Reports by SPBS Members

Conferences held in 2000
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25th Nov. London, Courtauld Institute. "Icons of Sinai"
The festival of St. Catherine (November 25th) was duly commemorated by a one-day conference based on the Courtauld's exhibition Sinai, Byzantium and Russia, in conjunction with the "Saint Catherine's Library Conservation Project" of the Camberwell College of Arts - The London Institute. These beautiful icons (dated to the eleventh-thirteenth centuries) are from Sinai. There is also a parchment charter of 1630 conferred on the monastery of St. Catherine by Tsar Mikhail Fyodorovich. Of the icons of St. Catherine's, only one has ever left the monastery. Most of those from the Hermitage were gathered from monasteries on Mt. Athos in the mid-nineteenth century. The aim of the conference was to explore the historical and art-historical importance of the monasteries and their art.

13-14 Jan: Oxford. ‘Current Research in Egyptology’.
A Symposium for Graduate Students in the British Isles. This symposium was organised by the University of Oxford and sponsored by the Griffith Institute. It was the first to be organised concerning postgraduate research on Egyptology and it proved to be a very good venue for postgraduate students to present their work amongst their peers. It had a very friendly atmosphere, not competitive at all, and the fact that there were hardly any lecturers in the audience may have helped speakers to relax and present their material better. The periods the symposium covered were from Prehistoric times down to Early Islamic ones, as well as various aspects of Egyptian history and archaeology. There were 29 papers presented, each of them 20 minutes long. The papers were grouped under various categories, including: Archaeology I; Social organization to the end of the Old Kingdom; Science, Medicine and Health; Archaeology II: field work; Late Roman, Byzantine and Islamic Egypt; Astronomy and Religion; Iconography, Language and Grammar; Interpreting Texts and Historical Sources; and Interpreting Visual Evidence. There was time provided after each session for questions and answers. Byzantine Egypt was represented by three papers: Dr. Sofia Torallas-Tovar speaking on ‘The Police in Byzantine Egypt’, Chrisi Kotsifou on ‘Papyrological evidence of travelling in Byzantine Egypt’ and Alison Gascoigne on ‘The Development of Fortified Settlements in Late Roman and Early Byzantine Egypt’. The majority of the researchers present were studying Pharaonic Egypt, but they were surprised and delighted to find out how fascinating and multi-faceted the Byzantine period is. I feel that it was a very effective way of introducing Byzantium to an audience which would otherwise not learn much about the subject. I am sure that the organisers of the next symposium will be grateful for more papers on Byzantine Egypt. The papers presented at this symposium will be published by the end of the year by the BAR publisher. Next year a similar symposium will be held at Liverpool University. The organiser is Fiona Simpson (e-mail: fss2603@liv.ac.uk) I feel that special thanks are due to Christina Riggs and to Angela McDonald who were the organisers of the symposium and who made sure that everything ran according to schedule. More importantly, they initiated a symposium that brought together young researchers from all over Britain to share and exchange their ideas and opinions. Hopefully it will run for years to come.
(Chrisi Kotsifou)

 

Conferences held in 1999

Jan: Nicosia, Cyprus. As a result of the Neograeca Medii Aevi IV Conference in Nicosia (November 1997), a workshop symposium on editorial practice of Byzantine and Postbyzantine vernacular texts, hosted by Hans Eideneier and Ulrich Moennig, was held at the University of Hamburg. Issues ranging from what should be included in an introduction to how to prepare a critical apparatus were substantially discussed. The results will be published by the University of Crete Press in a volume accompanying the acts of Neograeca Medii Aevi IV. Feb: Los Angeles, California. ‘Bishops, Charisma and Leadership from Constantine to Justinian’, a two-day international conference on ‘Elites in Late Antiquity’, UCLA. Conference proceedings will include papers by P. Brown, D. Caner, S. Elm, J. Matthews, C. Rapp, M. Salzman, and A. Skinner (forthcoming in the autumn 2000 issue of Arethusa). Feb: Moscow, Russia. Conference in memory of Victor Lazarev, held at Moscow State University. Feb: Los Angeles, California. ‘Church and State in Late Antiquity and Byzantium’, Center for the Study of Religion Colloquium, UCLA. Mar: Santa Barbara, California. ‘Jews and Muslims in Medieval Constantinople’, University of California Workshop on the Near East, Santa Barbara. 26-28 Mar: Johannesburg, Republic of South Africa. ‘Hellenic Culture within a South African Context’. Conference on various aspects of Hellenic topics within a South African context at The Rand Afrikaans University, Johannesburg. Inter alios, Dr. C. Matzukis delivered a paper on ‘George Seferis and Three South African Poets’, to appear in a volume of collected conference papers (Rand Afrikaans University).

