Fellowship Reports

2006–2007

2005–2006

2004

A Glossary of Juridical Terms in Mediaeval Bulgaria

Ivan Biliarsky

The aim of my project is to study law as a cultural phenomenon, related to the primary values of a civilization. Law itself is a value and is respected as a value, one necessary for the very existence of civilization. Every civilization creates its own normative system, based on its own values, and at the same time being part of them and serving as their protector. The legal norms are a means of creating solidarity from a simple collected group. This would mean that law is a factor in the creation of a group with common identity, based on common values, common cults, common power and, unavoidably, a normative system in common. This shared normative system imposes common models of behavior in every sphere of common life, including both the everyday and the deviant.

Every culture has its own manner of communication. Such communication can take place in different languages but always in the same primary context. It expresses itself in the same manner. On the other hand, culture creates not only a common expression and ultimately an internal language of communication, but also a common professional jargon. The norm is a text, which imposes a certain model of behavior and as a text has its linguistic character. Thus, language has a special importance in the legal domain.

Having been converted to Orthodox Christianity, Bulgaria entered the Byzantine Commonwealth; this development inevitably led to the reception of Byzantine law and legal language. It is exactly this process that is the main focus of the research within my project. Studies on the legal language up to now have usually been carried out by philologists and this presupposes that their goals are very different from the expected results of my research. To my best knowledge such research has been previously pursued only with regard to Western European legal texts.

I plan to finish my project by the end of this year (2006) and to publish it as a book.

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Jewellery in the Byzantine Museum of Athens:
The Mytilene Treasure

Eugenia Chalkia

A very significant component of the collection of gold jewellery in the Byzantine Museum of Athens consists of the Mytilene Treasure from the island of Lesbos. This find also included a group of luxury silver vessels, and thirty-two gold coins of the emperors Phokas (602–610) and Herakleios (first part of his reign, 610–629). The jewellery, twenty-one objects in total, consists of bracelets, rings, earrings, necklaces, pendants, amulets, belts, and buckles. Despite the importance of the Mytilene Treasure, one of the most significant hoards of the 7th century from the Aegean area, no previous systematic study has been dedicated to it since its discovery in 1951, except for brief entries in exhibition catalogues.

My aim during the period of my fellowship at Dumbarton Oaks was to complete an in-depth analysis of this collection. The great opportunity afforded by the use of the research materials at the library of Dumbarton Oaks enabled me to undertake a comparative study of each of the individual pieces, and to write systematic entries for them.

My current research has resulted in some important new observations. For example, it has not been previously realized that a small bracelet with a double engraved cross monogram contains the owner's name. Although bracelets with monograms are not unknown, this type is very rare. The very small dimensions of the piece of jewelry, as well as the masculine form of the name engraved within the monogram, lead to the conclusion that the bracelet belonged to a boy.

Another characteristic group of items within this collection consists of three cylindrical amulets, a very popular type of object, which typically contains a thin sheet of gold, inscribed with magical texts. Amulets of this type appear frequently in the Faiyum mummy portraits, and a considerable number of them were found in tombs. The presence in this hoard of three amulets which obviously belonged to the same family, as well as the presence of another pendant-amulet decorated with a cross, is indicative of semi-magical practices existing among families of the upper social rank during the 7th century, the epoch in which the Mytilene Treasure was buried.

The final objective of this project will be the publication of a systematic catalogue of the Mytilene Treasure. This task will be undertaken in collaboration with the former director of the Numismatic Museum of Athens, Dr. I. Touratsoglou, who is studying the rest of the items, i.e., the silver vessels and gold coins.

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Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos and Islam:
Political and Theological Aspects of his Attitudes toward Islam

Ksenia I. Lobovikova

The Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaiologos was a remarkable expert on Islam and polemist with Muslims in the late Byzantine period. His treatises against Muslims are the most extensive in the history of Byzantine polemic against Islam. E. Trapp and T. Khoury edited a part of the emperor's polemical legacy, while K. Förstel edited the whole series of his treatises against Islam, consisting of twenty-six dialogues with a Muslim about Christianity and Islam. Unfortunately, with the exception of one article of S. Reinert, there are no studies directly dedicated to these treatises of Manuel.

At Dumbarton Oaks, I focused on the investigation of the emperor's polemical works in the context of both the religious and political life of his epoch. Thus, the main aim of my project was to study Manuel's treatises against Islam and other sources which contain information on the emperor's perception of the contemporary political situation. Some of Manuel's letters, for example, describe the campaign of Bayezid I in Anatolia and the process of nomadization of Asia Minor. I have integrated also into my research Manuel's funeral oration for his brother Theodore.

My research reveals that the treatises of the emperor summed up the entire previous polemical orthodox tradition against Islam in Byzantium. Manuel knew well the polemical works of his predecessors and especially the treatises of his grandfather John VI Kantakouzenos. Through him, Manuel had access to the treatises of the Florentine Dominican monk Ricaldus de Monte-Croce. My research has also shown that as writer and polemist Manuel did not go beyond the framework of Byzantine literary and theological tradition. Many Byzantine polemists with Islam recognized with regret that any attempt to convert Muslims was destined to fail. Manuel Palaiologos also wrote with sorrow that Muslims did not abandon their faith even when their arguments were refuted as false. He was convinced of the senselessness of attempts to convert Muslims to Christianity.

My intention was to appraise the level of his competency in Islamic doctrine and earlier Byzantine interpretations of Islam. In this sense, the writings of Manuel II are interesting as representing the highest level of the knowledge of Islam during the Byzantine epoch.

The research I have been conducting is necessary to define the role and the importance of the anti-Islamic writings of Manuel Palaiologos in the history of late Byzantine religious philosophy. Moreover, study of the ideas of Manuel II Palaiologos should prove helpful for better understanding of the course and content of inter-confessional dialogue in general. The results of my research will be published in the form of a series of articles.

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Signs of the Times:
The Cleveland Marbles

Donald A. McColl

In recent years, such scholars as Paul Corby Finney, Graydon Snyder and Wolfgang Wischmeyer have asked us to pay more attention to the material culture of early Christianity; my work at Dumbarton Oaks, on the problematic group of sculptures representing Jonah and the Good Shepherd in the Cleveland Museum of Art (John L. Severance Fund. 1965.37–47), has tried to do just that.

Illustration: Jonah Praying, ca. 275 CE – Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund.

Illustration: Jonah Praying, ca. 275 CE – Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund.

After convincing curators at Cleveland to allow stable signature isotopic marble analyses of the works, which showed with a high degree of probability that the marble from which they were carved comes from the area around ancient Docimium, in Phrygia (a province in western Asia Minor), I went to Turkey, along with Clayton Fant (University of Akron) and Isabella Sjöström (then of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne and now of the British Museum). I not only searched for comparanda in a wide array of provincial museums, but also took stock of recent work in and on the quarries themselves, especially that by Marc Waelkens, which has shown that, in addition to workshops making a wide range of products in pavonazetto for export to Rome and elsewhere, there were workshops or teams at or near Docimium that specialized in sculpture made from a lesser-known, fine-grained, high-quality white marble. In fact, recent work has suggested that such workshops were not only responsible for the vast majority of extant Asiatic columnar sarcophagi, but also that large-scale works in this same marble were exported readymade to places as far afield as Lepcis Magna.

My working hypothesis is that the Cleveland marbles were made by a sculptor or sculptors who took advantage of the vacuum in the Imperial administrative system at Docimium, evident from the time of the trailing off of inscriptions there, around the middle of the third century AD. Inscriptions speak of itinerant sculptors carrying with them slabs of marble, and there is even evidence of Christian artisans making sepulchral monuments out of Docimian marble. This physical evidence is corroborated by my research in archives and elsewhere into the circumstances of the Cleveland Marbles' appearance on the New York art market, shortly before their purchase by the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1965, most of which points to their having been found somewhere in the area around Docimium.

While at Dumbarton Oaks, I have availed myself not only of its singular library resources (I made extensive use of the Princeton Index of Christian Art, Census of Objects of Early Christian and Byzantine Art in North American Collections, and Byzantine Photograph Collection), but also close proximity to colleagues in a wide array of fields, to bring into focus a number of other questions concerning the Cleveland Marbles. These range from their possible original placement in a garden, perhaps one attached to a heröon, or tomb, the likes of which were relatively common in Asia Minor, to the nature of, and sources for, the kind of storytelling involved in the pieces representing Jonah and Good Shepherd.

