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Obituaries (from BBBS 2001) We
announce with regret the deaths of the following Byzantinists, members
and friends: Professor Nikos Oikonomides; Sir Steven Runciman and Professor
Herbert Hunger. The Hon Sir Steven (James Cochran Stevenson) Runciman,
C.H
Steven
Runciman was elected first President of the Society for the Promotion
of Byzantine Studies at its foundation at the 17th Spring Symposium of
Byzantine Studies in Birmingham in 1983. It was rather late in the day
for such an initiative. In his 80th year Sir Steven had already actively
presided over a decade of such meetings. Of the forebears of the SPBS,
The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies had been founded in
1879 and of Roman Studies in 1911. Constitutionally, they remain the legal
heirs of our Society, but have yet to reciprocate this provision. Among
the founding fathers (and autocrats) of Byzantine Studies at the first
International Byzantine Congress in Bucharest in 1924 were Nicolae Iorga
(1871-1940) and Charles Diehl (1859-1944); Sir William Ramsay of St Andrews
represented Britain. "St Runciman", as he appears in lists of
delegates, did not attend his first Byzantine Congress until Sofia in
1934, whence, diplomatically and typically, he continued to Bucharest
to meet Iorga who had not attended owing to dispute over Dobrudja. However
when Runciman met Eleftherios Venizelos in 1928 and President Ataturk
in 1938, he boldly proclaimed himself to both as a Byzantinist. That identification
was quite enough for Byzantinists to come so belatedly out into the open
in Birmingham in 1983 with Sir Steven as their President sine die, as the Constitution allows. Happily
it was a long day, as a new generation of Byzantinists whose names President
Runciman intoned at successive Annual General Meetings of the Society
know, who found him the most accessible, courteous and supportive of constitutional
monarchs, each treasuring one of his canon of stories of old Byzantium. For
all members Sir Steven established a peculiar link between our 'academic'
and 'lay' membership. He was his own Establishment and belonged to many
academics but identified with none, but established 'Byzantium' for readers
worldwide on a scale comparable to that of Nicolae Iorga and Charles Diehl. Steven Runciman's Cambridge fellowship dissertation
on 1927 on Romanos Lekapenos began a sequence of works spreading out from
the Byzantine Balkans and not ending with excursions to Sarawak and The
Great Church in Captivity (1968). Members of the Society will know
them, for they are on their shelves. They will know how closely they stick
to their original narrative and edited sources, and how sequences such
as the march of the First Crusade through Anatolia are informed by direct
observation. But fifty years after our members may ask why in three volumes
of A History of the Crusades
Runciman devotes just thirty pages to economy (i.e. commerce), and to
the arts (i.e. Queen Melisende's Psalter). Put the work in context. It
remains the last such account to be attempted by a single hand, with the
handicap (not even faced by Gibbon in Lausanne) of being written on the
island of Eigg in the Inner Hebrides, where sheep were exchanged at the
pier for books from the London Library. Unlike Charles Diehl, Runciman
was scrupulous in providing references and indexes to his books. He was
also dubious of the advantages Nicolae Iorga had in employing the Roumanian
state publishers to distribute his works - arguing that Byzantinists have
so far come to a sticky end as prime ministers. An obituarist maintained that Sir Steven earned more money for Cambridge University Press "than any author except God". There is a difference. From Pentateuch to Apocalypse Sir Steven maintained a lucid textual consistency through as many books, and a wall of translations of them. William Davies of C.U.P., well known at Byzantine Symposium bookstalls, kindly tells me that Runciman probably only beat God in the years 1950-80, with royalties amounting to seven figures, but that 20 volumes of his 27 books are still in print - including a paperback of Romanus Lecapenus (1929). We are lucky that Sir Steven pitched in with us
so whole-heartedly. He liked what the SPBS is doing and rarely refused
an invitation to speak to any interested group, however modest. He was
himself an intellectual orphan - a turn round the Backs of Cambridge with
J. B. Bury (1861-1927) to check on his Bulgarian was his only supervision.
He had few formal pupils. He spoke of a Christian Turk Gagauz while he
was Professor of Byzantine Art and History at the University of Istanbul
in 1942-45, and he supervised the future
Professor Donal Nicol, largely in the Athenaeum Club in London, who in
turn dedicated a Festschrift to him in Byzantine
and Modern Greek Studies 4 (1978) to which 15 Byzantinists contributed.
