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This edition contains a wide variety of information on both foreign relations and internal administration and is one of the most important historical documents surviving from the Middle Byzantine period.
The 10th-century treatise on the military provinces (the 'themes') of the medieval East Roman (Byzantine) empire is one of the most enigmatic of the works ascribed to the emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos. A mix of historical geography, imperial propaganda, historical information and legend or myth drawn from ancient, Hellenistic as well as Roman and late Roman sources, it was one of the emperor's earliest works, although the extent to which he was its author remains debated. Its purpose, and the emperor's aims in commissioning or writing it, are equally unclear, since it offers neither an accurate historical account of the evolution of the themata nor does it appear to draw on availa...
This is the first modern language translation of the entire text of the tenth-century Greek Book of Ceremonies (De ceremoniis), a work compiled and edited by the Byzantine emperor Constantine VII (905-959). It preserves material from the fifth century through to the 960s. Chapters deal with diverse subjects of concern to the emperor including the role of the court, secular and ecclesiastical ceremonies, processions within the Palace and through Constantinople to its churches, the imperial tombs, embassies, banquets and dress, the role of the demes, hippodrome festivals with chariot races, imperial appointments, the hierarchy of the Byzantine administration, the equipping of expeditions, including to recover Crete from the Arabs, and the lists of ecclesiastical provinces and bishoprics.
The 10th-century treatise on the military provinces (the 'themes') of the medieval East Roman (Byzantine) empire is one of the most enigmatic of the works ascribed to theemperor Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos. A mix of historical geography, imperial propaganda, historical information and legend or myth drawn from ancient, Hellenistic as well as Roman and late Roman sources, it was one of the emperor's earliest works, although the extent to which he was its author remains debated. Its purpose, and the emperor's aims in commissioning or writing it, are equally unclear, since it offers neither an accurate historical account of the evolution of the themata nor does it appear to draw on availab...
Presents the first comprehensive study of the 'Byzantine Google' and how it reshaped Byzantine court culture in the tenth century.
This comprehensive volume offers new insights into a seminal period of medieval Eastern Roman imperial history: the rule of Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos (913/945-959). Its fifteen chapters are organized around the concepts of center, province and periphery and take the reader from the splendor of Constantinople to the fringes of the empire. They examine life in the imperial city in the age of Constantine VII, the cultural revivals in Byzantium and the Carolingian West, as well as the emperor's historiographical projects, including his historical excerpts and the famous Book of Ceremonies. Entering the sphere of the provinces, the authors explore visual messages on the coinage of Romanos ...
"Ostensibly Constantine was the author of the Book of Ceremonies....His purpose...was to 'save from oblivion' knowledge that had become faded and fragmented through a period of neglect and was in danger of disappearing altogether. He was concerned that the imperial ceremonial should be well ordered so that it would bring renown to the emperor and the senate...reflecting 'the harmonious movement of the creator in relation to the whole.' To this end it was necessary to collect the records of ancestral customs and current practices from many sources and to arrange these in an accessible form in simple language both for his own use and for future generations...."--Introduction, p. xxiii.
The first systematic study of the practice of royal self-coronations from late antiquity to the present.