{"title":"Translated Texts For Byzantinists","description":"\u003cp\u003eDelve into the world of Byzantium with this unique collection of translated texts. Essential reading for historians and scholars, these volumes unlock the secrets of a fascinating empire. Start your Byzantine journey here.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"nicholas-mesarites-book-michael-angold-9781786940063","title":"Nicholas Mesarites","description":"The aim of this book is to make accessible to a wider audience the works of Nicholas Mesarites, who deserves to be better known than he is. He was an ecclesiastic, who from the turn of the twelfth century provides a vivid record from personal experience of his troubled times, which saw the descent of the Byzantine Empire into factionalism, the loss of its capital Constantinople in 1204 to the armies of the fourth crusade, and its eventual reconstitution in exile as the Empire of Nicaea.  Nicholas Mesarites is difficult to place, because the record he left behind was not that of a historian, more that of a social commentator. He preferred to highlight individual incidents and to emphasise personal experience and family relationships. He does not try to make sense of events; only to record their immediate impact.  His is a fragmented autobiographical approach, which brings the reader closer to events, but leaves him to construct the bigger picture for himself; whether it is an eyewitness account of a palace coup that failed; a description of the relics of the passion; the memories of a brother, who became a defender of Orthodoxy; the detailed evocation of the Church of the Holy Apostles at Constantinople; the portrayal of his own nervous collapse following the loss of Constantinople; a character study of an ecclesiastical rival; or not least the mishaps -often for comical effect - suffered in the course of his travels. Because he was writing, as he tells us, largely to please himself, Nicholas Mesarites provides an idiosyncratic view of the society in which he moved, and, as he was less bound by literary convention than his contemporaries, he writes with a refreshing directness.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49735281312017,"sku":"NGR9781786940063","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/178694006X.jpg?v=1751122323"},{"product_id":"laws-of-the-isaurian-era-book-mike-humphreys-9781786940070","title":"The Laws of the Isaurian Era","description":"The eighth century was a turbulent time for Byzantium. Beset by war, plague and religious division, this remnant of the Rome fought for survival. Severe decline and dislocation necessitated far reaching reform and soul searching. In particular, Byzantines asked why God had so punished the Chosen People they believed themselves to be.  Attempting to formulate solutions to these problems were the new imperial dynasty, the Isaurians. Taking power in 717 as Constantinople was under siege by the Arabs, they would rule until 802 when Irene, the first empress to rule in her own right, was overthrown. However, our understanding of this critical period is clouded by the Iconoclast controversy, the debate over the validity of religious images that dominates the traditional narrative of the era. The vast majority of our sources were penned by the victors of that debate, the iconophiles, who make the controversy the driver of all events.   Fortunately, there is one set of sources that survives that is free from the prism of iconoclasm. For in 741 Leo III and Constantine V promulgated the Ecloga, a concise legal handbook that proved a watershed moment in Roman Law. Over the next three decades, it is argued, the Ecloga was buttressed with several further texts, before Irene used her own laws to attack the dynasty she had married into, and whose policy of iconoclasm she had reversed. For the first time all these texts are gathered together and translated, providing new insights into this crucial but murky period.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49736044871953,"sku":"NGR9781786940070","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1786940078.jpg?v=1751122324"},{"product_id":"chronicle-of-the-logothete-book-staffan-wahlgren-9781786942074","title":"The Chronicle of the Logothete","description":"The Chronicle of Logothetes covers the period from the Creation of the World to the burial of emperor Romanos I Lekapenos in the summer of 948 AD. If we deduce a medieval text's importance and success from the number of extant manuscripts, this work must score highly. While some medieval chronicles have come down to us in only one manuscript, about thirty manuscripts transmit the Chronicle of the Logothete in its main form, and there are also manuscripts containing different kinds of elaborated versions of the text. Also, the chronicle was translated into Old Slavonic at least twice. In spite of the work's popularity, the chronicler himself remains obscure. It has been suggested that this could be Symeon Metaphrastes, an illustrious Byzantine literate who collected and edited, or wrote, Saints' Lives. However, it is fairly certain only the final compilation of the text was made in the second half of the 10th century, which reveals a pro-Lekapenian bias and an antipathy towards the Macedonian dynasty. 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Four members of the Byzantine intelligentsia produced for the entertainment of their colleagues, their aristocratic patrons, and not least themselves, pastiches in verse and prose of the romantic tales of Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus. These novels are perhaps the most attractive, as well as the most unexpected, literary products of the Byzantine millennium. More than one of the four novels translated here was well known in Renaissance Europe, but all have been largely neglected by later generations of readers and scholars as insipid and derivative eroticism. This is regrettable since they antedate by several decades the works of Chrétien de Troyes, the French father of the European novel. This Byzantine phase in the history of the genre, though not part of its central development, deserves exploration. Building on recent work which has begun to rehabilitate these texts, this book marks the first English translation of all four texts in one volume, placing them and their writers in their literary and historical contexts and opening up their world to all those interested in the novel and in European medieval literature.   