Michael Angold held an authentically convivial symposium to celebrate
his 90th birthday in May 1993 at The Burn, Glenesk, where a dozen Byzantinists
(and their children) presented papers to him. For
such a shy person, Sir Steven enjoyed parties, supremely as a host, whether
for the children of Eigg, a small luncheon for the Queen Mother in the
Athenaeum, or a big splash for his birthday in Spencer House: all in the
Byzantine taxis. in 1966 his family sold Eigg and Steven and his books moved
to a pyrgos (or book-tower)
near Lockerbie in the Scottish Borderlands, where he entertained passing
Byzantinists with good cheer and gossip, intricate automata and one of
the best collections of drawings by Edward Lear outside the Gennadius
Library in Athens. The SPBS was not his only concern. The Anglo-Hellenic
League has given a Runciman Award since 1986 and King's College London
has held a Runciman Lecture from 1992. Among numerous other presidencies
outside Scotland, such as of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara,
that of the Friends of Mount Athos took him there in July 2000 to inaugurate
the archive of the Holy Mountain in the pyrgos
at Karyes, to which he had contributed his Onassis prize - the flight
from Athos to the Athenaeum thrilled him. The books in Sir Steven's own
pyrgos are destined for Sir
William Ramsay's University of St. Andrews. Steven Runciman was buried near Lockerbie with
the simple rites of the Church of Scotland. A memorial meeting was convened
at the Gennadius Library in Athens on 12 December 2000 by Haris Kalligas,
its Director, who had welcomed Sir Steven to Symposia in Monemvasia where
he had first set foot in Greece in 1924. There was also a memorial meeting
at St. Columba's, Church of Scotland, Pont Street, London, on Thursday
25 January 2001 at 12 noon. Anthony
Bryer NIKAOLAOS OIKONOMIDES Another
great Byzantinist died this year, after Alexander Kazhdan (1922-1977)
and Ioannis Karayiannopoulos (ob. 1998) in the month of May (31st), the
ominous month for Byzantium: Nicolas Oikonomides, Professor of Byzantine
History at the University of Athens, Director of the Institute of Byzantine
Studies of the National Institute of Research of Greece, Secretary of
the Association International des Études Byzantines. There is a direct
connection between Canada and Oikonomides as he served as Professor of
Byzantine History at Université de Montréal, where he began his teaching
career in 1969, and was a member of our Canadian Committee of Byzantinists.
There is, therefore, ample reason for us to pause for a moment in silence
and a reflection on his passing through his life. Scholars are measured and judged, especially when
they are candidates for a teaching or administrative post (one would wish
in all instances!), by their curriculum
vitae; and his is a too lengthy one for a brief memorial, and certainly
unnecessary in his case. As a teacher Oikonomides did not claim to be
exciting; he was honest and humble enough to confide that as a lecturer
in a classroom he was boring. His seminars, however, were quite another
matter. There the researcher and scholar emerged robust, especially inexorable
and demanding; thence flowed a score of his students who are occupying
today research or teaching positions in major universities and institutes.
He demanded nothing less than a thorough mastering of the sources and
the bibliography on a subject. When asked by a student what he, or she,
ought to cover, he would point not to volumes but to shelves, the topmost
of which were reached only by a ladder: ‘But of course, all this!’ To
the end of his life he remained known as a researcher, like his teacher
Paul Lemerle. He could be found almost every year, sweaty, at Dumbarton
Oaks during the hot and humid Washington summers, working on the Byzantine
seals in the basement. He has left us the fruits of his labours, his Byzantine
Lead Seals (1985), his Collection
of Dated Byzantine Lead Seals (1986) and, with John Nesbitt, the edited
Catalogue of Byzantine Seals at Dumbarton Oaks
and in the Fogg Museum of Art (1991). His name is connected also with
the monumental eighteen-volume Archives
de l’Athos, to which he contributed the Actes of
the monasteries of Dionysiou (vol. IV), Kastamonitou (vol. IX), Docheirariou
(vol. XIII) and Iviron (vols. XIV and XVI). A research project on ‘Levels
of Literacy in Byzantium’ has not, to my knowledge, seen as yet the light
of publication; but those who worked with him on that project and contributed
their expertise to it are still amazed by the breadth and depth of its
spectrum. With his profound knowledge of the sources and his unforgiving working habits Oikonomides made his mark in multiple areas of Byzantine studies: sources and institutions (as indicated above and in Documents et études sur les institutions de Byzance, 7e-15es., Variorum, 1976), literacy, diplomacy (‘Byzantine Diplomacy, A.D 1204-1453; means and ends’ in J. Shephard and S. Franklin, eds., Byzantine Diplomacy, 1992), civilisation (Byzantium from the ninth century to the fourth Crusade: Studies, texts, monuments, Variorum, 1992), and economies and commerce (Hommes d’affaires, grecs et latins à Constantinople [XIIIe-XVe siècles], 1979). A more complete and annotated list of his publications in book or article form is awaiting the hand of a specialist and more competent Byzantinist. Oikonomides
