This article examines the genealogical claims of Nikephoros III Botaneiates, namely his supposed descent from the Phokades and the ancient Roman Fabii, and aims to situate Botaneiates’ case within a broader context of exaggerated and contested claims of kinship in medieval Byzantium. While exploring the uses of fictionalized or exaggerated kinship and their reception in contemporary society, it addresses issues of authenticity, proof, and credibility. It argues that Byzantine authors were widely sceptical of audacious genealogical claims and may have been exposed to false claims of kinship more often than previously acknowledged.

Curtains constituted a standard component of the scenography of imperial ceremonies during the Middle and Late Byzantine period. This paper explores how curtains were used to control and ritualise sensory and perceptual access to the sacred person of the emperor and to manipulate emotive response to ritual performances. It also enquires into the way in which curtains, both as material objects and as symbols, were employed by those staging imperial ceremonies in order to articulate and communicate messages regarding the nature of the emperor's authority and his special status vis-à-vis his subjects. Paradoxically, the performative and symbolic potential that ensured the curtains’ use in imperial ceremonies led to their exclusion from the representation of the emperor in imperial portraiture, since post-Iconoclastic art did not admit veiled secrets.

A small silver bowl, discovered in Russia and usually attributed to eleventh-century Byzantium, displays a range of unusual imagery that has complicated its interpretation. The role of the saint and prayer on the vessel and the emphasis placed on intercession as well as on protection, this paper will suggest, was to protect the vessel's owner both on earth and in his afterlife. The vessel, which makes visible contemporary ideas about punishment, Last Things, and salvation, presents a fragmentary image of the Last Judgement designed to stress the importance of heavenly justice and to remind its viewer to remain virtuous.

Many studies of the medieval Black Sea address the importance of Byzantine imperial agency in facilitating economic and political exchange. However, few studies examine the limits of Byzantine statehood regarding trans-Black Sea local dynasts. This study, primarily utilizing sigillography, focuses on the eleventh-twelfth century notable families of Cherson and Trebizond in case studies, particularly the well-known Tzouloi and Gavrades: two cities and families famed for their respective local autonomies. How can seals uncover an otherwise hidden dimension of Byzantine sovereignty, or its contestation, which manifested itself across the Black Sea even before the emergence of the empire of Trebizond after 1204?

This article serves as a contribution to the discussion of gender segregation at the imperial court of Byzantium. Evidence from the Palaiologan period shows that many of the elements of a women's court, as it was known from earlier centuries, were still present in the last centuries of the empire.

In the eleventh and twelfth centuries Byzantium saw the rise of an influential monastic reform movement, which found its expression in rules and saints' lives. In these texts the question of worldly possessions was repeatedly broached. The authors challenged the hitherto common practice of allowing monks some private property and insisted that in their monasteries nobody should own money or other goods. Yet when it came to communal property the situation was starkly different. Most reformers accepted the traditional view that monasteries should be endowed with land in order to meet the material needs of the communities, and if anything were even more acquisitive than their forebears. There was, however, a small group of monastic founders, which challenged this consensus. They insisted that their monasteries should not accept donations of land because such behaviour went against Christ's demand not to take thought for the morrow and displayed a lack of trust in divine providence. This article presents the surviving evidence and seeks to explain how communities without landed property ensured their survival.

This article examines textual and material evidence regarding the burials of emperors during the Palaiologan period. It is argued that the Palaiologos dynasty did not initially have a plan to establish an imperial mausoleum: the monastery of Lips, re-founded by Theodora Palaiologina and often regarded by modern scholars as an imperial mausoleum, was instead conceived as a family shrine. Small-scale attempts to establish imperial mausolea are discernible only from the middle of the fourteenth century onwards, with the burials of Andronikos III and John V in the monastery of ton Hodegon and of the last Palaiologoi in the Pantokrator.

Despite a distinguished reputation as an orator and bishop in his own time, comparatively little scholarship focuses upon Euthymios Malakes, metropolitan of Neopatras during the later twelfth century. Using his extant works and contemporary sources, this article reconstructs elements of Malakes’ career in both Constantinople and Hellas. He was active in each, balancing his intellectual credentials, participation in synods, and elite connections to the capital, with immersion in more local contests. This combination allowed him to expand his pursuits and reputation beyond his minor see, in the capital and also in the province of his see.