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Portable Micromosaic Icons of the Late Byzantine Period

Edmund C. Ryder

The vibrant artistic and intellectual activities taking place during the Late Byzantine Period (1261–1453) stand in stark contrast to the many difficulties facing the Empire. The historian George Pachymeres related his sense of general foreboding regarding the condition of the Empire in his History: "things have arrived at such a state of misfortune…so much that they appear thus stripped of their first flowering under the blow of a heavy winter."1

Despite this malaise, artists of this epoch produced many works of art that stand out as some of the most beautiful and accomplished ever produced.

One genre that reached its summit of artistic achievement during this period was the portable mosaic icon. These small panels were created by laying flat, tesserae-coupons into a bed of wax and mastic; the minute size of the tesserae employed imparts an extremely painterly quality to the compositions. The resulting icons served primarily as devotional images for members of the Byzantine elite, and were often embellished with revetments (thringia), textiles (peploi, encheiria), and texts.

My goal this summer at Dumbarton Oaks was to complete the final stages of research for my dissertation, and to complete the first draft of the text. Furthermore, I wished to explore further and translate epigrams by Nikolaos Kallikles (first half of the 12th century) and Manuel Philes (ca. 1275–1350), two poets whose works graced the frames of icons in varying media. It is possible to glean much information about the display, patronage and use of icons by studying these other elements of their program.

Two epigrams by Philes were specifically written for two portable micromosaic icons; I argue that the author makes this connection clear by his description of the tesserae, as he utilizes the phrases psephisi leptais euphyos pepegmene2 and psephis se lepte syntetheisa deiknyei,3 descriptions that perfectly describe the flat tesserae employed in micromosaic. I explored the connection between these poems, and discussed the lives of their patrons in my informal talk "Two Epigrams of Manouēl Philēs intended for Inclusion on Mosaic Icons," given at Dumbarton Oaks on July 17th.

I have been able to discover many new aspects of Late Byzantine art production during my tenure here this summer, and these will be incorporated into my dissertation. The opportunity to use the library and discuss my ideas with scholars has enabled me to accomplish my goal of completing the first draft of my dissertation this summer.

1. Pachymeres, Corpus scr. hist. Byz. (Bonn. 1835) 1 I, p. 13.

2. Manuelis Philae carmina, ed. E. Miller, 2 vols. (Paris, 1855–57), I, pp. 9-10, XXIV.

3. Ibid. I, pp. 77-78, CLXVIII.

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The Cult of St. Febronia:
From Nisibis to Rome

Jeanne-Nicole Saint-Laurent

According to her sixth-century Vita, Febronia of Nisibis was a beautiful nun martyred during the Diocletianic persecution. I have examined the Greek, Syriac, and Latin versions of her life and traced the diffusion of Febronia's cult in Syria, Constantinople, Southern Italy and Sicily,1 and I have gathered medieval and modern artistic depictions of her. No such synthetic study on Febronia has been done before.

In Tell Tuneir, Syria, the archeologist M. Fuller has found the remains of a Syrian monastery. They discovered a tooth-shaped reliquary that may have contained Febronia's tooth.

P. Chiesa has produced a new edition of the Latin and Greek versions of Febronia's life.2 Chiesa has untangled the complexity of the translations of Febronia's Passio. Febronia's name reappears as Phebronia, Pambroniya, Sephronia, Sophronia, and Trofimena. In The Book of the Saints of the Ethiopian Church, she is remembered on the first day of Hamle (July 5–Aug 3), as Cephronia.3

Although the Synaxarium of Constantinople claims that Febronia's relics reached the city by 363, there seems to be no evidence of her cult in Constantinople before the seventh century. At that time she appears as an assistant to St. Artemios in the Miracles of St. Artemios, which describe a chapel erected to Febronia in the church of St. John Prodomos. 4 Emperor Heraclius (610–641) may have had a daughter by his second wife, Martina, named Febronia. Heraclius' campaigns in Mesopotamia could perhaps have brought him into contact with the legend of a local martyr, Febronia, and through him, therefore, her story could have been "Byzantinized." Attestations of other "Febronias" in the Greek-speaking world include the mother of the eighth-century iconodule confessor St. Anthousa of Mantineon and a girl featured in the 8-9th c. hagiography of Sts. David, Symeon and George of Lesbos. 5 The Russian Church venerates a Princess Febronia of Murom, the Wonderworker, whose relics were transferred to St. Sofia in Kiev in 1228. She is featured in a mosaic cycle of this church.

Febronia's Latin life dates to the ninth century, not long after a series of Syrian popes came to Italy in the eighth century. A cult around Febronia springs up in Patti/Messina. The community of Palagonia in Sicily continues to celebrate her feast-day, parading with a relic of her arm.

My next task is to posit how this material fits together. A photocopy from Venice of the unedited Laudatio on St. Febronia by the fourteenth century Patriarch Philokteos Kokkinos has been sent to me. 6 This will provide further evidence of later reception of her cult. The results of this study will be published as an article.

1. For an English translation of Febronia's Vita, see S. A. Harvey and S. Brock, Holy Women of the Syrian Orient (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 150-176.

2. P. Chiesa, Le Versioni Latine della Passio Sanctae Febroniae: Storia, Metodo, Modelli di Due Traduzioni Agiografiche Altomedievali (Spoleto: Centro Italiano de Studi Sull'alto Medioevo, 1990).

3. Budge, E. A. W, The Book of the Saints of the Ethiopian Church: A translation of the Ethiopic Synaxarium, Vol. IV (Cambridge University Press, 1928), p. 1049.

4. See D. Knipp, "The Chapel of Physicians at Santa Maria Antigua," in DOP 56 (Washington: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2002), 6; C. Mango, "On the History of the Templon and the Martyrion of St. Artemios of Constantinople," Zograf 10 (1979): 41-42, plan fig. 1; V. S. Crisafulli and J.W. Nesbitt, The Miracles of St. Artemios (Leiden, 1997), 13-14, 140-44 (miracle 24), 198-99 (miracle 38), 222-25 (miracle 45).

5. I am grateful to Alice-Mary Talbot for both of these references. Translations of these texts can be found in A-M. Talbot (ed) Byzantine Defenders of Images: Eight Saints' Lives in English Translation (Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1998). See A-M. Talbot (trans.) "Life of St. Anthousa of Mantineon," p. 16 and D. Abrahamse and D. Domingo-Forasté )trans.) "Life of Sts. David, Symeon, and George of Lesbos," pp. 193-197.

6. I thank Alice-Mary Talbot for this reference, as well.

7. I thank Donald McColl for this reference.

Fourteenth century icon of St. Febronia’s Martyrdom from Monastery of Gracanica, Kosovo.7

Fourteenth century icon of St. Febronia's Martyrdom from Monastery of Gracanica, Kosovo.7

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Byzantine Coins Found During the Excavations at Perge

Oğuz Tekin

The ancient city of Perge in Pamphylia is situated approx. 15 kms to the east of Antalya. Excavations and surveys at Perge first began in 1946 and, except for some short interruptions, have continued up to the present day. The total number of coins found in the 60 year excavation period is about 3000, approximately 1/3 of them Byzantine. Since much of the excavated area is Roman and early Byzantine in date, so the majority of coins found are naturally Roman and Early Byzantine.

a) Follis of Justinian I

a) Follis of Justinian I

As a summer fellow, I carried out library research at Dumbarton Oaks, using primarily the volumes of the Catalogue of the Byzantine Coins in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection and in the Whittemore Collection, as well as the catalogue of Byzantine coins in the Bibliothèque Nationale. As a consequence, I was able to make identifications of some problematic coins and complete the most important part of my catalogue. As a result of my research, some conclusions can be formulated about the Byzantine coins found at Perge. All the Byzantine coins from Perge (about 1000) are bronze, and most of them are folles. No gold and silver Byzantine coins were found. The major mints for Perge are Constantinople and Antioch. Most of the Byzantine coins found during the excavations are dated between the early 6th century AD and the first quarter of the 7th century AD, i.e. covering a total period of 100 years. So they extend from the reign of Justin I (518–527 AD) to Heraclius (610–641 AD) without interruption. After a long break coins start to reappear from the 10th century AD, i.e., anonymous folles (mostly class A2, B, C, D). Thus the Byzantine coins found at Perge form two separate chronological groups; the first group of coins belongs to the successive reigns of seven Byzantine emperors: Justin I, Justinian I, Justin II, Tiberius II, Maurice Tiberius, Phocas and Heraclius. The second group of coins belongs to the 10th–11th centuries (anonymous folles). So there is a period of nearly 300 years for which no Byzantine coins were found in the excavations. One may thus conclude that there was no circulation of Byzantine coins in the region between the second half of the 7th century and the 10th century.

b) Follis of Justin II

b) Follis of Justin II

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Things and Places Speaking of Themselves:
From Rome to Byzantium

Sergey Ivanov

A characteristic feature of a label is that without the actual object it makes no sense. The line "This is Zeus" or simply "Zeus" has only one clear reference–this text refers to an object.The majority of ancient pieces of art (with the exception of ancient Greek vases before the 4thc. BCE) had no explanatory inscriptions whatsoever. Nearly all frescoes, statues, mosaics and reliefs lack explanations. Why? Because viewers must have immediately recognized a likeness, not from a label but from their background knowledge. It was assumed that anyone who might be considered as possible audience must also know what Homer looks like, and those who don't do not matter. True, depictions in Antiquity are often accompanied by benedictions or maledictions, with signatures of painters and sculptors, with poetical commentaries and ekphraseis. All the above-mentioned kinds of texts are not labels, however, because they can be easily detached from the actual works of art that they accompany and also because they are fully meaningful when read separately. Thousands of epigrams on different works of art have come down to us–but only in the smallest minority of cases can we ascertain that these particular lines were written (for explanation) on the base of an actual statue or on the edge of a relief. Streets of Roman cities abounded with inscriptions of different kinds. Yet, even in Rome there were no street signs or written signboards (with the understandable exception of the words "taberna" and "hospitium"). The reason was the same: a lot of things were taken for granted.

