CS 369

This volume is concerned with the history and the social and institutional structures of the Byzantine empire in the period from its revival after the Arab assaults of the 8th century up to its disintegration and dismemberment when Constantinople was sacked by the Crusaders in 1204 (the subject of the final article). A distinctive feature of Nicolas Oikonomides' work is his ability to submit to detailed analysis varied types of source material, literary, legal, epigraphic, artistic and to extract from these the maximum of information. Particular articles deal with the political and ideological significance of works of art, for instance the mosaics of Saint Sophia, with the development of Byzantine legal texts, and with the world of Byzantium's eastern frontier.

Society, Culture and Politics in Byzantium is the fourth selection of papers by the late Nicolas Oikonomides to be published in the Variorum Collected Studies Series. Its focus is upon the Byzantine world after the Fourth Crusade and during the Palaeologan period, though several studies deal with a longer time span. The twenty-eight articles included look first at questions of language and literacy, and then at the relationships between art and politics. The final sections examine aspects of the history of the later empire, in the age of its decline, caught between the economic penetration of the Western European states and the expansion of the Ottoman Turks, and consider the development of Byzantine institutions, monasteries and the Church in this period.

The studies included in the present collection by Elizabeth Zachariadou are concerned with the long period of transition from the Byzantine Empire to its successor, the Ottoman Empire. Among the themes covered are the processes of settlement and state-formation amongst the nomadic and often superficially islamized Turks who invaded Asia Minor, and the interactions between them and the conquered Christian population, including not infrequent intermarriage. Other studies focus on how the Greek Orthodox inhabitants of the old Byzantine territories became centred around their ecclesiastical authorities and the patriarchate, and accommodated themselves to their new masters, offering particular services notably in economic life and foreign relations, and channelling their energies into such fruitful areas as trade and shipping.

Social and Economic Life in Byzantium is the third selection of papers by the late Nicolas Oikonomides to be published in the Variorum Collected Studies Series; a fourth, Society, Culture and Politics in Byzantium, will follow in 2005. The present volume is centred upon the period from the 9th to the 11th century, and a series of examinations into the society and economic activity of the Byzantine world. Other groups of studies investigate relations between state and church, monasteries in particular, aspects of the history of the Slavs in the Balkans, and topics in Byzantine epigraphy.