LUP gratefully acknowledges the generous support of Dr Costas Kaplanis, alumnus of King’s College London, who suggested the idea of the series to Professor Herrin and has underwritten the initial expenses.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49752737710353,"sku":"NGR9781846318252","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1846318254.jpg?v=1751027230"},{"product_id":"four-byzantine-novels-book-theodore-prodromos-9781781380079","title":"Four Byzantine Novels","description":"Constantinople in the mid-twelfth century saw the composition of the first sustained fictional narratives in the European world – novels – since late antiquity. Four members of the Byzantine intelligentsia produced for the entertainment of their colleagues, their aristocratic patrons, and not least themselves, pastiches in verse and prose of the romantic tales of Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus. 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LUP gratefully acknowledges the generous support of Dr Costas Kaplanis, alumnus of King’s College London, who suggested the idea of the series to Professor Herrin and has underwritten the initial expenses.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50399921471761,"sku":"CIN1781380074G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1781380074.jpg?v=1751279199"},{"product_id":"epiphanios-the-monk-book-mary-b-cunningham-9781835537985","title":"Epiphanios the Monk","description":"This volume provides the first English (or indeed any modern) translation of two early ninth-century hagiographical texts that deal with the Virgin Mary and the apostle Andrew. Both texts are attributed to a Constantinopolitan monk and priest called Epiphanios of the Monastery of Kallistratos. The Life of the Virgin represents the earliest attempt by a Greek-speaking Christian author to provide a full-length biography of this holy figure, from the time of her conception to her death and assumption into heaven. The Life of St Andrew not only provides a brief account of this apostle’s life and mission, but also traces the dissemination of his cult, including relics and an icon, in Asia Minor especially during the iconoclast period. Epiphanios reveals his iconophile opinions in this text, accusing iconoclasts of having attempted to destroy some of these objects. 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This book also contains the Theology of Darkness of the Left Hand Path and Demonic Invocations.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51831848567057,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51831848796433,"sku":"NGR9781836245254","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781836245254.jpg?v=1761645253"},{"product_id":"peter-the-sicilian-history-of-the-paulicians-sermons-and-florilegia-book-carl-dixon-9781805967262","title":"Peter the Sicilian: History of the Paulicians, Sermons and Florilegia","description":"The Paulicians were perhaps the most curious threat to imperil the Roman Empire in the east. 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By providing a full English translation of this collection for the first time, this volume introduces and examines these works, while shedding light on the authorship, authenticity, and reliability of an oeuvre that has often provoked controversy.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52993951269137,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":52993951334673,"sku":"NGR9781805967262","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781805967262.jpg?v=1773395838"},{"product_id":"chronicle-of-the-logothete-book-staffan-wahlgren-9781789628074","title":"The Chronicle of the Logothete","description":"While some medieval chronicles have come down to us in only one manuscript, about thirty manuscripts transmit the Chronicle of the Logothete in its main form, and there are also manuscripts containing different kinds of elaborated versions of the text.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53385252012305,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":53385252274449,"sku":"NGR9781789628074","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781789628074.jpg?v=1775600345"},{"product_id":"john-tzetzes-the-little-and-big-iliad-book-valeria-flavia-lovato-9781807810269","title":"John Tzetzes: The Little and Big Iliad","description":"Twelfth-century Byzantium is often described as a period of renewed engagement with Homer and the classical past, marked by literary experimentation and heightened authorial self-consciousness. Few figures embody this trend more comprehensively than John Tzetzes (c. 1110–after 1180), one of the most prolific and idiosyncratic scholars of Komnenian Constantinople.   Composed at the outset of his career and intended to establish his reputation, the Little and Big Iliad is a hexametric retelling of the Trojan Saga that combines narrative concision with encyclopaedic ambition. In reshaping the Troy material in his own voice, Tzetzes situates himself not only in dialogue with Homer, but also within the broader continuum of Greek literature. The poem is accompanied by an extensive body of scholia through which Tzetzes displays his learning across disciplines ranging from grammar and rhetoric to military tactics and astrology.   This is the first English translation of Tzetzes’ Little and Big Iliad – and the first translation of the accompanying scholia into any modern language. 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