At some unspecified moment, perhaps in the second half of the 1st c. BCE, there began to appear pictures with explications. The earliest occurrence is in Palestrina Nilotic mosaics. A little later in various regions of the Roman Empire mosaics emerge with the names of dogs, horses, and circus animals, such as tigers, as well as names of gladiators, charioteers and athletes, that is, transient and accidental appellations. There is also a new development in mosaics with classical subject matter. In the second and third centuries captioned images of great poets and philosophers of Antiquity begin to appear; in addition to real people, we can observe names of the months accompanied by their allegorical images, as well as captioned personifications of abstract concepts such as "creation", "generosity", etc. Moreover, captions were attached to personified images of rivers, mainly rivers of heaven, as well as elements such as winds, the ocean, etc. Thus, labels were appreciated not only by those with low-level artistic preferences, but also by cultured adherents of pagan philosophical systems. Paradoxically, what the identifying labels all shared was the sense of a certain deficiency of artistic expression and the need for a "verbal explanation".

In the early Byzantine period we witness both "silence" and "loquaciousness" with respect to identifying labels. If we look at the few remaining monuments of Constantinople, we see quite close to each other the mosaics of the imperial Palace, which do not have a single inscription, and the hippodrome statues of Porphyrios the charioteer on which literally all surface areas are covered with inscriptions; besides poems and good wishes the name of every horse is depicted on the reliefs. The imperial portraits (ivory plaques, mosaics, statues) or the Byzantine emperors' sarcophagi remain "silent" and anonymous, whereas Byzantine icons become more and more "talkative".

During my stay at Dumbarton Oaks, I assembled evidence of the developing urge in Byzantium to explain and to "label". Among my examples are labels such as "this stone is from the Calvary" or signboards such as "distillery of the holy monastery of Ataous", or a street sign "phoros Theodosianos" from Ephesos.The vita of St. John the Almsgiver gives us an interesting example of house -labelling. The most striking example is the inscription found recently on the Constantinopolitan city wall: "The Gates of St. Romanos". Does this mean that not only Byzantine icons and miniatures, but also Byzantine streets and squares were systematically "captioned" and "labeled"? If substantial evidence thereof will be found, it will provide a clearer picture of a huge shift in world outlook, of which the triumph of Christianity was but a small fragment.

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Rhetoric and Poetry in Byzantine Homiletics

Vessela Valiavitcharska-Marcum

Despite the broad title, the research area of my dissertation is prose rhythm in Byzantine and Old Slavonic homilies. My goals are first, to examine thoroughly the theoretical principles of prose rhythm outlined in Byzantine rhetorical treatises and commentaries, second, to test those in practice by applying them to homiletic texts of the fourth through tenth century, third, to determine whether there is any connection between prose rhythm and accentual poetry, and fourth, to see whether any of the Byzantine Greek principles of rhythm applied to the early (that is, tenth-century) translations of Slavonic homilies. I began my research with the idea that our understanding of prose rhythm has been confined mostly to the accentual cadence that defines the end of a sentence or clause, quite in contrast with how prose rhythm is described in the Hermogenic corpus, which the Byzantines studied extensively. Hermogenes and the authors of the Hermogenic corpus speak of prose rhythm as composed of word composition and end-of-clause cadence, which means that in order to fully understand Byzantine rhythm, we need to look at the entire clause or sentence.

My findings, based on Byzantine commentaries on the Hermogenic corpus and scholia on classical texts, are that the Byzantines did not think of prose rhythm as comprised solely of the clausular cadence, but as distributed in various ways throughout the sentence and the paragraph. Although they did use regular accentual patterns (as in accentual poetry), they saw the individual word, rather than a certain type of cadence or accentual foot, as the basic rhythmical unit of prose. Byzantine prose rhythm is somewhat similar to the rhythm of Byzantine accentual poetry in clause construction and ending cadence, but the rhythm of prose is much more varied and is perceived differently. There is, indeed, a similarity between Greek homiletic rhythm and the rhythm of the Slavonic translations of Greek homilies as shown by preliminary statistical data; this part of my research, however, is still under way.

My research took a surprising turn at Dumbarton Oaks when I discovered that Byzantine literary instruction included instruction in prose rhythm based on accentual patterns found in classical texts. The Byzantine teachers, in other words, sought out patterns of accentual responsion or other kinds of accentual regularity, whether deliberate or incidental, in classical texts and pointed them out to their students. The implications are that first, Byzantine prose rhythm includes accentual responsion, in a way similar to the rhythms of liturgical poetry, and second, that perhaps there are many more instances of accentual regularity in classical texts than we usually assume–a question involving intimate knowledge of the musical patterns of speech and barely studied by classicists.

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The Byzantines in the Chinese Eyes:
Translation and Commentary of Relevant Ancient and Medieval Chinese Texts

Chen Zhiqiang

Taking advantage of my investigation in recent years of Chinese texts about the Byzantines, I have concentrated my efforts during the period of my Dumbarton Oaks fellowship on the translation of Chinese texts into English and research for the commentary.Part I of my project consisted of the translation of more than one thousand Chinese historical texts into English, resulting in 500 pages. The final result of the project will be a book in English with the original Chinese texts attached, entitled Chinese Texts on Byzantium. After meticulous editorial care in textual criticism, I translated them into English with notes to help readers identify the special terms in the texts. From the translation, readers can learn abundant information on Chinese records of the Byzantine political system, material life, economic activities, customs, geographical situation, local products, religious regulations, architectural style, native plants and animals, monks (one of them retreated to a cave in southern China), technique of damask and glass, precious stones, and so on. Some of the descriptions of diplomatic events and commercial relations between the Byzantines and Chinese are also interesting,

The second part of my project was comparative research and writing of commentary on these texts with the help of the valuable rare books in the Library of Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks and library of Georgetown University, as well as the Library of Congress. The manuscript tradition of 329 books, from which the Chinese texts are cited, needs to be analyzed, and more than 100 place names, about 200 names of plants and animals as well as local products, about 50 names of drugs, and over 100 names of persons and peoples mentioned by the texts need to be identified. Also many events described by Chinese writers need to be corroborated by other historical sources, both literary and archaeological.

My investigation and translation of Chinese texts about the Byzantines represents the first collection of historical sources since 1885, when F. Hirth published China and the Roman Orient: Researches into their ancient and mediaeval relations as represented in old Chinese records (Leipzig-Munich, Shanghai-Hongkong, 1885), with his translation of seventeen texts from Chinese chronicles. The achievements of the scholars of the earlier generations have established a sound basis for more recent research on the topic, but have shortcomings. First of all, their collection of the sources is incomplete due to the lack of extensive research, and their reading of the sources was imperfect due to insufficient understanding of the ancient Chinese language and writing. Hirth's translation of seventeen passages of the Chinese texts about the Roman East, quoted often by western scholars, is marred by misunderstandings of key Chinese words and sentences. Furthermore, his book does not contain all the passages which we know on the subject, even though the collection of these passages claimed a considerable part of his time. The seventeen selected passages in his book come mostly from the official dynastic chronicles, whereas there are more than one thousand passages, not only from the Chinese dynastic histories, but also from government documents, folk literature, and scientific books, etc. Until now, few Chinese scholars have made an investigation about the texts relevant to Byzantium and can give a reasonable interpretation of them. Some of them, such as Zhang Xinglang, mention fewer than one hundred and fifty texts, with some useful notes and identifications. His collection was not translated into any western language, however, but appeared only in Chinese. My English translation of over one thousand Chinese texts with commentary should have academic significance for Byzantine studies, as well as for medieval European studies.

