Byzantium and British Heritage


Book Description

Byzantium was a very influential part of the development of the Arts and Crafts Movement (1880–1910) in Britain, and although the influence of the Gothic Revival (1830–80) is well known, that of the Byzantine Revival (1840–1910) is not. This volume is about the people and the movements that created the Byzantine Revival and shows how they influenced British heritage from architecture to the decorative arts during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The central pillars of the volume are the architects and scholars who created the Byzantine Research Fund (BRF) Archive, a unique collection of architectural drawings and photographs of numerous monuments across the Byzantine world, and the social and professional networks in which they circulated. The BRF members, an eclectic and little-known group, who based themselves at the newly founded British School at Athens, established the research of Byzantium in Britain and Greece. They were trained in the traditions of the Arts and Crafts Movement, which sought authenticity in design and decoration in reaction to the styles that had developed through industrialisation. Their work, uniting a distinctively British design tradition with Byzantine arts and crafts, represents a highly significant and under-researched link between Britain and the Hellenic world. This volume is the first contribution to try to fill this knowledge gap. Byzantium and British Heritage will appeal to all those interested in the relation between Byzantine and British culture and Byzantine art.




Newman University Church, Dublin


Book Description

In 1854, John Henry Newman, one of the foremost intellectual figures of the nineteenth century, was officially installed as the rector of the first Catholic university in Ireland. University Church (constructed in 1855–6) was Newman’s first objective when he agreed to the rectorship and it can be considered as a tangible manifestation of the idea behind the unprecedented Catholic university in Dublin – the posing of an erudite Catholic alternative to post-Enlightenment secularism and Protestant hegemony through a style-based analogy to the early Church. Despite physically embodying what Newman wished to achieve in and through his new university, this ‘early Christian' style church, which drew upon Roman and Byzantine basilicas, has received little attention. This book charts for the first time the significant place that the building occupies within the history of Victorian revivalist architecture. Niamh Bhalla explores the meaningful connection between the church’s context and the ambiguity of its ‘early Christian’ style. In the intersection of these two things, a significant monument was created. The study of University Church therefore provides an effective lens to understand more comprehensively the architectural revivalism that dominated the nineteenth century, particularly the first stirrings of basilican and Byzantine revivalist architectures in the British Isles. Praise for Newman University Church, Dublin 'Newman University Church, Dublin is an important contribution to the burgeoning study of historistic architecture of the nineteenth century. In studying the larger contexts of the church, Niamh Bhalla illumines the aspirations of Cardinal Newman for the university that he directed and Catholicism in Ireland and the United Kingdom.' Robert S. Nelson, Yale University 'A riveting analysis of the University Church and its intellectual background. Niamh Bhalla steers us effortlessly through the many strands of architectural and religious thought that lie behind Newman’s church, while revealing its seminal place in the history of the Byzantine revival.' Roger Stalley, Trinity College Dublin




Rome and the Colonial City


Book Description

According to one narrative, that received almost canonical status a century ago with Francis Haverfield, the orthogonal grid was the most important development of ancient town planning, embodying values of civilization in contrast to barbarism, diffused in particular by hundreds of Roman colonial foundations, and its main legacy to subsequent urban development was the model of the grid city, spread across the New World in new colonial cities. This book explores the shortcomings of that all too colonialist narrative and offers new perspectives. It explores the ideals articulated both by ancient city founders and their modern successors; it looks at new evidence for Roman colonial foundations to reassess their aims; and it looks at the many ways post-Roman urbanism looked back to the Roman model with a constant re-appropriation of the idea of the Roman.




The Invention of Byzantium in Early Modern Europe


Book Description

The Invention of Byzantium in Early Modern Europe offers a new approach to the history of Byzantine scholarship. By tracing Byzantium's impact on everything from politics to painting, this book shows that the empire and its legacy remained relevant to generations of Western writers, artists, statesmen, and intellectuals.




