Ceramics

2021 ◽  
pp. 550-564
Author(s):  
Demetra Papanikola-Bakirtzi

During the Early Byzantine period, ceramic vessels evolved from Roman pottery; red-slip tableware produced by Asia Minor and North African workshops dominated the market. Christian motifs enriched the decorative repertoire. From the seventh century onward, glazing signaled a major change in the appearance of vessels during the Middle and Late Byzantine periods. Glazed White Ware from Constantinople monopolized the tableware market until the eleventh century. From this time onward a light-colored slip layer on red fabric ensured a surface suitable for decoration and allowed for the development of sgraffito decoration, the Byzantine pottery decorative technique par excellence. It also made the production of glazed decorated ceramics possible in parts of the empire without white clay. During the Late Byzantine period, decentralization of pottery workshops allowed the development of local characteristics.

1988 ◽  
Vol 38 ◽  
pp. 147-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clive Foss

In the Byzantine period, urban life in Anatolia underwent a decay in which ancient cities shrank behind reduced circuits of walls or withdrew to the fortified hilltops whence they had descended in the Hellenistic age. Even the greatest city of the empire, Constantinople, saw a drastic diminution of population and resources, abandonment of its ancient public works and services, and consequent transformation from a classical to a medieval city. These changes began with the devastating invasions of Persians and Arabs in the seventh century. Sources reveal little about Anatolia between the early seventh and mid-ninth century, a true dark age, but the evidence of archaeology often makes it possible to visualize conditions at the time.The Byzantines, whose empire long survived these troubles, generally occupied existing sites in Asia Minor where their ruins are superimposed on those of the Romans or earlier cultures. In only a few instances, usually occasioned by the needs of defence or of a militarized administration, were new sites founded. Although the Dark Ages were not a propitious time for urban development, some new towns did come into existence or prominence. Few of them have been studied. Strobilos on the Carian coast, therefore, is of some potential interest as an example of a Byzantine town which first appears in the historical record in the eighth century, and whose remains have been preserved.


1990 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
pp. 161-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clive Foss

Malagina was a place of considerable strategic importance in the Byzantine period, from the Dark Ages until the final collapse of imperial rule in Asia Minor. Frequent mentions in the sources indicate that it was a major base, a station on the route of imperial armies to the East, and the seat of the stables from which the expeditions were supplied. It had an administration of its own, and grew in importance as the Empire shrank. Although its general location, on the Sangarius river, has never been in doubt, the site has so far failed to be convincingly identified, in spite of serious attempts. Thanks to investigations in the field, it is now possible to provide Malagina with a precise location, and to identify and describe its fortress, whose remains add considerably to our knowledge of the site and its history. For the sake of completeness, these remains will be discussed in the context of what is known of the Byzantine and Ottoman history of the site.The first appearance of Malagina is in a curious text, an apocalyptic prophecy attributed to St. Methodius, but actually dating from the late seventh century. Its chronology can be determined from its forecast that the Arabs would break into Constantinople. Although that never happened, the prophecy has reasonably been associated with the great siege of 674–8. In preparation for that attack, the Arabs would, it announces, divide their forces into three parts, of which one would winter in Ephesus, another in Pergamum, and the third in Malagina. Although this provides no specific information about the site, it shows that Malagina was then considered an important military base, a likely goal for an Arab attack. It may also indicate that the place was actually taken and occupied by the Arabs on that occasion. In any case, Malagina was in existence by the seventh century.


2021 ◽  
pp. 450-467
Author(s):  
Anthony Kaldellis

After the Roman Empire lost Egypt and Syria to the Arab conquests of the seventh century, it survived in the Balkans and Asia Minor until the fifteenth century in a form that modern historians call “Byzantium.” This state expanded gradually until the eleventh century, conquering Bulgaria, but then experienced the shock of sudden contractions, especially when it lost most of Asia Minor to the Seljuk Turks and when the Fourth Crusade captured its capital Constantinople and dismembered the empire. This chapter examines how the empire’s governing institutions adapted to these changing circumstances, the combination of Roman and Christian Orthodox ideology that sustained it, and the shifting balance of ethnic diversity within it. At all times, the majority of the population consisted of Greek-speaking Orthodox Romans: “empire” was thus more a relationship that obtained between the state and its conquered or absorbed minorities, which Byzantium was good at assimilating.


