Books in the Oxford Studies in Byzantium series

An examination of how, at the close of the Roman Empire, Christianity influenced the political and social philosophy of the peoples of the Near East, laying the groundwork for the blending of religious and ethnic identity that we see in the Middle East today.

Byzantine Religious Law in Medieval Italy is a historical study of manuscripts containing Byzantine canon law produced after the Norman conquest of southern Italy, exploring how and why the Greek Christians of the region persisted in using them so long after the end of Byzantine rule.

Civil war and usurpation were endemic to the later Roman Empire, with no fewer than 37 men claiming imperial power between 284 and 395 AD. This volume constructs the first comprehensive history of civil war in this period through the ways in which successive dynasties manipulated history to legitimate themselves and to discredit their predecessors.

Byzantine medicine is the biggest unknown quantity in both the study of medieval medicine and science and in Byzantine studies. This volume aims to redress this gap by presenting the first comprehensive examination of the medical corpus of John Zacharias Aktouarios, arguably the most important Late Byzantine physician.

This first English translation of the Universal History of Step'anos Taronec'i offers an accessible guide to the text, with extensive annotations and a substantial introduction providing valuable new insights into its contents, the intellectual and literary contexts within which it was composed, and its place in the Armenian tradition.

The Letters of Psellos is the first detailed study of the correspondence of Michael Psellos, a preeminent Byzantine intellectual, politician, and writer. Structured in two parts, it juxtaposes five essays offering detailed historical and literary analyses of selected letters with annotated summaries of the entirety of Psellos' correspondence.

Law, Power, and Imperial Ideology in the Iconoclast Era explores Roman law and canon law to chart the various responses to the turbulent years of the Iconoclast era, c.680-850, which saw the rise of Islam and the emergence of medieval Byzantium from the wreckage of ancient Rome.

This volume explores the architecture of Jerusalem's round and octagonal churches, the perceptions and architectural models that stood behind it, and their impact on both ideas and design in future architecture.

Using recent archaeological findings, Avni addresses the transformation of local societies in Palestine and Jordan between the sixth and eleventh centuries AD, arguing that the Byzantine-Islamic transition was a much slower and gradual process than previously thought.

This volume provides a synthetic study of the political, social, and economic processes which formed early Islamic Egypt. Looking at a corpus of previously unknown Arabic papyrus letters, Sijpesteijn examines the reasons for the success of the early Arab conquests and the transition from the pre-Islamic Byzantine system to an Arab/Muslim state.

Simpson uncovers the complex manuscript tradition and transmission of Niketas Choniates' History, an important historical Byzantine text. Investigating issues related to historical narrative and imperial biography, the volume explores the historian's sources and the literary models and historical concepts which guided him.

This book explores the Byzantine art of embroidery on liturgical vestments. Spanning the period from the eleventh through the fifteenth centuries, it studies the evolution of forms of liturgical costume in the Orthodox Church in relation to both currents in religious thought and the complex relationship between the church and the imperial court.

The eleventh century saw both the heyday of Byzantium and its almost immediate subsequent decline following serious military defeats and heavy territorial losses. The papers in this volume view the social order as a prime determinant of change, tracking it through archaeological and documentary evidence to deepen our understanding of the period.

A study of the agrarian landscape and economy of the late-antique eastern Mediterranean. Michael Decker describes the ways in which Roman farmers succeeded in producing food surpluses, fuelling a surge in population and a flowering of cultural expression and economic prosperity in the century before the arrival of Islam.

In this pioneering study, the first of its kind, Galit Noga-Banai analyses silver reliquaries decorated with Christian figurative themes, offering a clearer and more detailed picture of the beginnings of the cult of relics in the early Church. The book is illustrated with nearly 100 finely reproduced drawings and photographs.

The image of St Basil's Cathedral in Moscow's Red Square is a familiar Russian landmark. Saints such as Basil overturn the conventional concept of sainthood - what is saintly about them? This book aims to solve the mystery by exploring the figure of the holy fool in Byzantium and in later Russian history.

Basil presided over a Byzantium which was the superpower of the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East in the century before the Crusades. This is a study in English of the Byzantine emperor Basil II, the 'Bulgar-slayer'. It reveals an empire that was governed by a potent mixture of subtle persuasion and brutal force.

Using Greek, Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman sources, this volume looks at the relations between Byzantium and its eastern neighbours in the thirteenth century, and presents a new interpretation of the Nicaean Empire and highlights the evidence for its wealth and power.

In the mid-eleventh century, secular Byzantine poetry attained a hitherto unseen degree of wit, vividness, and personal involvement. This is the first volume to consider this poetic activity as a whole, focusing on Byzantine conceptions of the role of poetry in society.

In Debating the Saints' Cults in the Age of Gregory the Great, Dal Santo argues that Pope Gregory the Great's Dialogues, which debated the nature and plausibility of the saints' miracles and the propriety of the saints' cult, should be considered from the perspective of a wide-ranging debate which took place in early Byzantine society.

Byzantines, Latins, and Turks in the Eastern Mediterranean World after 1150 is a collection of thirteen original articles which focus on the religious identity, cultural exchange, commercial networks, and the construction of political legitimacy among Christians and Muslims in the late Medieval eastern Mediterranean.

A detailed study of the Chronicle of Morea, an important and controversial historical narrative written in the late Middle Ages, telling the story of the founding and government of a Crusader State following the conquest by western invaders of the capital - Constantinople - and the provinces of the Byzantine Empire.

The first English translation and study of George Akropolites' History, an essential source for 13th-century Byzantine history. Ruth Macrides discusses the author's background, social position, and relation to the tradition of Greek history writing, and provides a comprehensive guide to reading the text.

The veterinary compilation known as the Hippiatrica is a rich and little-known source of information about the care and medical treatment of horses, donkeys, and mules in late antiquity and the Byzantine period. This book provides a guide both to its intriguing contents, and to its complex textual history.