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Byzantine Dimension of the Canon Law Corpus of the Orthodox Slavs and Romanians

Victor Alexandrov

The primary aim of my work in Dumbarton Oaks has been research into the Byzantine background of the canon law corpus available to the Orthodox Slavs and Romanians in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period (up to the late-seventeenth century). On one hand, I have been reading general literature on Byzantine and Slavic canon law, trying to obtain greater knowledge in this field. On the other hand, I have been concentrating on those two aspects of Byzantine and Slavic legal history with regard to which my research is at an advanced stage. These two aspects are first the history of the Slavic canon law sources translated from Greek and secondly the ecclesiastico-political conflicts in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Balkans.

I am particularly interested in the data on the five Byzantine nomocanones-extensive codes comprising both canon and civil law-that were translated into Church Slavonic: the Synagoge of John Scholastikos, the Syntagma of Fourteen Titles, the Pandectae of Nikon of the Black Mountain, the Synopsis of Stephen of Ephesos with the commentary of Aristenos, and the Alphabetical Syntagma of Matthew Blastares. The editions and secondary literature on these collections are difficult to find in one location, and I have taken advantage of the Dumbarton Oaks Library to study these otherwise poorly accessible materials. The data I have collected during my stay here constitute the basis for writing a historical introduction to the Slavic translations of these Byzantine codes. Such a publication will contribute to the study of Byzantine legal influence upon the Orthodox countries situated north of Byzantium (and subsequently post-Byzantine Greece).

Regarding the ecclesiastico-political controversies in the Balkans, I have been researching the period from the early thirteenth to the mid-sixteenth century. Studying the relations between the Churches of the Balkans, one encounters a long chain of conflicts in which several issues recur constantly. The driving force of these conflicts was the struggle of the local Balkan Churches (namely those of Ohrid, Bulgaria, Serbia, Epirus, Trebizond) to emancipate themselves from the Patriarchate of Constantinople after the dismemberment of the Byzantine Empire, that is, after the Fourth Crusade. I have attempted to follow the recurrent issues of the separate controversies and to study the canon law background of the struggle. Again, the library of Dumbarton Oaks has proved indispensable for orientation in sources and literature related to this chain of conflicts. I expect that this research will also result in an important publication (or several minor ones) clarifying the ecclesiastical and political relations in the Balkans in the period indicated above.

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Migration and Development in First Millennium Europe

Peter John Heather

During the period of my fellowship I have essentially solved the two remaining major intellectual problems in my book project. The first was how, exactly, to combine the themes of migration and state formation. The breakthrough here came when, finally, I realized that state formation is a code name for development in general. Major political change never occurs in isolation from equally profound social, economic, and cultural transformation. And in the modern world, patterns of migration are always strongly dictated by patterns of unequal development; migrants from less developed zones are always sucked into the more developed unless prevented from doing so by state structures at their points of destination. When I fed this insight back into my research on the first millennium, the linkages between migration and development fell quickly into place.

The second problem was more specific. I have drawn much inspiration from comparative migration studies, since the kind of migration unit often reported in first millennium sources (large numbers of men, women, and children in a compact, organized mass) has never been observed in modern contexts. Again, I think, the explanation is linked to development. Most of the migrants derived from populations whose level of agricultural expertise did not root them solidly to one particular locality. Unable to maintain fertility over the long-term, they were prone to periodic movement. These kinds of agricultural regimes also produced only a small surplus, so that warrior specialists could also be supported in small numbers (200 seem to have been standard for the retinue of a Germanic king of the late Roman period). But since much first-millennium migration involved moving into the territory of an imperial state, migrating groups required much larger military forces. Germanic society did have other sources of military manpower, but these men were also landholders, many of them with wives and children, and recruiting them naturally involved their families as well. In a quite different way, therefore, migration and development emerge as intimately interlocked on the level of the migration unit as well as of the broader patterns of movement.

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Early Byzantine Miniatures Revealed

Marilyn E. Heldman

A group of twenty-three full-page miniatures, the subject of my fellowship research, is bound in disarray within two Ethiopic Gospel books, treasured manuscripts at the monastery of Abba Garima in northern Ethiopia. The miniatures-evangelist portraits and two sets of decorated canon table frames-were first published in the 1960s, but were neither properly identified nor correctly dated. Recently published results of radio-carbon tests of the miniatures' parchment confirm my stylistic analysis and my conclusion that these Early Byzantine miniatures are datable to the late sixth century.

Garima 16

Garima 16

These stylistically homogeneous miniatures, produced in a workshop at a major center in the Eastern Mediterranean, were brought to Ethiopia, probably before AD 630, as separate quires to be integrated into two Ethiopic manuscripts of the Four Gospels. Each set of evangelist portraits came with a set of canon tables, composed of sets of numbers-ten different concordance tables-that indicate parallel passages of the Four Gospels. They are typical of luxury editions of the Gospels which were provided with the beautifully embellished architectural frames within which the concordance tables were copied. The architectural frames of the Abba Garima canon tables arrived in Ethiopia devoid of numbers as well as the standard directions concerning the use of the canon tables. The requisite numbers and Ethiopic texts were added to the empty architectural frames by Ethiopian scribes. [ See illustration: Canon VIII (Luke & Mark), IX (Luke & John), photograph courtesy of N. Sobania and R. Silverman.]

Five evangelist portraits, the surviving miniatures from the two sets, represent a significant addition to the presently recognized number of extant late antique evangelist portraits: St. Luke in the late sixth-century Latin Gospels of St. Augustine and the portraits of the four evangelists incorporated into the canon table frames of the Syriac Rabbula Gospels (AD 586). In figure style, the evangelist portraits at the Abba Garima monastery are stylistically closer to late sixth- and seventh-century Byzantine mosaics and murals.

Few decorated canon tables datable to before AD 600 are extant, either as fragmentary or complete sets. Hence the importance of the Abba Garima miniatures with richly illuminated Early Byzantine canon tables, the architectural frames of which, embellished with grasses, fruits, flowers and birds, suggest doorways to the path of salvation. One set of canon tables concludes with full-page miniature of a circular temple whose roof is upheld by four columns, an architectural device symbolizing the unbroken unity or harmony of the Four Gospels, the purpose of the canon tables themselves. The "finispiece" of the second set of canon tables takes the form of a rectangular structure with steep stairway and is unique to our present knowledge of late antique canon table decoration, although architectural motifs play an important role in the iconography of extant floor mosaics of Early Byzantine churches in the eastern Mediterranean. I argue that within the context of the Gospel book decoration, this unique composition suggests the symbolic temple of Christ's body. My fellowship research will result in a publication that establishes the strategic importance of these miniatures for the history of Bible illumination.

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Growth or Decline? Agriculture and village life in the Late Antique Near East (3rd–8th c. A.D.)

Tomasz Waliszewski

The present state of research on the rural communities of late antique Syria-Palestine can be described, on the one hand, by the growing number of regional studies focused on settlement history, on architecture of the rural dwellings and the installations used in agricultural production, and, on the other hand, on a paleoenvironmental approach revealing the potential of such disciplines as climatology, pedology or paleobotany for the comprehension of the natural processes taking place in parallel with and in close relation to the impact of the human activity revealed by archaeology. Scholars look also for the possible and probably multiple reasons for the slow abandonment of the villages in the early Islamic Near East.

Agriculture and village life, a basic expression of economic life at that time, is understandably a vast subject. Due to the limited time of my fellowship, I decided to narrow the scope of my research to a general review of sources covering the territory of modern Jordan and southern Syria which correspond largely to the late antique provinces of Arabia and Palaestina Tertia. The focus on one of the regions gives an opportunity to choose the most promising areas that could serve as reliable case studies. Data from the numerous prospections and excavations conducted in such regions as Hauran or Moab reveal an interesting network of settlements, still active during the early Islamic period, much later than was accepted until recently in the scholarly literature. The detailed examination of the landscape and the soils helps also to determine the agricultural regions inside the mentioned areas, when a careful study of the implements, installations and the buildings sheltering them provides the firm basis for a regional differentiation of the main agricultural activities.

Regionalism in local production is a widely debated element of the discussion. My research reveals that the region between Wadi Mujib and Amman as well as the Hauran in southern Syria share the same predilection for wine production documented by dozens of rock-cut installations. In contrast, the hills and mountains surrounding the Greco-Roman cities like Jerash, Philadelphia or Abila are well furnished with olive oil presses. Interestingly, closer investigation of the presses reveals also another phenomenon that can be explained by different treatment of the fruits. Installations for pressing the grapes are almost exclusively located near the fields, whereas the olive oil presses are known mainly from the settlements–villages but also, in a few cases, from the cities.

