Category: Third-party

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Stay Connected with the International Association of Byzantine Studies

The International Association of Byzantine Studies (AIEB) warmly invites scholars, students, and all those with an interest in Byzantium to connect with us through our official social media channels. By following our accounts, you will receive updates on the Congress and remain informed about the broader initiatives, announcements, and scholarly developments associated with the AIEB.

We welcome you to follow us on:

Facebook – International Association of Byzantine Studies (AIEB)

Instagram – @aieb_byzantium

BlueSky – aieb-byzantium.bsky.social

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♱ John Lowden ♱ (1953-2026)

It is with great sadness that we announce that John Lowden, Professor of Art History at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London and Fellow of the British Academy, died peacefully on Tuesday, 27 January 2026, with his wife Joanna Cannon and son Gregory at his bedside. John had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease many years earlier.

John studied for his MA and PhD at the Courtauld and joined its academic staff in 1982 after a brief period teaching at St Andrews. He taught generations of students there until his retirement in 2017. Byzantinists will know him especially for his many works on Byzantine manuscripts, including Illuminated Prophet Books (1998),  The Octateuchs (1992) and the Jaharis Gospel Lectionary(2009), as well as his invaluable survey text Early Christian and Byzantine Art(1997). These all conveyed John’s deep and close understanding of medieval books, how they were made and how they were read. However, his intellectual reach was much broader. He set up the International Gothic Ivories Project (http://www.gothicivories.courtauld.ac.uk/) published an award-winning two-volume work on the Bibles Moralisées, and was a co-investigator of the Royal manuscripts in the British Library (leading to a major exhibition in 2012). That is only a small taste of his output.

John was far more than his research: he will be remembered by many as a generous and joyous colleague, an inspiring teacher and a great friend to many. His sense of humour and his pithy comments and questions in seminars were infectious, but also kept you on your toes. John’s own students – of whom there are many – will no doubt produce fuller and more insightful memories in the days and weeks to come.

John always ended the annual medieval postgraduate colloquium at the Courtauld by reminding everyone of what an auspicious day it was; so it seems only fitting to end by noting that John died on the Feast of the Return of the Relics of St John Chrysostom to Constantinople, when we also commemorate the memory of the Venerable Peter of Alexandria, Marciana wife of Justin I, Ashot Kuropalates of Georgia, St Devota of Corsica and many, many others. John is in excellent company, but he will be greatly missed by all of us who remain behind.

Antony Eastmond

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Byzantium and Bloomsbury: A one-day online workshop, 1 April 2026, 10am-5pm, organised by The Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies

This one-day online workshop, organized by Liz James, Rowena Loverance, and Shaun Tougher, will focus on the interest of members of the Bloomsbury Group in Byzantium, especially Byzantine art. Both Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant demonstrated an interest in Byzantine art, in terms of their aesthetic concerns and their subject matter; in 1912 Vanessa Bell painted a work entitled ‘Byzantine Lady’ and Grant painted a similar work entitled ‘The Countess’, and their Famous Women dinner service, commissioned by Kenneth Clark in 1932, featured the Empress Theodora as one of the twelve queens depicted on the set of fifty plates. However, the Bloomsbury Group’s interest in Byzantine art was more profound than this. Byzantium had a vital place in Clive Bell’s Art (1914); Clive, art critic and husband of Vanessa, declared ‘since the Byzantine primitives set their mosaics at Ravenna, no artist in Europe has created forms of greater significance unless it be Cézanne’. His enthusiasm was shared by Roger Fry, both artist and art critic (and collaborator with Vanessa and Duncan in the Omega Workshop, 1913-1919), who initially labelled Cézanne and Gauguin as ‘proto-Byzantines’ before adopting the term ‘post-Impressionists’. Boris Anrep, who worked in mosaic (e.g. at Westminster Cathedral), knew Fry (Anrep’s wife left him for Fry), Lytton Strachey, Maynard Keynes and Virginia Woolf.

