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The Excerpta project instigated by the Byzantine emperor Constantine VII turned the enormously rich experience offered by Greek historiography into a body of excerpts distributed across fifty-three distinct thematic collections. In this, the first sustained analysis, Andras Nemeth moves from viewing the Excerpta only as a collection of textual fragments to focusing on its dependence from and impact on the surrounding Byzantine culture in the tenth century. He introduces the concept of appropriation and also uses it to study some other key texts created under the Excerpta's influence (De thematibus, De administrando imperio and De ceremoniis). Unlike world chronicles, the Excerpta ignored the chronological dimension of history and fostered the biographical turn in Byzantine historiography. By exploring theoretical questions such as classification and retrieval of historical information and the relationship between knowledge and political power, this book provides powerful new ways for exploring the Excerpta in Byzantine studies and beyond.

Unrivalled Influence explores the exceptional roles that women played in the vibrant cultural and political life of medieval Byzantium. Written by one of the world's foremost historians of the Byzantine millennium, this landmark book evokes the complex and exotic world of Byzantium's women, from empresses and saints to uneducated rural widows. Drawing on a diverse range of sources, Judith Herrin sheds light on the importance of marriage in imperial statecraft, the tense coexistence of empresses in the imperial court, and the critical relationships of mothers and daughters. She looks at women's interactions with eunuchs, the in-between gender in Byzantine society, and shows how women defended their rights to hold land. Herrin describes how they controlled their inheritances, participated in urban crowds demanding the dismissal of corrupt officials, followed the processions of holy icons and relics, and marked religious feasts with liturgical celebrations, market activity, and holiday pleasures. The vivid portraits that emerge here reveal how women exerted an unrivalled influence on the patriarchal society of Byzantium, and remained active participants in the many changes that occurred throughout the empire's millennial history. Unrivalled Influence brings together Herrin's finest essays on women and gender written throughout the long span of her esteemed career. This volume includes three new essays published here for the very first time and a new general introduction by Herrin. She also provides a concise introduction to each essay that describes how it came to be written and how it fits into her broader views about women and Byzantium.

Introduction. The article is devoted to the identification of the donor of the famous illuminated codex, which received the name “Niketas Bible” in historiography. The name of the donor Niketas, and his position as a ‘koitonites’ are known from the epigram in this manuscript. Until now, researchers cannot come to a decision about the date of the “Niketas Bible” and hesitate about the identification of its owner to one of the Niketas of the 10th century known to us. Dating to the 960s – 970s has until now been considered the most reasonable. However, all the arguments related to the paleography and the decoration of this manuscript are quite random and don’t make it possible to narrow down its dating on reasonable grounds. In the historiography there was no coherent research of the biographies of those men named Niketas, who could potentially be identified with the eponymous owner of this luxurious manuscript. Methods. On the basis of the prosopographical and historical-cultural analysis, we proposed a new identification of the owner of the manuscript and restored his ‘cursus honorum’, which allows us to obtain a new “narrow” date for ordering the codex of the “Niketas Bible” and identify another manuscript that belonged to him. Analysis. The only ‘koitonites’ Niketas, which would satisfy all the indirect indications of the personality of the donor of “Niketas Bible”, is the protospatharios and ‘koitonites’ Niketas. He was the addressee of one of the letters of Metropolitan of Nicaea Theodore. All the surviving letters of Metropolitan Theodore fit into the period from 956 to 959, and it is precisely this time period that his letter to ‘koitonites’ Niketas should be dated to. It turns out that the codex of “Niketas Bible” is associated with a person who is mentioned in the sources between 956 and 959. There is a solid ‘terminus ante quem’ to limit the residence of ‘koitonites’ Niketas in this position at the court. After the death of Emperor Constantine VII in November 959, his son Romanus II removed all of the courtiers that worked under his father from his posts. Obviously, Niketas had to lose his position along with all the other courtiers. It is possible to identify ‘koitonites’ Niketas with patrician, protospatharios, and droungarios of the fleet Niketas. Courtier Niketas is known as the donor of “Niketas Bible”, while the droungarios Niketas is known as a person who wrote the Paris. gr. 497 manuscript. The Paris. gr. 497 manuscript was written by him when he was in captivity in Africa; after his returning to Constantinople in 968 he decorated this manuscript and in 970 donated it to the church of St. George in Cyprus. Results. ‘Koitonites’ Niketas ordered the manuscript of “Niketas Bible” in the second half of the 950s, ‘terminus ante quem’ – November of 959, or the very beginning of 960. Courtier Niketas is most likely the same person as patrician Niketas. The life story of the eunuch Niketas, the courtier, the commander and the bibliophile, is quite typical for the close circle of Emperor Constantine VII’s and Basil Lecapenos the Nothos.