27-29 Mar: XXXIII SPRING SYMPOSIUM OF BYZANTINE STUDIES
‘Eastern Approaches to Byzantium’, University of Warwick, Coventry.
The 33rd Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies met to examine some eastern approaches to Byzantium. The symposium was held in the heart of England but explored the easternmost regions of the medieval Christian world. The aim of the conference was to discuss questions of transmission and transformation on the eastern frontier of the Byzantine Empire. It covered the period of the reconquest and subsequent loss of the eastern provinces, c.800 to c.1300. The papers looked at the many points of contact between the peoples of this region, and especially between the Greeks, Georgians, Armenians, Seljuks and Turkmen.
Full details and abstracts....

Apr: Birmingham, England. ‘The Bishops as Elite in Late Antiquity’, 6th Workshop on Late Antiquity and Early Islam. May: California. ‘Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity: Religious and Secular Leadership in a Time of Transition’, USC-UCLA Latin Workshop, University of Southern California. 8-9 May: Oxford. The Second Graduate Students’ Conference under the auspices of the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies and the Oxford Byzantine Society was held at Christ Church. The first such event was held in Oxford last February, at the encouragement of the SPBS, in order to provide an opportunity for graduates in Byzanitne Studies to give reports about their work and to meet other students with related interests, in an informal environment. The event was organised by the officers of the Society.

Some fifty participants attended; they represented a dozen universities in Britain and included Oxford undergraduates and senior Byzantinists. Two students, Aslihan Akisik and Koray Durak, came from Istanbul for the conference. The twenty speakers presented twenty-minute communications in two morning and two afternoon sessions. Their papers, arranged roughly into thematic groups, covered a wide variety of subjects in the domains of art history, historiography, literature, palaeography, and identity, the last a subject of spirited discussion.

A reception was held in the Upper Library on Saturday evening; thanks to the kindness of Mr Richard Hamer and Mrs Janet McMullin, a number of Greek manuscripts and icons from the Christ Church collections were on display. At the end of the meeting, Anna Williams volunteered to hold the event at Birmingham in 2000. The organisers are grateful to the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies, the Oxford University Committee for Byzantine Studies, and Christ Church, for their support of the conference.
(Anne McCabe)

29 May: Oxford. One-day conference on ‘Economy and Exchange in the East Mediterranean during Late Antiquity’, Somerville College. Olga Karagiorgou delivered a paper entitled ‘"Thessalia multa ferens (frumenta)": Thessalian products in the late Antique Mediterranean trade’.

13-17 June: Jerusalem, Israel. ‘Scripture and Picture: the Bible in Jewish, Christian and Islamic Art’, held at The Hebrew University. Alexei Lidov delivered a paper on ‘The Temple Vision of Ezekiel and the Russian Sculptural Decoration of the 12th Century’.

21-24 Jun: Maynooth, Ireland. ‘The Mystery of the Trinity in the Fathers of the Church’, at St Patrick’s College, Maynooth.

24-26 Sept: Athens, Greece. 2nd Meeting of Byzantinologists from Greece and Cyprus, held at the University of Athens.

27-30 Sept: Parma, Italy. ‘Medioevo: i modelli’, organized by A.C. Quintavalle. Among the speakers were M. Andaloro, A. Cadei, W. Dorigo, C. Dufour Bozzo, J. Gardner, A. Iacobini, B. Kiilerich, X. Muratova, V. Pace, E. Russo, E.B. Smith, M. Righetti, H. Torp, W. Tronzo.

15-17 Oct: Amherst, Massachussetts. ‘The World of Late Antiquity: The Challenge of New Historiographies’, held at Smith College. This event gathered a remarkable number of distinguished speakers to address the world of late antiquity and their own approaches to it. A large number of papers was packed into a brief space of time, and there was therefore little opportunity for wider discussion or for the speakers to engage with one another on contested issues.

23 Oct: York. Byzantium in the North: An Interdisciplinary Research Forum. Seminar: Meetings of East and West.

The one-day meeting was held at the College of Ripon & York St John and was supported by the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies. It was a very successful research seminar which gathered more than 40 Byzantinists from all over England and especially from the North. The day was very well organised and the atmosphere extremely hospitable. The way the programme was laid out was by having coffee and tea in the morning and then two main papers, one from Prof Judith Herrin and one from Dr Andrew Jotischky, speaking on ‘The Wicked Empress Theophano’ and ‘The Friars and the Early Christian Tradition: Perception and Appropriations’, respectively. Then we had an hour and a half break during which we were treated to a beautiful buffet-lunch prepared by the organisers of the seminar themselves. We proceeded to the final main lecture of the day with Dr Jonathan Harris speaking on ‘Edward 11, Andronicus 11 and Giles d’Argentain, a neglected episode in Anglo-Byzantine relations’ and then we concluded with three research communications. In general, the day proved to be extremely thought-provoking and stimulating. All of the papers were interesting and covered different aspects of meetings of East and West. There was plenty of time left after each paper for questions and answers and there were also 15 minutes of closing remarks at the end of the day. We finished our day with tea and coffee, during which everybody expressed how successful the seminar was, and then we had the chance to enjoy the beautiful city of York for the rest of the day.
(Chrisi Kotsifou)

10-12 Nov: Rome, Italy. ‘Imperial Art as Christian Art -- Christian Art as Imperial Art. Expression and Meaning in Art and Architecture from Constantine to Justinian’, Norwegian Institute. Speakers included B. Brenk, S. de Blaauw, J. Deckers, F. Guidobaldi, B. Kiilerich, D. Kinney, T. Mathews, P.J. Nordhagen, S. Sande, H. Torp and others.

