'Italy and the East Roman World in the Medieval Mediterranean' addresses the understudied topic of the Italian peninsula’s relationship to the continuation of the Roman Empire in the East, across the early and central Middle Ages. The East Roman world, commonly known by the ahistorical term "Byzantium", is generally imagined as an Eastern Mediterranean empire, with Italy part of the medieval "West". Across 18 individually authored chapters, an introduction and conclusion, this volume makes a different case: for an East Roman world of which Italy forms a crucial part, and an Italian peninsula which is inextricably connected to―and, indeed, includes―regions ruled from Constantinople. Celebrating a scholar whose work has led this field over several decades, Thomas S. Brown, the chapters focus on the general themes of empire, cities and elites, and explore these from the angles of sources and historiography, archaeology, social, political and economic history, and more besides. With contributions from established and early career scholars, elucidating particular issues of scholarship as well as general historical developments, the volume provides both immediate contributions and opens space for a new generation of readers and scholars to a growing field.
Author(s): Thomas J. MacMaster, Nicholas S. M. Matheou (eds.)
Series: Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman Studies, 30
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 400
List of figures x
List of contributors xi
Preface and acknowledgments xv
Introduction: Italy and the East Roman world, 476–1204 / BRYAN WARD-PERKINS 1
PART I. Sources and historiography 11
1. Cassiodorus and the reluctant provinciales of Dalmatia / CRISTINA LA ROCCA 13
2. Procopius of Caesarea in Renaissance Italy / BRIAN CROKE 23
3. Ambrosio de Morales and the Codex Vetustissimus Ovetensis / ROGER COLLINS 49
4. Constructing the enemy: Byzantium in Paul the Deacon / EDUARDO FABBRO 70
PART II. The Exarchate of Ravenna 95
5. Travels of an exarch: Smaragdus and the Anastasian Walls / JIM CROW 97
6. Remarks on the sociocultural and religious history of early Byzantine Ravenna in the light of epigraphic and archival evidence / ALESSANDRO BAZZOCCHI 109
7. Exarchs and others: Secular patrons of churches in the sixth to eighth centuries / DEBORAH M. DELIYANNIS 122
8. The exarchate, the empire, and the élites: Some comparative remarks / JOHN HALDON 142
9. Bishops and merchants: The economy of Ravenna at the beginning of the Middle Ages / ENRICO CIRELLI 154
PART III. Ravenna after the exarchate 177
10. Renovatio, continuity, innovation: Ravenna’s role in legitimation and collective memory (eighth to ninth centuries) / NICOLE JANTZEN-LOPEZ 179
11. Thomas Morosini, first Latin patriarch of Constantinople, and the Ravenna connection / MICHAEL ANGOLD 200
PART IV. Empire and elites 213
12. Dux to episcopus: From ruling cities to controlling sees in Byzantine Italy, 554–900 / EDWARD M. SCHOOLMAN 215
13. The Duke of Istria, the Roman past, and the Frankish present / FRANCESCO BORRI 234
14. Hegemony, elitedom and ethnicity: “Armenians” in imperial Bari, c.874–1071 / NICHOLAS S.M. MATHEOU 245
PART V. Elites and cities 273
15. What was wrong with bishops in sixth-century southern Italy? / PATRICIA SKINNER 275
16. Before the Venetians? Evidence for slave trading out of Italy, 489–751 / THOMAS J. MACMASTER 289
17. Urban life in Lombard Italy: Genoa and Milan compared / ROSS BALZARETTI 304
18. A dance to the music of time: Greeks and Latins in Medieval Taranto / VERA VON FALKENHAUSEN 324
The study of empire and cities in the early medieval Mediterranean: Personal reflections and conclusions / THOMAS S. BROWN 353
Tom Brown Bibliography 365
Index 368