was not the ‘fun’ scholar to have around - unless one had good luck, perseverance
and a discerning disposition. In such a case, whether junior or senior,
one would be invited to his home for consultation, where Oikonomides himself
would prepare coffee and cookies, and, for good measure in case he was
not sure of his guest’s preference or taste, he would have procured from
the nearby patisserie a good ensemble of Greek pastries. Somehow he knew
how to combine and balance a serious, business-like, dry conversation
with a sweet or sharp physical taste. The last time I was with him in
his office at the Institute of Byzantine Studies in Athens we had a not-so-dry,
antinomically speaking, conversation on Byzantine studies in Canada over
a glass of strong Cretan raki! But this is not the only thing for which I will remember him
fondly. Herbert Hunger Herbert
Hunger was a giant among the giants who created the multifarious discipline
of Byzantine Studies in the 20th century. He
knew about empires. Born in Vienna in 1914, a subject of the king-emperor
Francis Joseph, Hunger will be remembered most vividly by many Byzantinists
when, as president both of the International Association of Byzantine
Studies and of the Austrian Academy (for he too wore several crowns),
he assembled the International Congress of Byzantine Studies in 1981 amid
the Habsburg splendours of the Hofburg in Vienna. Their topic ws 'Byzantinistik
bis 2000', a subject which this most scholarly, benign and (unusually)
effective of autocrats himself saw through until his death in Vienna in
2000. Hunger's training was solid and traditional, classical and textual. His doctorate of 1936 was on 'Realism in the Tragedies of Euripides'. War supervened, but in 1947 he was appointed Keeper of Manuscripts in the National Library of Austria. The former imperial library preserves one of the most important collections of classical texts in the world but their manuscript copyists and commentators are mostly medieval, which brought Hunger to Byzantium: pagan learning seen through Christian eyes. In the University of Vienna Hunger was appointed Reader in 1954 and in 1962 Professor in the new Chair of Byzantine Studies, establishing a research Institute of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, which became the model and envy of less well ordered and funded institutions everywhere. Hunger led and, more remarkably, saw through, projects which have become essential to scholars of Byzantium, on a majestic scale. Besides his institute's Yearbook there were series such as the Byzantina Vindobonensia. From 1976 his research teams took to jeeps to produce the Tabula Imperii Byzantinii (a hands-on historical geography), and to computer for a Prosopography of the Palaiologan Period (an exhaustive Who's Who on 12 volumes, 1978-94). Greek scribes from AD 800 to 1600 were identified in a Repertorium, Byzantine lead seals catalogued and music published in a Corpus Scriptorium de Re Musica. On an international scale Hunger initiated fresh
editions of historical texts in the Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae, now amounting to more than 40
volumes with as many international collaborators. What first impressed collaborators was the effortless way Hunger managed his scholarly empire, putting pioneering projects into action. There was realism in Euripides. As patron he somehow cleared the path with a single telephone call (he knew the right numbers and it helped that from 1963 Hunger was a key animator of the Austrian Academy). Traditionally,
classical patrons are also hosts. After an expansive invitation to a Greek
taverna or new wine festival in the Vienna Woods, Hunger's clients might
have asked for no more. But what most impressed them was the way in which
Hunger shared his own formidable scholarship: critical, supportive constructive.
In fact his great projects, their imagination and scope, arose from his
own research. As
a classicist Hunger's dictionary of mythology, Lexicon
der griechischen und römischen Mythologie (first published in 1953)
is now in its eighth edition. As a Neo-Hellenist his article (there are
others beyond count) on a Greek encomium on Queen Elizabeth I might be
better known. As a librarian his (and other students') six-volume catalogue
of the Greek MSS of the National Library of Austria (1961-94) is on his
own principles. As a Byzantinist any decent library catalogue should come
up with over 40 titles under Herbert Hunger's name alone. He
watched how books and ideas translate from one language and culture to
another (Latin into Greek especially). But, as a critic, Hunger demanded
selection. We select his monumental work on Byzantine secular literature,
Die hochsprachliche profane Literatur der Byzantiner, originally published
in Munich in 1978 and since 1944 in a Greek version. Hunger's own students offered him honorary degrees
and other crowns in the last century. Now we are 2000, it is about time
that Herbert Hunger's own masterpiece and achievement had an even wider
understanding - in English. Costas
Constantinides Obituaries from BBBS 2010: Obituaries from BBBS 2009: Obituaries from BBBS 2008: Obituaries from BBBS 2007: Obituaries from BBBS 2006: Obituaries from BBBS 2005: Obituaries from BBBS
2004: Obituaries from BBBS
2003: Obituaries from BBBS
2002: |