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the work of Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant and Roger Fry. In October 2024 there was an exhibition at the MK Gallery on Vanessa Bell, A World of Form and Colour, Charleston (Vanessa and Duncan’s Sussex home) has recently opened an exhibition devoted to Roger Fry (15 November 2025 – 15 March 2026), and in 2026 there will a major exhibition at Tate Britain on Bell and Grant (12 November 2026 – 11 April 2027). Thus, this is an opportune moment to turn the spotlight on the interest of the Bloomsbury Group in Byzantium.

The workshop will feature a series of talks by scholars, as well as discussion sessions. Contributors include:

  • Elizabeth Berkowitz, “A Modern-made Byzantium”?
  • Niamh Bhalla, More than a Method? Boris Anrep’s St Patrick Mosaic at Mullingar and the Dialectics of Universalism, Continuity and Irish Particularity
  • Rowena Loverance, “Degraded and conventional” or “awfully swell”? Roger Fry’s Use and Abuse of Byzantine Art
  • Chris Reed, Byzantium in/as Modern Art; or, How to Avoid “A Nasty Wooly Realism about the Sheep”
  • Jane Williams, “A breath in the modern world.” Boris Anrep’s Mosaics: A Russian Contribution to the Enthusiasm for Byzantium

The workshop is open to members of the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies (reduced fee), but also to non-members (full fee). The reduced fees also apply to members of the British School at Athens. To find out more about how to enroll or contact details, please click here.

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PRAYER IN LATE ANTIQUITY

12th Nordic Patristics Meeting 20–22 August 2026, University of Helsinki (Finland)

We are pleased to invite proposals for the 12th Nordic Patristics Meeting on “Prayer in Late Antiquity”, which will be held 20-22 August 2026 at the University of Helsinki (Finland). The meeting aims to explore the theme of prayer in late antiquity, both as a religious practice, the subject and medium of theological thought, and a socio-religious identity marker. We invite contributions, e.g., on the evolving concept and practice of prayer, its theological foundations, its everyday performance, and/or its role in defining religious communities and identities during the transformative period of late antiquity.

At the date of publication of this call, the following keynote speakers have confirmed their attendance:

Anni Maria Laato (Åbo/Turku), Barbara Crostini (Uppsala), Maria Munkholt Christensen (Bonn), Harald Buchinger (Regensburg), and Bishop Damaskinos (Olkinuora) of Haapsalu.

We welcome submissions for 20-mins. presentations that address one of the following three broad themes:

1. THEOLOGIES OF PRAYER

How was prayer conceptualised and theorised in Christian, Jewish, and Graeco-Roman thought? How did theologians engage with specific prayers, such as the Lord’s Prayer? And how was prayer shaped by the languages of late antique religions? Possible topics in this section include:

– Theologies and Prayer: The nature of prayer and its theological underpinnings in Christianity, Judaism, and Graeco-Roman thought.

– Functions of prayer, e.g., conversations with God, intercession, or meditation.

– Goals of prayer, such as deification, transcendence, or mystical union.

– Exegetical and doctrinal discussions on prayer found in patristic, rabbinic, and philosophical texts.

2. PRACTICES OF PRAYER

This section focuses on the tangible and performative aspects of prayer in late antiquity. We encourage contributions that examine:

– How prayer was ritualized and performed across different religious contexts.

– Intentions of prayer and their impact on practices.

– Bodily gestures, posture, and voice in prayer practices.

– The significance of sacred spaces, times, and objects in the performance of prayer.

– The interplay between personal and communal prayer, including liturgical and spontaneous forms of devotion.

13. PRAYER IN PRACTICE

This theme addresses the lived experience of prayer, highlighting how prayer functioned in shaping social identities, communal boundaries, and spiritual lives. Potential areas of focus include:

– Roles of prayer in monasticism: ascetic practices, and personal spirituality.

– Prayer as a tool for constructing religious identity and negotiating social conflicts.

– The connection between prayer and broader socio-religious changes, such as the decline of sacrifices or the rise of Christian liturgies.

– The impact of prayer on daily life, from silent prayer to public liturgical practices.

We encourage submissions from all interested disciplines, and particularly welcome interdisciplinary approaches that explore prayer as both a theological concept and a lived practice.