25-27 Nov: Athens, Greece. ‘Heroes of the Orthodox Church. The New Saints, 8th-16th Centuries’, organized by The Institute for Byzantine Studies (NHRF), Athens and was held at the National Hellenic Research Foundation.

The symposium lasted four days and Byzantinists from many different countries attended it. The main issues that concerned scholars who participated in the symposium were saints and martyrs, the historicity of the saints, forms of sanctity, the process of sanctification, saints’ Lives, forms of the texts, miracles, art history and Slavic saints.

The study of monk and bishop saints was one of the main topics presented in the symposium. Michel Kaplan discussed the case of Leontios of Jerusalem and attempted to define his form of sanctity. Marie France Auzépy talked about monk saints of the period of second iconoclasm while David Turner devoted himself to saints’ Lives of the same period. Anna Avramea presented a paper on the bishop saints of the 8th-10th centuries and discussed the interaction between bishops and their environments.

The study and interpretation of saints’ Lives and holy persons was the subject of many papers. Sergey Ivanov referred to the literary genre of the Holy Fool in relation to St Paul the Corinthian, and to the way this genre developed throughout the centuries. Antonia Kiousopoulou discussed the topic of ‘time’ as this appears in Lives of the later Byzantine period. Odysseas Lampsides studied the historicity of hagiographical texts of Pontic regions and referred to the discrepancies that are noted in such texts, making special reference to texts related to Panagia of Soumela. Kriton Chrysochoides talked about martyrs and martyrdom in the 16th century in rural areas, in relation to the first martyrs and martyrdoms that mainly took place in urban centres. Sophia Kotzambasi discussed the presence of saints of the middle Byzantine period in hagiographical texts of the Palaeologan era, using mainly the example of St Theodosia. Eleonora Kountoura-Galaki studied the cult of St Nicholas with reference to the Byzantine naval tradition. Narrations of miracles were of great interest for scholars like Alice-Mary Talbot (‘Metaphrasis in the early Palaeologan Period: the Miracula of Kosmas and Damian by Maximos the Deacon’), Stephanos Euthymiades (‘Late Byzantine collections of miracles and their implications’) and Martin Hinterberger who talked about autobiographical elements in narrations of miracles.

Two papers, the first by Ljubomir Maksimovic and the second by Lenos Mauromates, focused on the Serb emperors who became saints. A long and heated discussion followed. The topic of Slavic saints and hagiographical texts preoccupied other scholars as well, including Dmitry Afinogenov who referred to Slavic translations of Byzantine hagiographical texts; Leonid Beliaev; Ninoslava Radosevic on the rhetoric of the Serb hagiography; Mirjana Zivojinovic on Symeon as the saint and protector of the Serb state; Dzurova and Velinova’s joint paper on the cult of King Milutin.

Of great interest also was the paper presented by Konstantinos Manaphes who announced that he tracked down another version of the Life of St Athanasios in a manuscript of the Sinai monastery dated to the beginning of the 11th century. Anna Lambropoulou, representing the research team of the Institute for Byzantine Research which works on the programme of history and geography, delivered a paper on the cult of saints of Peloponnesos (9th-15th centuries). Theocharis Detorakis presented a newly established research programme called Bibliotheca Hagiographica Neograeca; this programme aims to collect all saints’ Lives and other relevant material dated after 1453.

On the last day of the Symposium all of the participants visited the site of Hosios Loukas in Steiris. After a guided tour around this famous monastic establishment the last session of the symposium took place: Nancy Patterson Sevcenko, Nicholas Oikonomides and Symeon Paschalides presented their papers. At the end of this last session, the monks of the monastery offered lunch.
(Sophia Oikonomou)

30 Oct: Dublin, Ireland. ‘From Rome to Rûm: Continuity and Change in the Mediterranean’, Symposium held at University College, Dublin, with four sections: architecture, archaeology, minor arts and history and literature.

1-5 Dec: Istanbul, Turkey. ‘Senbysantinsk kultur i interaktion och isolering’ (‘Late Byzantine Civilization - Interaction and Isolation’), Swedish Research Institute. Papers delivered (in Scandinavian languages) by E. Balicka-Witakowska, B. Brendemoen, V. Bulgurlu, B. Bydén, R. Gothoni, O. Hjort, K. Hult, B. Kiilerich, J.O. Rosenqvist, S. Sande, H. Torp, C. Troelsgaard, S.T. Christensen. The proceedings are to be published in English.

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