This article examines the two extant military speeches attributed to Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos for their biblical references and allusions. These speeches demonstrate imperial Byzantine exegesis, establish biblical grounds for the ‘chosen’ status of Byzantine Christians, and reveal that the non-soldierly emperor Constantine VII appropriated the role of a mediating priestly figure as a way of claiming authority over his fighting forces. In this, he follows in the footsteps of his father, the emperor Leo VI (r. 886–912). Both speeches are explicitly Christian, and were used to bolster military morale and to reinforce imperial authority.

Introduction. The article aims to compare two texts concerning byzantine diplomatic practices of the mid 10th century. The first one is described in the 13th chapter of the treatise “De Administrando Imperio”, in which its author Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus gave some pieces of advice to his son Romanus II Porphyrogenitus how to line up rhetorical manipulation during the negotiations with ambassadors of different ‘barbarian’ nations. The second one is the description of conversation, which took place on September 17, 968 between emperor Otto I the Great’s ambassador bishop Liudprand of Cremona and patrician Christopher. It is described in Liudprand’s “Relatio de Legatione Constantinopolitana”. Methods. The classical comparative method is used to examine the veracity of two independent texts of different character describing the similar diplomatic trick. The author compares a program-ideological and simultaneously a propaedeutic treatises with a semiofficial report of a foreign senior ambassador. Analysis. In the 13th chapter of the treatise “De Administrando Imperio” its author Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus advised his son Roman II in negotiations with the ambassadors of the “barbarian” nations not to except the precedent of giving in marriage the granddaughter of the Byzantine emperor Romanus I Lecapenus Maria-Irina to Bulgarian ruler Peter, since Romanus I Lecapenus was a man of poor education and incompetent in the ancient sacred customs of the Roman Empire. In “Relatio de Legatione Constantinopolitana” by bishop Liudprand of Cremona during the confiscation of “purple clothes”, which he had bought, he referred to the fact that during his last visit to Constantinople, emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus had allowed him to take out even more expensive clothes without any obstacles. Contrary to this example, he received a reply from patrician Christopher, that emperor Constantine was a weak man and cherished the friendship of barbarians and foreigners with gifts, and ruling emperor Nikephoros II Phokas was a strong and warlike man, he didn’t allow such liberties for foreigners. In both cases, the same counter-argument was used to disavow precedent – a criticism of the bygone emperor in comparison with the current sovereign. This suggests that it was a common rhetorical device for Byzantine diplomats. These two cases allow to clarify the sophisticated ideology of “Tradition” and its “Split” as a corner-stone political idea of Eastern Roman Empire. Results. As a result of comparing the texts “De Administrando Imperio” (952–959) and “Relatio de Legatione Constantinopolitano” (969) it becomes clear that Byzantine politicians in the mid 10th century used for disavowing diplomatic precedents the criticism of their own emperor, who agreed to some concessions in the past. His personality was declared inappropriate to the high standards of a Roman ruler in comparison with the current emperor. Such rhetoric was surprising for the peoples who considered a series of their rulers as a genealogical aggregate of relatives responsible for their predecessors as for themselves. Byzantine politicians calmly recognized imperfections of their bygone emperors, what allowed them to ignore the strongest diplomatic argument of the early Middle Ages – a historical precedent.

The article discusses the passage from the 29th chapter of the Byzantine emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus' treatise De administrando imperio (c. 950) where is reported of how archontes, that are those who had hereditary power status, replaced so-called zupanoi-elders, who previously headed early Slavic societies in the Balkans. It was this information that was often considered a key evidence in favor of presumed stadiality of the development of Slavic social organization transformed from originally acephalous society (the zupanoi period) to a politically organized society in which there existed a princely power (the archontes period). The author raises a question to what extent the interpretation of this passage from the perspective of social evolution was determined by the information of the source itself, and by the theoretical context of current ideas about the nature of early Slavic society. Having examined the passage in the context of Constantine Porphyrogenitus' perception of the early history of the Serbs and Croats, the author concludes that the passage on zupanoi and arhontes is not only ideologically motivated construction. In the case of this passage we deal with one of the first theoretical explanations of social evolution in barbarian society. The explanation proposed by the emperor looks so plausible and logical that harmonizes with current theories of acephalous society and secondary state formation. Meanwhile, the author argues, the real social development of early Slavic society was much more complex. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

[Edward Gibbon] published The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in six volumes between 1776 and 1788. In it, he damned Byzantium as a \"degenerate race of princes\" mired in intrigue and corruption, concluding: \"I have described the triumph of barbarism and religion.\" The shadow of Gibbon still falls over the modern view of Byzantium. Unlike the attention and affection inspired by ancient Greece and Rome or Elizabethan England, Byzantium receives little mention in British education. It is quite simply \"the Dark Ages\" - coming after the glories of antiquity and before the light of the Renaissance. Byzantium lived through difficult times - there were the challenges of mass immigration into Europe and the rise and advance of Islam. It is worth remembering, too, that Russia has inherited many Byzantine traditions. Yes, Byzantium was a bureaucratic state - but almost nothing on a modern scale. \"Byzantine obscurity\" is a great term of abuse, but is it accurate? The Royal

Review.