situated as “the periphery”, taking almost for granted that the empire was the centre, not only to its subjects but also to its—at least its Christian—neighbours. Perhaps, as a means of reorientation in our sense of what the eleventh century was about, we can take up the challenge posed by the conference theme: to look truly beyond Byzantium, to examine the eleventh century from the perspective of those who centred their existence outside it. This Thematic Session brings together participants of the RELEVEN project, whose remit has been to re-examine the eleventh century through the networks built by travel of people and transmission of texts, with other early-career scholars working on the so-called “periphery” of the Byzantine eleventh century. We aim, through a lively exchange, to reorient our own senses, so that we are not “looking out” from Constantinople, or even indeed seeking “the view from outside”, but rather the sum of perspectives of many cultures looking at themselves, at Byzantium, and at each other.
The eleventh century is a watershed in the history of the empire of New Rome. In 1000 New Rome formed the most powerful Christian state in Europe and the Mediterranean, and one of two powerful co-hegemons in the eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, but by 1100 the empire had shrunk drastically in all directions. Scholars…
The eastward expansion of the Byzantine Empire in the late tenth and eleventh centuries brought sweeping political, administrative, fiscal, and economic transformations to the neighbouring communities gradually incorporated into its domains. This hegemonic restructuring also reshaped the cultural and intellectual landscape of urban and monastic centres across northern Syria, Mesopotamia, eastern Anatolia, and the Caucasus….
The Greek monastery of Veszprémvölgy is a mysterious case in the early history of Hungary. Its foundation is recorded in a twelfth-century copy of an earlier charter written in Greek with a supplement and confirmation in Latin. Both the source and the historical context of the establishment were the subject of a long dispute among…