The Balkans and the Byzantine World before and after the Captures of Constantinople, 1204 and 1453

Contributions by Ivan Biliarsky, Jelena Erdeljan, Katerina Kontopanagou, Nicholas Melvani, Ema Miljkovi, Jelena Mrgi, Radu G. Pun, Dušan Popovi, Radivoj Radi, Alicia Simpson, Vlada Stankovi, Christos Stavrakos, Nada Zeevi Edited by Vlada Stankovi

Publication date:

15 June 2016

Length of book:

248 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

ISBN-13: 9781498513258

This book represents the first attempt to analyze historical and cultural developments in late medieval and early modern southeastern Europe as a set of mutually intertwined regional histories, burdened by the strong dichotomy between the almighty center—Constantinople—and the periphery that is rarely visible in both contemporary sources and modern scholarship. This mosaic of original studies is devoted to various regions of the Byzantine Balkans and their historical, artistic, and ideological idiosyncrasies, mirroring the complex character and composite and fragmented structure of this vast region. The focal points of the book are the two captures of Constantinople in 1204 and 1453, and the contributors analyze the significance of these catastrophic events on the political destiny of medieval Balkan societies, the mechanisms of adapting to the new political order, and the ever-present interconnectedness of a lower, regional elite across southeastern Europe that had remained strong even after the Ottoman conquest.

Introduction: In the Balkans “Without” Constantinople: Questions of Center and Periphery, Vlada Stanković

Part I: In a World Without a Center: Remaining Byzantine
Chapter 1: Byzantium’s Retreating Balkan Frontiers during the Reign of the Angeloi (1185–1203): A Reconsideration, Alicia Simpson
Chapter 2: Discontinuity and Continuity of Byzantine Literary Tradition After the Crusaders' Capture of Constantinople: The Case of "Original" Byzantine Novels, Dušan Popović
Chapter 3: The Divided Empire: Byzantium on the Eve of 1204, Radivoj Radić
Chapter 4: The Fate of the Palaiologan Aristocracy of Thessalonike after 1423, Nicholas Melvani
Chapter 5: Paintings of Donor Portraits in the State of Epirus: Aesthetics, Fashion and Trends in the Late Byzantine period, Katerina Kontopanagou
Chapter 6: Monastic Foundation Legends in Epirus, Christos Stavrakos

Part II: The Peripheries: In the Shadow of Constantinople and Its Influence
Chapter 7: Studenica and the Life Giving Tree, Jelena Erdeljan
Chapter 8: Rethinking the Position of Serbia within the Byzantine Oikoumene in the Thirteenth Century, Vlada Stanković
Chapter 9: The Synodicon of Orthodoxy in Manuscript BAR Sl. 307 and the Hagioriticon Gramma of the Year 1344, Ivan Biliarsky
Chapter 10: Mount Athos and the Byzantine-Slavic Tradition in Wallachia and Moldavia after the Fall of Constantinople, Radu Păun
Chapter 11: The Center of the Periphery: The Land of Bosnia in the Heart of Bosnia, Jelena Mrgić

Part III: Aftermath: Between Two Empires, Between Two Eras
Chapter 12: Before and After the Fall of the Serbian Despotate: The Differences in the Timar Organization in the Serbian Lands in the mid-15th Century, Ema Miljković
Chapter 13: Memories of Home in the Accounts of the Balkan Refugees from the Ottomans to the Apennine peninsula (15th–16th centuries), Nada Zečević

This volume faces the difficult task of exploring southeastern Europe during the period contiguous to the Fourth Crusade, and that when the Ottoman Empire replaced the Byzantine one—with Constantinople becoming Istanbul—, while the contributors are cognizant of a contemporary Balkan region and its devastations . . . This is not a history well-known beyond its research specialists, thus the volume is of value to scholars in this particular field as well as interdisciplinary studies.