Author(s):  
Carolyn Muessig

Francis of Assisi’s reported reception of the stigmata on Mount La Verna in 1224 is often considered to be the first account of an individual receiving the five wounds of Christ. The thirteenth-century appearance of this miracle, however, is not as unexpected as it first seems. Interpretations of Galatians 6:17—I bear the stigmata of the Lord Jesus Christ in my body—had been circulating in biblical commentaries since late antiquity. These works explained stigmata as wounds that martyrs received, like the apostle Paul, in their attempt to spread Christianity in the face of resistance. By the seventh century, stigmata were described as marks of Christ that priests received invisibly at their ordination. In the eleventh century, monks and nuns were perceived as bearing the stigmata in so far as they lived a life of renunciation out of love for Christ. By the later Middle Ages holy women like Catherine of Siena (d. 1380) were more frequently described as having stigmata than their male counterparts. With the religious upheavals of the sixteenth century, the way stigmata were defined reflected the diverse perceptions of Christianity held by Catholics and Protestants. This study traces the birth and evolution of religious stigmata as expressed in theological discussions and devotional practices in Western Europe from the early Middle Ages to the early seventeenth century. It also contains an introductory overview of the historiography of religious stigmata beginning in the second half of the seventeenth century to its treatment and assessment in the twenty-first century.


Author(s):  
Charles Hartman ◽  
Anthony DeBlasi

This chapter discusses how the full emergence of the centralized, aristocratic state in the seventh century brought about an official historiography that was part of the bureaucracy of that state. Beginning in the Tang, each dynastic court maintained an office of historiography. Over time, a regularized process evolved that, in theory and often in reality, turned the daily production of court bureaucratic documents into an official history of the dynasty. Although this process was ongoing throughout the dynasty, the final, standard ‘dynastic history’ was usually completed after the dynasty's demise by its successor state. Indeed, the very concept of a series of dynastic histories that, taken together, would present an official history of successive, legitimate Chinese states, dates from the eleventh century.


1993 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 117-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hugh Barnes ◽  
Mark Whittow

1992 was the first season of the Oxford University/British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara Survey of Medieval Castles of Anatolia. Over the next five years it is planned to survey and record in as much detail as practicable five Byzantine castles in the area of the Büyük and Küçük Menderes river systems in western Turkey. The five castles will eventually be published in a single monograph where they can be discussed as a group and placed in their historical and geographical context. An annual preliminary report will appear in Anatolian Studies, which we hope will serve as a forum to test ideas, raise problems, and encourage other historians and archaeologists to suggest further ways of obtaining the most from these sites.The five sites—indicated on Fig. 1—are Mastaura kalesi (near Bozyurt, in Aydın ili, Nazilli ilçesi, merkez bucağı); Yılanlı kalesi (on the side of the Boz dağ near Kemer in İzmir ili, Ödemiş. ilçesi, Birgi bucağı); Çardak kalesi (near Çardak in Denizli ili, Çardak ilçesi, merkez bucağı); Yöre kalesi (near Yöre köy in Aydın ili, Kuyucak ilçesi, Pamukören bucağı); and Ulubey kalesi (on the Kazancı deresi near Ulubey in Uşak ili, Ulubey ilçesi). None has received more than brief notice before; none has been planned or studied in any detail. They have been chosen to cover the whole period of Byzantine rule in the area from the seventh century to the early fourteenth, and a variety of the different types and functions of Byzantine castles. Yılanlı is possibly a late seventh-century fortress, built in the context of the Arab attempts to take Constantinople and the consequent struggle to control the western coastlands of Asia Minor. Çardak appears to have been built between the seventh and the ninth century principally to act as a look-out point in the Byzantine defensive system against Arab raids.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariusz Gwiazda

Imported marble vessels from Jiyeh (Porphyreon), a site on the Phoenician coast, could not be easily identified in terms of function and dating for lack of sound stratigraphic evidence. An examination of parallels from other sites in the Eastern Mediterranean was needed in order to determine the chronology and uses of these objects. Virtually all of the Jiyeh vessels were thus dated to the early Byzantine period. Forms included utilitarian mortars and plates, as well as tentative liturgical tabletops. The repertoire represents standard exports of vessels of these shapes to Syro-Palestine from Greece and Asia Minor. Their distribution in Syro-Palestine was conditioned by geographical factors, as well as the affluence of settlements that imported such objects.