Submission Guidelines

Please submit an abstract of no more than 250 words by 15 November 2025, clearly indicating which

section or sections of the conference your contribution will primarily address primarily. Include your name, institutional affiliation, and contact information.

Please send your abstract to the secretary of the Societas Patristica Fennica, Mr. Tomi Ferm, at sihteeri@suomenpatristinenseura.fi

For any inquiries related to this call for papers, please contact Dr. Harri Huovinen (University of Eastern Finland) at harri.huovinen@uef.fi

The programme committee for the 12th Nordic Patristics Meeting: Harri Huovinen (University of Eastern Finland), Tomi Ferm (University of Helsinki), Ella Sahivirta (University of Helsinki), Panagiotis Pavlos (University of Oslo), Katarina Pålsson (Lund University), Florian Wöller (University of Copenhagen)

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John H. Pryor

It is with great sadness that we pass on the news that John H. Pryor, Emeritus Professor of Medieval History at Sydney University, passed away early on Tuesday March 24th. Professor Pryor’s son Sean has indicated that although his father’s death was somewhat sudden, he had been unwell for a long time. Nonetheless, John Pryor had been down at the family’s holiday house south of Sydney until the morning before he died and had walked out along his favourite beach a few days earlier. Characteristically, he had asked not to have a funeral or memorial service.

 

Professor Pryor will be very well known to many scholarly audiences for his pathbreaking scholarship which brought together the study of the western Middle Ages, the Islamic world, the Crusades and Byzantium. The focus of his research was on maritime history, particularly in the Mediterranean. Author of multiple publications which combined analyses of the practicalities of sea-faring, trade and naval warfare, his most notable book was Geography, Technology, and War : Studies in the Maritime History of the Mediterranean, 649-1571 (Cambridge, 1988), a widely reviewed volume which was regarded  as soon as it appeared as a landmark publication. Integral to JP’s analysis was his identification of the fundamental significance of the counterclockwise current in the Mediterranean for shipping, trade and conflict across the medieval centuries. Professor Pryor was notable for his focus on Byzantium as a central component of a complex Mediterranean world, with his collaboration with the late Professor Elizabeth Jeffreys leading to another landmark publication The Age of the Dromon: The Byzantine Navy ca. 500-1204 (Leiden: Brill, 2006). He was a regular participant in Byzantine conferences including the Spring Symposium. And he was still publishing important articles and book chapters into the 2020s. An index of the significance of JP’s scholarship was the 2016 Festschrift, Shipping, Trade and Crusade in the Medieval Mediterranean, published by Routledge, which ran to more than 400 pages and included contributions from twenty of the most significant scholars in the many fields on which he had made such a profound impact. His students will remember him as an extraordinarily generous, stimulating and intellectually rigorous teacher, whose enjoyably sardonic humour came with great warmth.

 

Catherine Holmes, Amanda Power

 

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New editor for Byzantine Modern Greek Studies

The Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies is pleased to announce that Dr Baukje van den Berg will assume the position of editor of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies at the start of 2025.

Dr van den Berg is Associate Professor in the Department of Historical Studies at the Central European University and director of its Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies. She is a leading expert in Byzantine literary thought and the reception of ancient literature in Byzantine culture. Her publications include her monograph Homer the Rhetorician: Eustathios of Thessalonike on the Composition of the Iliad (OUP, 2022) and a recent co-edited volume (with Nikos Zagklas) Poetry in Byzantine Literature and Society (1081–1204) (CUP, 2024).

The Centre would also like to express our most heartfelt thanks to Professor Ingela Nilsson (University of Uppsala), who steps down from the role. Professor Nilsson has been instrumental in ensuring the continued success of the journal in the past few years and its importance to Byzantine and Modern Greek scholarship within Birmingham, and across the globe.