I was also able to trace the technological parallelism between Palestine and Transjordan. Screw and cross presses found in the Ajlun and Jerash area find their closest parallels in Byzantine Judea. Predominance of lever and weights presses in Jordan again links the country technologically to Judea and Galilee.

The project is a contribution to our comprehension of the local trade, village economy, subsistence resources of the peasants and the history of ancient farming techniques. The results of my research, extended over the next year, will be published in the form of a book.

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The Politics of Narrative:
The Byzantine and Italian Narrative Icons

Paroma Chatterjee

My research deals with the emergence of narrative icons in Byzantium and Italy in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The most influential study by Nancy P. Ševčenko suggests that the very mode of the narrative icon originated in the monastery of St. Catherine at Sinai, and was expressly intended to cater to a multicultural audience of the sort that the monastery attracted during the Crusader period. My study uses Ševčenko's valuable observations but places the narrative icons within both a physical and visual context in order to determine their specific value for the cultures in which they functioned.

Using the resources of Dumbarton Oaks, I was able to construct a physical sacred space in which the narrative icons may have been displayed, and also to gauge their specific position within the broader visual and cultural history of images in Byzantium. In my chapter on the Byzantine icons, I conclude that the narrative panels were considered to be cult images of saints analogous to cult images of the Theotokos, such as the Hodegetria, Blachernitissa, and others. The narrative icons of saints managed to juxtapose a static image of a saint with narrative images in a manner that recall the moving images in miracles associated with the Theotokos. The most famous example of the latter is the Blachernai miracle witnessed by Byzantine and Latin audiences. Furthermore, I argue that the narrative icons take their cues from templon beams which adorned the iconostasis–a structure that developed in the same period as the icons. On the basis of these observations, I challenge Ševčenko's proposition by showing how the Byzantine narrative icons functioned in extremely specific ways in resonance with the concerns of Byzantine visual culture. They were not, therefore, intended as multicultural vehicles for a homogenous audience.

In the next chapter, I explore the narrative icons of saints in Italy, particularly Francis, and the fresco cycle of Francis painted in the narrative format on the walls of the Kalenderhane Camii (Kyriotissa Monastery) in Constantinople. I conclude that the narrative icons followed (at least) two trajectories in Italy: one in the south which closely imitated Byzantine examples, and one in a specifically Franciscan milieu which departed consciously from Byzantine icons as a means of asserting Franciscan identity. I argue that the Franciscan fresco in Constantinople continues this trend by affirming ethnic and religious differences between the Orthodox and the Catholics via the Franciscan use of the narrative format.

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Slavery in Late Antiquity

Jon Kyle Harper

During my fellowship I succeeded in completing the research phase of my dissertation on slavery. When I started the term, I had written four chapters on the history of law and slavery–the first half of my dissertation. The second half of my dissertation analyzes the social role of slavery. From a research perspective, it is a much more ambitious and laborious undertaking. Dumbarton Oaks has allowed me to pursue a broad research strategy that would hardly be possible in any other environment.

I set myself the task of using the electronic databanks of ancient texts to search for slaves in late antiquity. The Thesaurus Linguae Graecae and the Library of Latin Texts technology allowed me to create instantly indices which gave me virtually every reference to slavery from the period of my research. I have gone through over one hundred thousand references to slavery in late antique texts. John Chrysostom, for example, used some form of the word "slave" eight thousand times in his extant corpus. Because of Dumbarton Oaks and the electronic resources, I have been able to collect an amount of useful raw data that I hope can illuminate the importance and nature of slavery in the late Roman empire.

The next phase will be to turn this store of data into readable chapters. The late antique witnesses have shown me that slavery was a vital institution, woven into the fabric of late antiquity's most important social institutions, above all the family. I plan to write three chapters on the place of slavery in the late antique family. One will address the relation between sexuality and slavery. I believe that the transition from a society whose sexual ethics were moored in the workings of status to a society that preached a Christian, spiritualized notion of sexuality was a slow, if fundamental, part of the transformation of the ancient world. My other chapters on the family will focus on discipline and labor, that is, how master-slave relations worked and how slaves were used in late antiquity.

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Suicide in Byzantium

Apostolos Karpozilos

Of the material I have gathered on suicide incidents during the Byzantine millennium the historical sources have proved by far more instructive and informative, although the recorded instances are not as numerous as one might have expected. To be sure, the sources of the earlier period, that is from the fourth to the sixth century, have yielded more material than the later centuries. Most of the incidents involve individuals in high political or military positions, who committed suicide in anticipation of death and/or in the fear of cruel torture at the hands of their captors. The question that arises is whether suicide was more widespread in the early than in the later centuries and whether the cases under consideration suggest a pattern–or differently said, whether inflicting death upon oneself was more socially acceptable during the period of transition from paganism to Christianity. In late antiquity, self-inflicted death seems to have been part of a code of honor or a moral duty in case of defeat and disgrace. The recording of attempted and successful suicides by well known persons, defeated or otherwise disgraced, was considered "normal", whereas in later periods such incidents were perhaps considered taboo and may have been suppressed. The same seems to be the case with collective suicides either among heretics or among the oppressed populace–the phenomenon is confined to late antiquity up to the eighth century. The suicides recorded in historical sources by and large resulted from extreme situations–in the face of defeat and in fear of confinement and torture.

The cases mentioned in the hagiographic texts, on the other hand, are of a different kind. The individual is described as struggling against daemonic powers and invisible forces that drive him to self destruction, but in the end he is rescued by the timely intervention of divine agency. These kinds of stories, unreal as they may be, nevertheless indicate the way suicide was perceived and understood by a large segment of the society. A more sophisticated approach was inclined to interpret it, of course, as the product of a primitive mind, overburdened with passions, as Manuel Palaeologos theorized.

We also encountered instances of attempted suicides by women either in love or in distress. Judicial records attest to the fact that suicidal incidents of women under extreme stress were not uncommon. As for suicides among the lower classes, like soldiers and slaves, only general statements about them are found in the sources–the anonymous poor driven to suicide out of desperation, whereas in legal texts contain only a few inferences regarding soldiers and slaves. The impact of a suicidal act within a community is described in some detail only in one instance, which makes it clear that the act was socially condemned and severely affected the relatives of the deceased. Yet, instances of indignities inflicted upon the body of a victim of suicide or arbitrary confiscation of his property–practices attested in western documents–are not witnessed in the Greek sources.

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The Constantinopolitan Monastery of Panagiou in its Eleventh-century Context

Dirk KrausmŸller

During the last nine months I have prepared a monograph about the Constantinopolitan monastery of Panagiou and its literary legacy: a Typikon, a Life of Athanasius the Athonite, and a metaphrasis of this Life, the so-called Vita A, all of them written before 1025. These texts are of crucial importance for the understanding of the coenobitic movement of the eleventh century: the Panagiou Typikon is the earliest surviving extended rule and the Lives are the earliest examples for the influence of typika on the hagiographical genre.

I first give a historical overview and reconstruct the lost texts. Comparison between the Bachkovo Typikon and the Vitae A and B of Athanasius proves the existence of the Panagiou Typikon and the first Life, and study of the metaphrastic techniques employed by the author of Vita A permits the conclusion that Vita B represents this first Life with only minor changes. Then I discuss the rivalries between Panagiou and other monastic settings. I show that the author of the first Life claimed that Panagiou and not Lavra followed the Athanasian monastic tradition. I further argue that he inserted into the text a much extended version of the short rules of Athanasius in order to match the claim of the Studites that their extended version of the original Studite Hypotyposis was based on the teachings of Theodore. Next I study the texts as indicators for a transformation of the two literary genres to which they belong. I argue that the transition from shorter to extended rules reflects growing emphasis on communal rituals, which had previously been of little significance. I further show that the integration of typikon material into the Lives and the presentation of Athanasius as interacting with his community marks a new development when Lives are no longer exclusively written to prove the sanctity of the protagonist but also function as models for monastic life, or in other words, as Typika in action. Lastly I study invectives against extreme and ostentatious asceticism and against private almsgiving. I demonstrate that these activities were widely accepted and that they were an intrinsic part of the traditional ideal of sainthood. I then show that the authors of the Lives of Athanasius engaged in a complex reinterpretation of traditional topoi in order to present Athanasius as a 'traditional' saint and at the same time to make sure that his behavior would not be emulated.