This article considers the variation in the metres of the ‘ὥσπερ ξένοι’ epigrams, collected in the Database of Byzantine Book Epigrams (DBBE). In its canonical form, these epigrams follow a dodecasyllabic metrical pattern. The seemingly unmetrical decasyllabic and decatetrasyllabic variants are explained from a cognitive-linguistic perspective as the pairing of different cola – 5+5 and 7+7 instead of the usual 7+5 or 5+7. From this perspective, cola can be equated with the cognitive ‘idea’ or ‘intonation units’ (IUs) used in ordinary speech.

What made Athens different from other multi-layered cities absorbed into the Ottoman Empire was the strength of its ancient reputation for learning that echoed across the Arabic and Ottoman worlds. But not only sages were remembered and Islamized in Athens; sometimes political figures were too. In the early eighteenth century a mufti of Athens, Mahmud Efendi, wrote a rarely studied History of the City of Sages (Tarih-i Medinetü’l-Hukema) in which he transformed Pericles into a wise leader on a par with the Qur'anic King Solomon and linked the Parthenon mosque to Solomon's temple in Jerusalem.

This article suggests that a possible source of inspiration for Cavafy's poem ‘Waiting for the barbarians’ can be identified in a passage of the Byzantine historian Niketas Choniates concerning the arrival of German ambassadors at the court of Alexios III in Constantinople in 1196. The context of diplomacy, the city's decadent atmosphere, the emperor's self-humiliation and the unsuccessful ostentation of luxury and royal attire are prominent features linking both texts.

This article discusses a neglected aspect of Greek ecclesiastical material culture: the wide use of Ottoman textiles after the conquest of Constantinople. My discussion will touch upon Greek archival sources before analysing three different types of textiles: aniconic silks and velvets; Ottoman figural production for the Christian market; and embroidery of the Byzantine tradition featuring Ottoman motifs. These categories represent three different points of contact between Ottoman aesthetic and Greek ecclesiastical material culture. If the use of aniconic textiles expresses the employment of court aesthetic, then the figural silks represent the weaving industry's response to a Christian demand for such products. Finally, the Byzantine-tradition embroideries discussed constitute evidence of artistic confluence.

At the beginning of 1941 Britain decided to provide military aid to Greece, which was facing an ongoing war against Italy and was expecting a German invasion. This article discusses the impressions and experiences of the British soldiers who took part in the campaign, using their letters, diaries and their – mostly unpublished – reminiscences. It examines their perception of Greece and its inhabitants, as well of their fellow allies and their enemies; their venture in military operations, or captivity; and their daily routine. Furthermore, it comments on their retrospective assessments of the campaign.

Merchant diasporas have long attracted the attention of scholars through the narrow prisms of ‘nations’ and states. The history of Amsterdam's Greek Orthodox merchants, together with the other cases—who left the Ottoman Empire in the eighteenth century and established a seemingly controversial range of networks involving the Dutch, Russian, Ottoman and Greek states there—is an oft-quoted example. This article draws attention to some of the problematic aspects of these perceptions of the relations between states and diaspora merchants. The main tenet of the article is that nation- and state-centred perspectives are limited in explaining the full scope of flexibility and pragmatism displayed by the diaspora merchants.

Before World War II, tobacco was the most important Greek export, but just days after the German invasion in April 1941, the occupation authorities rushed to seize the tobacco production. While this article will document the seizure, most importantly, it will take a deeper look at how Greek tobacco producers and traders sought compensation for losses incurred as the result of the confiscation of their tobacco. It will also present how the German and the Greek postwar authorities handled these claims, taking into consideration Greek and German archival sources, which have hitherto been relatively neglected.

After an introduction considering the reception of Aristophanic comedy and the significance of shadow theatre in modern Greek culture, this article explores the possibilities of adapting Aristophanes’ plays to the latter art form. Using Evgenios Spatharis’ shadow performances of Peace (c. 1986) and Frogs (1978) as case studies, I examine the way obscenity is handled and roles are allocated. These adaptations are viewed in relation to the generic prerequisites rather than just the medium of Greek shadow theatre, which is characterized by a high level of codification.