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Call for Papers: Radicalism and its Uses in Late Roman/Byzantine History (Session for the Leeds International Medieval Congress, 7–10 July 2025)

Radicalism, as a form of sociopolitical thought or action that aims at fully upturning the roots (radices) of a problem, must necessarily pose some threat to the status quo. The late Roman and/or Byzantine status quo is generally regarded to have been particularly impervious to such threats. One dominant narrative of Christianisation is that the ‘oppositional radicalism of the early church’, especially the radical potential of its social ethics, was defused in the rapprochement with mainstream Roman society and gave way to a non-radical ‘establishment outlook’ (Harper 2016, 141). This was, for some, unavoidable: ‘as Christianity was progressively identified with the Empire’, Christian ideas ‘gradually lost their radical character’ (Merianos & Gotsis 2017, 205). For others, it was a conscious counter-radical project, as ‘upper-class Christian leaders’ learned ‘to accommodate the Bible’s most radical social critiques… into something less threatening’ (Maxwell 2021, 158). Either way, the consequence is a model of Christian Roman society that affords little space for radicalism, even at the margins, over a thousand-year period.
This model is under challenge. The editors of the 2018 Cambridge Intellectual History of Byzantium criticise the field’s ‘persistent tendency… to subordinate individuals to normative ideas’ and to assume that late Romans ‘could not conceive a particular radical, heterodox, or supposedly modern idea because they could not think outside the box of their imperial-Orthodox framework’ (Kaldellis & Siniossoglou 2017, 18). “Radicalism” is one lens through which historians might meet this call for more generous study of the non-conformist elements of late Roman/Byzantine intellectual and political culture. Yet while our overarching scholarly narratives of late Roman history are just beginning to admit the possibility of “radicalism”, the terms “radical” and “radicals” have always appealed to any historian who wishes to emphasise moments of difference or divergence. We hear, for example, of the ‘radical Christian ascetics’ (Cullhed 2016, 352) who made a ‘radical rejection of normal life’ (Hezser 2018, 20), though their movements perhaps safely diverted the more threatening anti-wealth instincts of some Christians. We hear of ‘religious radicals’ (de Wet 2018, 74) and ‘guerilla… radical[s]’ (Drake 2002, 229) who made use of violence to advance their cause. We even hear of radical emperors pursuing ‘radical administrative reform’ (Bell, 2013, 165). And the late Roman past, whatever radical ideas it gave rise to itself, is productive ground for public-facing historians who think through inequality and capitalism, perhaps with a radical instinct of their own (e.g. Paolo Tedesco in Jacobin). For a society traditionally thought to have been un- or counter-radical to its core, its modern historians are eager to make claims for the radicalism of their chosen subjects.
In light of the above, the session organiser invites proposals for ambitious papers that critically interrogate the concept(s) and historiographical uses of “radicalism”, and seek to furnish the term with a sharper analytical utility. Papers may treat any aspect of late Roman or Byzantine history, conceived very broadly in time and space. They might explore any or more of the following:
  • The definition(s) of radicalism in different late Roman/Byzantine contexts: what was “radical” in the late Roman or Byzantine world?
  • Case studies of specific late Roman/Byzantine ideas and behaviour that are usefully described as, or were perceived at the time as, radical (or counter-radical);
  • Late Roman/Byzantine attitudes to radicalism (philosophical, social, political, religious, etc.);
  • Radical or counter-radical traditions of thought and/or action in the late Roman/Byzantine world;
  • The conceptual utility of the terms “radical” and/or “counter-radical” for understanding aspects of the late Roman/Byzantine world;
  • Previous scholarly uses of (or choices not to use) the term “radical” in a late Roman/Byzantine context that might be productively rethought;
  • Radical approaches to the study of late Roman/Byzantine history.
Scholars of any career stage are welcome to propose a paper. To do so, please send a title and brief description of the paper, around 100 words in length, to matthew.hassall@liverpool.ac.uk by the end of Friday 20 September 2024. Questions are welcome at the same address. The organiser expects to be able to defray some of the costs of participating in the Congress for any speakers who do not have their own recourse to sufficient institutional funds.
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Roman Constantinople in Byzantine Perspective

The Memorial and Aesthetic Rediscovery of Constantine’s Beautiful City, from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance

Author:

Paul Magdalino
This book studies the research perspective in which the literary inhabitants of Late Antique and medieval Constantinople remembered its past and conceptualised its existence as a Greek city that was the political capital of a Christian Roman state. Initial reactions to Constantine’s foundation noted its novel Christian orientation, but the memorial mode of writing about the city that developed from the sixth century recollected the traditional civic cultural heritage that Constantinople claimed both as the New Rome, and as the continuation of ancient Byzantion. This research culture increasingly became the preserve of the imperial bureaucracy, and focused on the city’s sculptured monuments as bearers of eschatological meaning. Yet from the tenth century, writers progressively preferred to define the wonder and spectacle of Constantinople in the aesthetic mode of urban praise inherited from late antiquity, developing the notion of the city as a cosmic theatre of excellence.
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Online Lecture: Recycled Cities: Sardis and the Fortifications of Early Byzantine Anatolia

The Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture is pleased to announce the final lecture in our 2023–2024 lecture series.

Thursday, March 28, 2024 | 12:00 PM EDT | Zoom
Recycled Cities: Sardis and the Fortifications of Early Byzantine Anatolia
Jordan Pickett, University of Georgia

The largest standing architecture at the ruined city of Sardis is not its famous Temple of Artemis, the fourth largest Ionic temple of antiquity, but is instead the massive but little-published fortification that sits on its Acropolis. This paper delivers preliminary results from new study of the Byzantine fortifications on the Acropolis at Sardis, part of the larger Harvard-Cornell Exploration of Sardis ongoing since 1958. Composed entirely of thousands of architectural blocks and sculpture recycled from older Iron Age and Roman monuments of Sardis, our understanding of the Acropolis fortifications hinges on three questions considered here. How has the Acropolis, composed of extraordinarily friable loose conglomerate subject to erosion and earthquake, changed since Antiquity? When were the Acropolis fortifications constructed? Possibilities range from c. 550 during the reign of Justinian to as late as c. 850. And, how and by whom were the Acropolis fortifications constructed? Set at a remarkably steep elevation, the labor for transport and construction with reused materials was extraordinary. No minor monument of the “Dark Ages”, the fortifications on the Acropolis at Sardis stand as a remarkably well-preserved complex of defensive architecture that sheds light on the priorities and capacities of communities in Byzantine Anatolia.

Jordan Pickett is Assistant Professor in the Department of Classics at the University of Georgia and co-PI, with Benjamin Anderson (Cornell University), for Acropolis investigation for the Archaeological Exploration of Sardis, Turkey, under the direction of Nick Cahill (University of Wisconsin).

Advance registration required at https://maryjahariscenter.org/events/recycled_cities

Contact Brandie Ratliff (mjcbac@hchc.edu), Director, Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture with any questions.

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Opportunity for Graduate Students & ECRs: Inscriptions in a Digital Environment: An Introduction to EpiDoc for Byzantinists

The Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture and the Byzantine Studies Association of North America are pleased to offer a three-part EpiDoc workshop for graduate students and early career researchers in collaboration with Martina Filosa of the University of Cologne.

Inscriptions in a Digital Environment: An Introduction to EpiDoc for Byzantinists, workshop by Martina Filosa (University of Cologne), Zoom, April 5, 12, and 26, 2024, 11:00 AM–3:00 PM EDT with a break from 12:30–1:00 PM

In this online workshop, participants will explore the use of EpiDoc, the established standard for digitally encoding ancient inscriptions, papyri, and other primary and documentary texts in TEI XML for online publication and interchange. The workshop will also introduce the participants to the EFES (EpiDoc Front-End Services) platform for viewing and publishing EpiDoc editions. The workshop will include asynchronous tutorials, real-time sessions, and guided hands-on exercises. Participants will have the opportunity to work with their own epigraphic material, broadly understood.

Registration closes Friday, March 22.

Who is eligible?

  • Graduate students and early career researchers (PhD received after April 2016) in the field of Byzantine studies.
  • All participants must be BSANA members. BSANA membership is free for graduate students and early-career contingent scholars who have earned their PhD within the last eight years and who do not hold a permanent or tenure-track appointment. If you are not already a BSANA member, please complete the BSANA Membership Form before registering for the workshop. Your membership status will be confirmed before your space in the workshop is confirmed.

For a full description of the workshop and to register your interest, please visit https://maryjahariscenter.org/events/inscriptions-in-a-digital-environment.

Contact Brandie Ratliff, Director, Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture, with any questions.