The Byzantine City from Heraclius to the Fourth Crusade, 610–1204: Urban Life after Antiquity

225 Pages·2021·4.306 MB·English

by  Luca Zavagno

NEW APPROACHES TO
BYZANTINE HISTORY AND CULTURE
The Byzantine City
from Heraclius to
the Fourth Crusade,
610–1204
Urban Life after Antiquity
Luca Zavagno
New Approaches to Byzantine History and Culture
Series Editors
Florin Curta
University of Florida
FL, USA
Leonora Neville
University of Wisconsin Madison
WI, USA
Shaun Tougher
Cardiff University
Cardiff, UK
New Approaches to Byzantine History and Culture publishes high-quality
scholarship on all aspects of Byzantine culture and society from the fourth
to the fifteenth centuries, presenting fresh approaches to key aspects of
Byzantine civilization and new studies of unexplored topics to a broad
academic audience. The series is a venue for both methodologically inno-
vative work and ground-breaking studies on new topics, seeking to engage
medievalists beyond the narrow confines of Byzantine studies.
The core of the series is original scholarly monographs on various
aspects of Byzantine culture or society, with a particular focus on books
that foster the interdisciplinarity and methodological sophistication of
Byzantine studies. The series editors are interested in works that combine
textual and material sources, that make exemplary use of advanced meth-
ods for the analysis of those sources, and that bring theoretical practices of
other fields, such as gender theory, subaltern studies, religious studies
theory, anthropology, etc. to the study of Byzantine culture and society.
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14755
Luca Zavagno
The Byzantine City
from Heraclius to the
Fourth Crusade,
610–1204
Urban Life after Antiquity
Luca Zavagno
Department of History
Bilkent University
Ankara, Turkey
ISSN 2730-9363 ISSN 2730-9371 (electronic)
New Approaches to Byzantine History and Culture
ISBN 978-3-030-84306-9 ISBN 978-3-030-84307-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84307-6
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P
reface
“The criminal always returns to the scene of the crime.” Indeed, this proj-
ect represents a return to a topic I have explored on numerous occasions
before and after my Ph.D. as I was preparing my first monograph, entitled
Cities in Transition: Urbanism in Byzantium between Late Antiquity and
the Early Middle Ages (AD 500–900) (BAR 2009). Since then, a score of
contributions on the topic of Byzantine urbanism have appeared; how-
ever, no introductory survey of Byzantine urbanism and the changes its
experience between 600 and 1204 has ever appeared. Three preliminary
caveats should be set forth, though.
First, the main idea at the very basis of this book is to propose a regional
and sub-regional overview of the transformations of urban contexts in a
comparative perspective, taking into consideration the peculiar geomor-
phological and topographical varieties of each area under scrutiny; in other
words, echoing the late Martin Harrison, the focus of this diachronic
approach will also be the urban developments across the mountain, the
plain, and the coastline as well as the islands. In other words, this book
proposes a sort of examination of the blueprint of the Byzantine urban
landscape rather than a simple map of the most important and better-
excavated sites.
Second, indeed, archaeology and material culture have pride of place in
what remains a short and -of course- brief overview of the functional
changes experienced by Byzantine urbanism. The changes in urban func-
tions, landscape, structure, and fabric, have been explored by bringing
together the most recent results stemming from urban archaeological
v
vi PREFACE
excavations, the results of analyses of material culture (ceramic, coins,
seals), and a reassessment of the documentary and hagiographical sources.
They have hopefully allowed me to propose an all-encompassing analytical
approach that set the sails from the urban economy and addressed politi-
cal, social, religious, and cultural issues, which all played a role in morph-
ing the Byzantine city. Indeed, I also remain convinced that the Byzantine
urban landscape can afford us a better grasp of changes to the Byzantine
central and provincial administrative apparatus: the fiscal machinery, mili-
tary institutions, socio-economic structures, and religious organization.
Cities are, therefore, a sort of looking glass: a way of checking the reality
on the ground in a world too often interpreted through the
Constantinopolitan perspective. The Queen City was, of course, imitated
and sought after as an architectural and urbanistic model; nevertheless, it
was never reached; and as cities often remained central to the experience
of many “Romans,” more often than not, it remained a distant thunder in
the background noise of the actual flow of Byzantine city life.
The third and last point concerns the audience of the book. Indeed, it
is meant and thought for a scholarly (and not) public as well as students.
Therefore, it may be called a handbook. Personally, I would rather regard
it as an attempt to paint a picture of the main historiographical trends,
interpretative structures, and methodological questions concerning
Byzantine urbanism with a broad brush. In other words, it should ideally
be regarded as a starting point for further delving into issues like economic
functionality of cities, their religious and socio-political role, as well as
their architectural, urbanistic, and structural manifestations along the six
centuries under scrutiny here. I can only hope that when turning the last
page of this book, the readers will feel that their intellectual curiosity has
been stimulated enough to pursue their own journey following the trails
of Byzantium and its city. After all, as Sophocles concludes: “a city that is
just of one man only is no true city.”1
Ankara, Turkey Luca Zavagno
a
cknowledgments
There are many people to whom my gratitude should be extended, but it
is often hard to mention them in one breath. This book has been written
during extraordinary times in which the Covid-19 pandemic had changed
the world as we knew it. During this immense tragedy, the “usual” and
traditional academic activities and encounters came to a complete stop.
Teaching turned into a bi-dimensional and virtual exercise with students
perching from small windows on a screen. However, and without glossing
over the difficulties instructors and students experienced, nobody turned
into a solitary soliloquist. Technology helped to reach out to colleagues
(most of whom I am proud to call friends) no matter how far they were.
Some of them were terrific sources of inspiration and support. They helped
me with advice, suggestions, and references: sometimes directly, some-
times indirectly (as some even accepted to skim through the boring draft
of the book). In particular, I would like to mention Nicholas Bakirtzis
(who is like an elder and wiser brother to me), Owen Miller, Jonathan
Jarrett, Rebecca Darley, and Maria Cristina Carile (it was a real privilege to
put the last touches to my book while in Ravenna); to me, they are more
than colleagues: they are invaluable mentors on top of being superb
scholars.
I also had the good luck to discuss and debate some of the concepts and
ideas included in this book with the students of some of the courses I held
at Bilkent University. They also provided invaluable food for thoughts. I
can name but a few of them (but to all goes my token of appreciation and
gratitude): Harun Celik, Yunus Dogan, Aysenur Mulla, Humberto De
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viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Luigi, and Zeynep Olgun. To my “dottoranda” Fermude Gulsevinç goes
a special praise for her patience with a supervisor like me and because she
reviewed the manuscript and convinced me that Stravinsky’s was not too
bad a metaphor after all.
Finally, I would like to mention my mum, my stepdad Mariangelo, my
sister Marianna, Eddie Luca, my brother-in-law Antonio and -above all-
my wife Federica, and my daughter Sofia, to whom this book is dedicated;
cause without them, I would not have been able to write a single sentence
of it or of anything I scribbled in the past fifteen years.
note
1. Sophocles, Antigone (2003). R. Gibbons and C. Segal (Eds.). Oxford, 85.
Praise for The Byzantine City from Heraclius to the
Fourth Crusade, 610–1204
“This is a most welcome and important contribution in the study of Byzantine
cities, a topic of growing scholarly interest. Drawing from a range of historical
sources and archaeological results this book offers a compelling overview of the
socioeconomic and cultural complexity of the Byzantine city and its significance
for our understanding of the history of Byzantium.”
—Nikolas Bakirtzis, The Cyprus Institute