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Art and Text in the Vienna Genesis

Maureen Anne O'Brien

I spent the 2005–2006 academic year researching and writing my dissertation on the Vienna Genesis. One of the world's most famous codices, the Vienna Genesis comprises the Greek text of the Book of Genesis on the upper part of each page accompanied without exception by painted miniatures to the text on the lower half. Although a large volume of scholarship exists on the manuscript, research over the past sixty years has focused almost exclusively on finding evidence within the Vienna Genesis for lost models of illustrated manuscripts that might prove theories about the origins of Jewish and Early Christian book illustration. My dissertation takes a different approach and investigates the afterlife of the object rather than its origins. It returns to fundamental questions about the codicology and paleography of this purple-dyed manuscript and presents evidence that the Vienna Genesis is most likely a composite codex made up of a sixth-century manuscript and fourth-century manuscript. I furthermore argue that this composite codex was extensively repainted in Renaissance Italy before it entered the Austrian imperial library in Vienna in the seventeenth century. The dissertation also examines the interesting relationship between the Vienna Genesis' Greek text and its repainted images as well as considering its original function and possible place of production versus its possible use during the Renaissance. A final chapter discusses the contributions of Franz Wickhoff, who wrote the original facsimile commentary of the Vienna Genesis in 1895, to art historiography and to the field of narratology and considers how narratological analysis can be applied to the codex today. In the end, I am arguing that the Vienna Genesis is a miscellany, a composite group of fragments, a repainted pastiche, and a testament to the complex afterlife and reception history of Early Christian codices rather than a means to understand the origins of manuscript illustration.

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The History and Archaeology of Bet Shean (Scythopolis) from the Hellenistic to the Medieval Periods:
Introductory Volume (Series of final reports)

Yoram Tsafrir

The Hebrew University excavation at Bet Shean (directed by Gideon Foerster and myself) took place between the years 1986–2000. It was the largest archaeological project carried out in Israel in the last quarter of the 20th century. Biblical Bet Shean was re-founded as Scythopolis in the Hellenistic period. At the end of the fourth century it became the capital city of the province of Second Palestine. In the early sixth century it reached its peak in size (some 160 hectares) and demography (probably 30–40,000 inhabitants). Around 635 CE it was conquered by the Muslims who called it Baysan. A process of decline, which had begun already in the late Byzantine period, accelerated. The town was destroyed by an enormous earthquake in the year 749 CE.

The publication program comprises five large volumes (written by members of the research team) which deal with major complexes that cover the entire area: 1. The Street of the Monuments; 2. The Valley Street, the Roman Basilica and the Byzantine Agora; 3. Silvanus Street, the Eastern bathhouse, and Hisham's Bazaar; 4. Palladius Street and the Caesarea Street; 5. The Amphitheater and the neighboring Byzantine Quarter. Several volumes of smaller scale on selected topics (two of which on oil lamps, and on Early Islamic glass have already appeared) will complete the publication. Such a large-scale program calls for an introductory monograph which will supply general orientation and enable the readers of the detailed reports to insert each individual complex into a comprehensive historical and archaeological frame. I have dedicated my work at Dumbarton Oaks to the writing of this monograph

My research has been concerned with general problems such as urbanization and municipal organization, city economy, urban planning, the role of plagues and earthquakes, ruralization of the city in late Byzantine and Islamic periods, etc. There is also an analysis of individual monuments: the streets, temples, basilica, forum and the Byzantine agora, bathhouses, residential buildings, mass entertainment structures, statues, etc. Each of these topics will be inserted into the monograph according to the chronological order. I believe that, when completed, the monograph will present more than a profile of an individual city, but will also shed light on urbanism and culture in the entire region of Palestine and Arabia.

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A Historical and Literary Commentary on the Vita of Epiphanius of Salamis

Claudia Rapp

These months at Dumbarton Oaks have enabled me to complete the research for several chapters of my commentary on Life of Epiphanius of Cyprus, the great church father and heresiologist of the late fourth century. The Vita itself must have been composed between 439 and 478.

In order to make the most of the DO's rich library resources in history, archaeology and art history, I have concentrated on three locations of Epiphanius' life: Palestine, Persia and Cyprus.

According to his Vita, Epiphanius is born into a poor Jewish family near Eleutheropolis. He eventually converts to Christianity, becomes a monk and later establishes his own monastic community at "Spanhydrion". I have found that the Vita is quite accurate in describing the general surroundings in Late Antique Judaea. Excavations at Beth Guvrin (Eleutheropolis) show a prosperous city, and confirm the presence of Jews and Christians in the area.

Shortly after he becomes a hermit, Epiphanius travels to Persia in order to heal the King's daughter from a demon. Comparison with descriptions of Persian court ritual and the reception of foreigners and guests at the court again confirm the accuracy of detail in the hagiographer's account. The narrative of this episode is closely modeled on a similar account of miraculous healing performed by the pagan philosopher Eustathius recorded in Eunapius' Lives of the Sophists.

Epiphanius spends the last decades of his life as bishop of Constantia (just north of modern Famagusta) in Cyprus. Again, the archaeological record contains nothing to contradict the Vita. The presence of lavishly appointed private villas in Constantia as well as Paphos and Kourion attests to the enduring power of the local aristocrats whom, according to the Vita, the new bishop is struggling to convert to Christianity. The five-aisled basilica he is reported to have built is still standing, complete with several spaces for specially honored tombs in the south aisle. Its close proximity to a massive temple of Zeus must have inspired the hagiographer to assert that Epiphanius miraculously found a large amount of gold in this temple with which to finance his building project.

A further valuable resource at DO has been the ease of access to digital resources, especially the online Thesaurus Linguae Graecae. This has enabled me to identify that the hagiographer puts three words from Homer's Iliad I 225, kynos ommat' echon in Epiphanius' mouth as the saint chastises a recalcitrant deacon as "having the eyes of a dog". The hagiographer also refers to Dionysius of Halikarnassos and Hesiod-thus demonstrating his erudition.

The combination of accurate detail with the use of classical allusions and pagan sources are unusual for a hagiographical work of this period and attest to the historical interest and literary value of the Life of Epiphanius.

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Christian Monasticism and the Transformation of Health Care in Late Antiquity

Andrew Crislip

My research for the fall term of 2004–2005 brings to light the healing traditions of late antiquity and the nascent monastic movement's role in shaping health care in Egypt and throughout the greater Byzantine world. The intent of the project was to use the resources at Dumbarton Oaks to expand the work begun in my 2002 Yale dissertation, "Christian Monasticism and the Development of the Hospital in Late Antiquity." While my previous work has focused on monastic health care in its social context in late antiquity; my current work focuses on both the intellectual transmission of healing traditions in early Byzantine monasticism, and on placing the healing traditions of monasticism within the context of those in cognate institutions, such as saints' shrines. First I should note that during the fellowship I was able to bring to an end the editing of my book based on my dissertation research, From Monastery to Hospital, forthcoming, 2005. More significantly for my use of the resources at Dumbarton Oaks, I began a second monograph that expands areas of my research into monastic medicine. One part of this undertaking has been an edition and translation of the corpus of Coptic medical literature-a little known Byzantine tradition that draws on both Greek and Egyptian medical traditions. Another is research in the various institutions through which healing was provided in late antiquity, including not only the monasteries, but also the burgeoning saints' shrines, physicians in private practice, and of course the hospital, the great medical innovation of the early Byzantine period. The resources of Dumbarton Oaks have been central to my project, bringing together holdings in such disparate fields as papyrology, hagiography, and Byzantine medicine. During my tenure at Dumbarton Oaks I have finished an annotated translation of Coptic medical literature from Byzantine Egypt; and have written and submitted for publication several articles on the healing traditions of early Byzantine monasticism. These include an edition of an Egyptian monastic letter requesting pharmacological ingredients for a sick monastic; an edition of a Byzantine Greek papyrus preserving recipes for medicinal wines; and a study reevaluating monastic approaches to one of the most famous and trenchant psychological disorders of early Byzantine monasticism, acedia, commonly equated with depression.

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The Milk of Salvation?:
Gender, Audience and the Nursing Virgin Mary in the Eastern Mediterranean

Elizabeth S. Bolman

Embodiment of paradoxes and prophecies, shaped by an array of metaphors, the heterogeneous, ever-shifting artifact that is the Virgin Mary could hardly stand further from the natural world. Late Antique and Byzantine authors both fragmented her and invested her with immense authority. Despite her extraordinary qualities, remote from the experience of womankind, art historians who have attempted to interpret one aspect of this very complex subject–the nursing Virgin Mary–have commonly naturalized it. The vast distance that separates women engaging in the biologically natural act of nursing from the social construction of a nursing female cult figure disappears in these writings. This historiographic pattern interests me, and has motivated my desire to problematize this iconographic type, using it as a vehicle for exploring the variability of assemblages of the Virgin Mary Galaktotrophousa, or 'she who nourishes with milk,' and her diverse audiences, in a book.