PEDIATRICS ◽  
1973 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 313-313
Author(s):  
Jack H. T. Chang ◽  
John D. Burrington

In the recent literature there appears to be a revival of interest in the use of Foley catheters in removing foreign objects from both orifices of the alimentary canal.1-3 During the peak of the Byzantine period, foreign bodies were extracted from the esophagus by having the patient swallow a small, dry sponge on a string, allowing it to expand in the stomach and then withdrawing the sponge. Paulus Aegineta (seventh century) wrote in Book Six of his Epitome of Medicine:


1990 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 65-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. G. H. Joffé

AbstractThe conventional view is that Malta has been on the ‘forgotten frontier’ of Christian maritime resistance to Islamic expansionism since the Islamic invasions of North Africa in the seventh century. The limited archival and archeological evidence suggests that, up to the arrival of the Order of the Knights of St John of Jerusalem in Malta in 1530, this picture is not accurate. The Islamic occupation of the Maltese archipelago in 870 created a cosmopolitan Muslim society which persisted until the mid-thirteenth century, despite the Norman conquest of the region in 1090. Indeed, the formal end of Muslim society in Malta only came in 1224, as a side-result of the Hohenstauffen suppression of a Muslim rebellion in Sicily.Even under the Order of St John contacts with the Muslim world were far closer than is conventionally supposed. The Grand Master of the Order maintained close contacts with the Qaramanlis in Tripoli and the Beys of Tunis during the eighteenth century, despite the continuation of the corso. In reality, contacts had always existed and had been recognised as essential by the Holy See because Malta could not sustain its population once it had exceeded 10,000 persons. Sicily, the obvious source of supply, often exerted undesirable political pressure and the Barbary coast was the only other alternative. The main legacy of the close contacts between Malta and the North African Muslim world, however, is to be found, even today, in the Maltese language, which is really a Medieval variant of North African Arabic.


2012 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 9-19
Author(s):  
Andrew Jotischky

The monastery founded in the fifth century by St Sabas, in the Kidron Valley a few kilometres south-east of Bethlehem, has been described as ‘the crucible of Byzantine Orthodoxy’. The original cave cell occupied by Sabas himself grew into a monastic community of the laura type, in which monks lived during the week in individual cells practising private prayer and craft work, but met for communal liturgy on Saturdays, Sundays and feast days. The laura, which differed from the coenobium in the greater emphasis placed on individual meditation, prayer and work, was the most distinctive contribution of the Palestinian tradition to early Christian monasticism. The first laura had been founded in the Judean desert in the fourth century by Chariton, and cenobitic monasteries had been in existence in Palestine both in the desert and on the coastal strip since the same period. Nevertheless, partly as a result of an extensive network of contacts with other foundations, both laurae and cenobitic monasteries, partly through Sabas s own fame as an ascetic, and partly through a burgeoning reputation for theological orthodoxy, St Sabas became the representative institution of Palestinian monasticism in the period between the fifth century and the Persian invasion of 614. The monastery’s capacity to withstand the Persian and Arab invasions of the seventh century, and to adapt to the cultural changes brought by Arabicization, ensured not only its survival but also its continued importance as a disseminator of monastic practice throughout the early Middle Ages. In 1099, when the first crusaders conquered the Holy Land, it was almost the sole survivor of the ‘golden age’ of Palestinian desert monasticism of the early Byzantine period. The monastery continued to prosper under crusader rule. It was an important landowner and its abbot was in the twelfth century a confrater of the Knights Hospitaller. Moreover, it is clear both from varied genres of external documentary sources – for example, pilgrimage accounts and hagiographies – and from the surviving manuscripts produced in the monastery between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, that the monastery’s spiritual life also flourished in this period. The role of St Sabas and Palestinian monasticism within the broader scope of Byzantine monastic reform of the eleventh and twelfth centuries suggests that the continuing function of the monastery at the centre of a wider network of practices and ideals across the Orthodox world engendered a revival of early monastic practices in a period more often associated with decline and the struggle to preserve the integrity of monastic life.


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