Mary nursing, in a Nativity scene, Omorphi Ekklesia, Aegina, 1282 Fresco. Photograph: E. Bolman

Mary nursing, in a Nativity scene, Omorphi Ekklesia, Aegina, 1282 Fresco.
Photograph: E. Bolman

A minor but persistent eastern Mediterranean choice, depictions of the nursing Virgin first appear in significant numbers in Late Antique Egypt. These represent the reformulation of a pagan Egyptian nursing goddess type. In a move that seems counterintuitive to us, most of the Egyptian Christian exempla were designed for the male, monastic viewer, as wall paintings and manuscript illuminations. They read as a metaphor for the eucharist, emphasizing Christ's divinity.

The next substantial cluster of images of the Galaktotrophousa belongs to Byzantium in the twelfth through fourteenth centuries. I have focused on these Byzantine images in my research at Dumbarton Oaks this year. I have confirmed that the Galaktotrophousa fits within a larger pattern of events that demonstrated the fullness of Christ's human nature, and therefore represents the opposite of the Coptic construction of the same subject. I have added to the known exempla, and have studied their functional contexts and possible audiences.

In this book, I chart not the development of the nursing type, but the fluidity of its varied historical constructions and reconstructions, in Greco-Roman and Coptic Egypt, and Byzantium. My central point is to demonstrate the break between nature, on the one hand, and the social construction of ideas about, and images of nursing, on the other.

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Densely-woven Praise:
The Funeral Oration for Manuel I Komnenos by Eustathius of Thessalonike. Critical Edition, Translation, Commentary

Emmanuel C. Bourbouhakis

My anticipated goal during my junior fellowship at Dumbarton Oaks was to revise parts of my dissertation drafted while at the Byzantinisch-Neugriechisches Institut in Berlin last year, and to finish the remaining sections of the work in time for Spring 2005 graduation at Harvard University. This project has been multifaceted from the start, involving textual criticism, translation of a text replete with involved rhetorical idiom, and a joint philological-historical commentary designed to render the text accessible to advanced students of Byzantine literature and language, as well as informative for scholars wishing to exploit one part of the rich cultural and literary legacy bequeathed by the remarkable figure of Eustathius of Thessalonike. As such, work on the dissertation advanced on many fronts simultaneously, with each part shedding light on otherwise obscure and inscrutable material in other parts. Since I expect to submit the work for publication next year, it has been important all along to aim at thoroughness and fastidious handling of textual questions in order to have a camera-ready copy soon after submission for graduation.

While my area of research, strictly speaking, is philology and palaeography, the nature of this project required the unrivalled resources of Dumbarton Oaks in Byzantine history, rare 19th c. monographs, recent publications on Constantinopolitan monastic foundations, and even some coins. Textual criticism and interpretation may call on any number of sources for help and guidance. The composite nature of the work, drawing on research as diverse as theological scholarship and literary theory, reflects the persistently composite or interdisciplinary nature of Byzantine studies.

At least one interesting outcome of the research I have conducted while here has been a renewed appreciation at what remains to be done in the still nascent field of the study of Byzantine literature. The text I am editing, long considered unimaginative and ridden with clichés and commonplaces, has revealed itself upon closer scrutiny to be an outstanding example of twelfth century literary culture, with all its foibles, no doubt, but also possessed of an aesthetic of oral-aural poetics so far little mentioned and even less well understood. This work should help bring the study of Byzantine literature closer to the fold of literary studies more broadly and the humanities, where its unique perspective of language, the ties between art, spirit and society is likely to be appreciated as distinctly instructive.

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Stewardship Economics in Early Byzantium

Daniel F. Caner

My research in Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks this year explored the idea of sacred wealth and its proper management from the fifth through the eighth centuries. This was the first period in history in which Christian institutions became economically prominent as centers of donation and distribution, raising basic questions about how such wealth was represented and justified. To address these questions I focused on the use of the word "blessing" (eulogia in Greek, benedictio in Latin, bûrktâ in Syriac, smou in Coptic) as a special designation for a Christian gift in church and monastic literature of the time. Commonly applied to liturgical offerings, lay donations, medicaments, or tokens of hospitality or affection given out by clerics, monks, or at holy land shrines, the word also appears in hagiography as a gift sent by God to support people who do charitable work. It therefore provides a key to understanding how religious wealth was idealized and, to some degree, managed in early Byzantium.

What my research demonstrates is that the Christian notion of a "blessing" mainly derived from Paul's definition of a "blessing" in Second Corinthians 9:5–12, but gained definition and importance in the Roman East through contrast with more worldly gifts of the time. Considered a product of God's bounty, items called "blessings" were given out to churchmen and monks as a supplemental ration, thereby providing a material basis for charitable giving. When given, such gifts were also supposed to be free of self-interest, making no demands on either giver or receiver (for example, monks who gave them are presented as asking for nothing in return). When viewed against the secular use of gifts to achieve promotions or impose patronal bonds, it is this aspect of a Christian "blessing" that made it especially novel, providing one of the earliest historical examples of a "pure" gift. It was also conceptually different from an alms, since it was not given in atonement, and was believed to derive from God's grace. Hence it provided the conceptual basis for a distinctly Christian way of thinking about material wealth and its use in early Byzantium.

Dumbarton Oaks greatly facilitated this work by providing access to rare editions, lexica, and papyri, and by providing training on use of the Thesaurus linguae graecae. Both enabled me to survey my subject in a manner more comprehensive than has been done before or would have been otherwise possible.

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Authorship, Audience, and Performance of High-Brow Literature in Late Byzantium (c.1250–c.1350)

Niels Henrik Gaul

My research project addressed the question of "Authorship, Audience, and Performance of High-Brow Literature in Late Byzantium ( c.1250–c.1350)."

In the fashion of a cultural poetic ("new historicist") analysis, I was particularly interested in reading the abundant rhetorical production of the early Palaiologan period as a means of representing (reenforcing), distributing, and challenging (imperial) power and social influence within the upper strata of Byzantine society.

To this end, I scrutinized a wide-spread social practice in late Byzantium, the so-called thea¬tron. While the term originally denoted a classical-and, for that matter, modern-"theater," in Byzantium it came to describe a circle of learned men, very rarely women, who read (performed) their rhetorical compositions to one another. Hitherto, theatra were perceived as "circles of the Muses," as "classless," "unofficial," and "informal." A close reading of the sources, however, made it obvious that the theatron was quite the opposite: In fact, a hierarchy of theatra began to emerge. At the top ranked the imperial theatron, followed by the still "exclusive" theatra in the houses of the imperial family and the emperor's ministers, spreading down through society to the houses of schoolmasters (hence, I believe, the renewed composition of meletai, rhetorical set pieces in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries) and "common" litterati.

Rhetoric composed in the Attic Greek dialect-commonly believed to have been "escapist" and "phantastic", as to have been "removed at least one stage from reality"-thus became visible as a form of "social energy" (Greenblatt), that circulated in the theatra: The more social energy an author managed to invest in a text, the more prestige ("cultural capital") he would gain and the higher he would climb on the social ladder. It goes without saying that the opposite could be equally true: If he failed, his career would not progress very far-or even come to an end.

This analysis of the late Byzantine theatron is included as a methodological/background chapter in my PhD dissertation, which exemplifies the interaction of the late Byzantine learned élite and wider society by focussing on the late Byzantine scholar Thomas Magistros (c.1280–c.1347/8). My project profited immensely from the online and excellent library resources at Dumbarton Oaks: Especially the "Thesaurus Linguae Graecae" and ready access to even the most remote editions allowed the exhaustive search for the term theatron in Byzantine textual sources from the mid-thirteenth to the late fourteenth century.

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The Prosopography of Bulgaria under Byzantine Rule 971–1185

Ivan Jordanov

My scholarly research has followed two basic lines of investigation:

І. Searching in the narrative sources (chronicles, annals, acts, documents, vitae, etc.) to ascertain information on the following people:

  1. Byzantine governors (secular, military and ecclesiastical) of the Bulgarian lands for the period 971–1185.
  2. Individuals connected with the Bulgarian lands: Bulgarians by origin; short- or long- term residents in the Bulgarian lands and generally persons with material and other interests in the Bulgarian lands.

The materials under this rubric available at Dumbarton Oaks have proved extremely numerous and the time allotted for their detailed examination and bringing this process to completion has proved insufficient. All those materials have been documented by photocopying or scanning. Work on them will continue after my return to Bulgaria with the intention to involve other specialists in this field.

ІІ. Investigation in the field of sigillography, archaeology and epigraphy with the purpose of documenting the following:

  1. Seals of Byzantine governors (secular, military and ecclesiastical) of the Bulgarian lands.
  2. Seals of individuals connected with the Bulgarian lands: Bulgarians by origin; short- or long-term residents in the Bulgarian lands; individuals who wrote letters to Bulgaria and whose seals have been found in situ in the Bulgarian lands.
  3. Individuals attested on monuments of art, archaeological materials, inscriptions etc., connected with the Bulgarian lands in the discussed period.

I focused my efforts on this line of investigation, since the Dumbarton Oaks resources in these areas are enormous and this work can only be carried out in person. From the very large collection of seals at Dumbarton Oaks (ca. 17, 000 specimens), I have located seals of individuals connected with the Bulgarian lands in the period 971–1185, namely: by office: Byzantine governors (secular, military and ecclesiastical) of the Bulgarian lands for the period 971–1185; by origin: bearing proper or family names indicating a Bulgarian origin; parallels of the more than 3,000 Byzantine seals discovered in the Bulgarian lands and generally seals of individuals of the same families somehow connected with Bulgaria, since the theme of the project is basically prosopographic.

This process took more than five months working with the card-indexes and the originals. After January 2005 I began entering the information from the examined seals and narrative sources into the manuscript of the Corpus of the Byzantine Seals from Bulgaria, volume 2: Seals with Family Names.

The working process was slow but extremely useful. The whole manuscript, whose English text is going to be revised soon, amounts to ca. 500 computer pages. It includes nearly 800 Byzantine seals, a large number of which are unpublished to date, and contains a prosopographic survey of more than 2,000 individuals who played an important role in the Bulgarian lands and generally in Byzantine society in the Xth–XIIth centuries. I hope the volume Corpus of the Byzantine Seals from Bulgaria, volume 2: Seals with Family Names will be published before the congress in Byzantine Studies in London in 2006.

Of course, with this the work on my project and generally my scholarly research have not been completed. I have also examined and documented materials (sphragistic and narrative) that will be included in the next Corpus of the Byzantine Seals from Bulgaria, volume 3: Seals of Byzantine Institutions (secular and ecclesiastical) from the capital Constantinople.

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Antioch (969–1268):
Byzantine Provincial Art from Georgia and Greek Illuminated Manuscripts

Alexander L. Saminski

In 969 Byzantium reconquered Antioch after three centuries of Arab occupation. In 1268 it was captured and devastated by the Mamluks. There are reasons to believe that during these three centuries of renewed Byzantine rule the city may have become an important cultural center of the empire, as it had been before the Arab invasion. Our only source for evaluating Antiochene art is a few Georgian and Greek illuminated manuscripts. Georgia had been a part of the Patriarchate of Antioch since the fourth century. A multitude of Georgians lived in Antioch after the Byzantine victory side by side with the Greek population.

Therefore Georgian manuscripts of attested Antiochene origin enable us to recognize their anonymous Greek relatives.

What, then, do these books tell us about the city's cultural activity? First of all, statistical analysis reveals that the rise of the illuminated book in Antioch was very short lived: for a period of 20 years after the middle of the 11th century. Only then could Antioch proclaim herself as an artistic center of the Byzantine world. On the other hand, a fine miniature from a Gospel Lectionary in the Bibliothèque orientale in Beirut, painted between 1323 and 1344, testifies that occasional production of illuminated books persisted in the Antiochene Patriarchate even long after the devastation of the city.

Two exquisite manuscripts from 1054 with miniatures indistinguishable from those of Constantinople suggest that Hellenism flourished in Antioch once more as the culture of the upper classes, in this sense continuing a tradition interrupted by the Arab conquest. Other books exemplify a variety of styles corresponding to the esthetics of different strata of Antiochene society, but nevertheless all of them were strongly influenced by the art of Constantinople. Instead of the expected stylistic consistency that would add one more local center to the general picture of Byzantine art, the manuscripts reveal the richness and diversity of Antochene culture, suggesting new and unknown aspects still to be discovered.

A hallmark of Antiochene book production seems to be the extraordinary miscellaneous character shared by all the manuscripts. This enables us to ascribe to Antioch a manuscript at the Walters in Baltimore (W 532), the Greek Gospel illuminated by Armenian Chalcedonian artists, and another one in the Great Lavra on Mt Athos painted by a Melchite master, who was unfamiliar with the Greek language.

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Latent Turkification of Byzantium (ca. 1071–1461)

Rustam M. Shukurov

The present research project is intended to analyze interethnic (Greek and Turkic), intercultural, and interconfessional (Christian and Muslim) relationships and influences during the Turkic conquests of Asia Minor and the Balkans. The project represents an attempt to reconstruct the actual content and evolution of the ethno-cultural interaction between Byzantine societies in Anatolia and the Balkans, and the Turkic element (the Cumans, Turkmens, Saljuqs and Ottomans). The focus of my research is Byzantine mentality viewed from the standpoint of its reaction to its meeting with the Alien.

Several interconnected aspects of the problem posed have been studied during the academic year 2004/2005: 1) Ethnic presence of Turks in different strata of Byzantine population; 2) Oriental influences upon the medieval Greek spoken and literary languages of the Balkans and Anatolia; 3) The Byzantine view of the Turks, Muslims and the Orient; 4) Oriental influences upon Byzantine material culture.

The concrete outcomes of the study of the aforementioned aspects are as follows: 1) The Database of the Turks in Byzantium from the end of the 11th through the 15th century has been composed: "Part 1. The Turks under the Komnenoi and the Lascarids" (almost completed); "Part 2. The Turks in the Empires of the Palaiologoi and the Grand Komnenoi" (ready for publication); 2) The Database of Oriental lexical elements in the 12th–15th- century medieval Greek (almost completed); 3) Materials from primary and secondary sources for a series of special studies dealing with the general topic "Turks, Muslims and the Orient in Byzantine everyday mentality" have been gathered and systematized.

The results of this research will soon be submitted as a monograph. The research described above should give an up-to-date and most complete picture of the reaction of Byzantine civilization to its meeting with the Turks, and should contribute to a better understanding of the causes and mechanism of success and failure in the contest between civilisations.

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The Rural Landscape and Built Environment at the End of Antiquity::
The Limestone Villages of Southeastern Isauria

GŸnder Varinlioğlu

During the academic year of 2004–2005, I worked on my dissertation entitled "The Rural Landscape and Built Environment at the End of Antiquity: The Limestone Villages of Southeastern Isauria". In my dissertation, I investigate the character of rural settlement patterns, land use and building practices in a marginal territory located in the hinterland of Seleucia on the Calycadnus river (modern-day Silifke in southern Turkey), the capital of the late Roman province of Isauria. I explore the transformations that the countryside underwent during the transition from Antiquity to the Middle Ages, due to the Persian and Arab invasions, the disruption and transformation of trade networks in the Mediterranean, and the plagues and earthquakes which struck urban centers from the sixth century onwards. In my study and interpretation of this period, which spans the period of the fourth century to the end of the first millennium, I use several types of evidence: ancient texts, accounts of travelers, epigraphy, and the archaeological data I gathered during two summers of fieldwork in the rural landscapes of Isauria. I focus on this particular territory in southeastern Isauria with a much larger goal of understanding regional dynamics which allowed the formation and viability of a dense network of settlements and intra-regional communications in the Late Antique Mediterranean world.

At Dumbarton Oaks, I focused on two aspects of my dissertation. First I studied the accounts of travelers from antiquity to the twentieth century using the virtually complete collection of ancient, medieval and modern authors at the Dumbarton Oaks library. Secondly I worked on the new data I collected in the summers of 2003 and 2004, namely the architectural sculpture, masonry techniques, pottery and settlements. I studied these in comparison to similar evidence from the larger region as well as from the Eastern Mediterranean. In this part of my research, I made intensive use of the articles, books, dissertations etc. dealing with similar material evidence from Late Antique and Byzantine Anatolia, the Levant, Egypt, North Africa and Greece. The academic year I spent at Dumbarton Oaks allowed me to contextualize my research in the wider field of Byzantine settlement and landscape archaeology. In other words, I investigated the significance of southeastern Isauria within broader settlement patterns and networks in the Eastern Mediterranean through the comparison of the material evidence from diverse sites and landscapes. My research attempted to answer to the need for new data and approaches in order to draw a more complete picture of Anatolian rural landscapes during the transition from Antiquity to the Middle Ages.

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