The Cambridge Intellectual History of Byzantium


Book Description

This volume brings into being the field of Byzantine intellectual history. Shifting focus from the cultural, social, and economic study of Byzantium to the life and evolution of ideas in their context, it provides an authoritative history of intellectual endeavors from Late Antiquity to the fifteenth century. At its heart lie the transmission, transformation, and shifts of Hellenic, Christian, and Byzantine ideas and concepts as exemplified in diverse aspects of intellectual life, from philosophy, theology, and rhetoric to astrology, astronomy, and politics. Case studies introduce the major players in Byzantine intellectual life, and particular emphasis is placed on the reception of ancient thought and its significance for secular as well as religious modes of thinking and acting. New insights are offered regarding controversial, understudied, or promising topics of research, such as philosophy and medical thought in Byzantium, and intellectual exchanges with the Arab world.




Daily Life in Arthurian Britain


Book Description

This book surveys current archaeological and historical thinking about the dimly understood characteristics of daily life in Great Britain during the fifth and sixth centuries. Arthurian legends are immensely popular and well known despite the lack of reliable documentation about this time period in Britain. As a result, historians depend upon archaeologists to accurately describe life during these two centuries of turmoil when Britons suffered displacement by Germanic immigrants. Daily Life in Arthurian Britain examines cultural change in Britain through the fifth and sixth centuries—anachronistically known as The Dark Ages—with a focus on the fate of Romano-British culture, demographic change in the northern and western border lands, and the impact of the Germanic immigrants later known as the Anglo-Saxons. The book coalesces many threads of current knowledge and opinion from leading historians and archaeologists, describing household composition, rural and urban organization, food production, architecture, fashion, trades and occupations, social classes, education, political organization, warfare, and religion in Arthurian times. The few available documentary sources are analyzed for the cultural and historical value of their information.




Through the Looking Glass: Byzantium through British Eyes


Book Description

The papers in this volume derive from the 29th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies. This was held for the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies in the University of London in March 1995, in order to complement the British Museum exhibition 'Byzantium. Treasures of Byzantine Art and Culture'. The objective of the symposium was to explore the ways in which British scholars, travellers, novelists, architects, churchmen and critics came into contact with Byzantium, and how they perceived what they saw. The present volume sets out some of the results of this enquiry. Byzantium is treated both as a source of influence on British culture as well as an 'idea' which British culture constructed in different ways in different periods of history. To give some comparative context, attention is also paid to attitudes towards Byzantium in continental Europe. Papers deal, amongst other topics, with the collecting of objects representative of Byzantine culture and with the changing appreciation of Byzantine manuscripts. They also include a series of case studies of individual historians and Byzantinists, and two deal in particular with Ruskin, who emerges as a perceptive 19th-century critic of Byzantine culture. Through the Looking Glass is volume 7 in the series published by Ashgate/Variorum on behalf of the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies.




English Heritage Book of Tintagel


Book Description

Tintagel is a grand and spectacular site on the Cornish coast; its name conjures up Arthurian legend and it has been much visited and written about since the Middle Ages. The site consists of the Island; the castle; and the church and churchyard each with its own history, some of which is only partly known. The author, Charles Thomas, is excavating at Tintagel and in this book he brings all the strands together, deciphering the clues, deconstructing some of the myths and building a model of this multi-faceted site.




Trees in the Religions of Early Medieval England


Book Description

Drawing on sources from archaeology and written texts, the author brings out the full significance of trees in both pagan and Christian Anglo-Saxon religion.




An Archaeological History of Britain


Book Description

Jonathan Eaton has provided the essential volume for all students of Archaeology, Classical Civilisations and Ancient History by condensing the entire archaeological history of Britain into one accessible volume. ??The Archaeological History of Britain takes us from the earliest prehistoric archaeology right up to the contemporary archaeology of the present day through the use of key sites to illustrate each key time period as well as a narrative of change to accompany the changing archaeological record. The wide range of evidence utilised by archaeologists, such as artefacts, landscape studies, historical sources and genetics are emphasised throughout this chronological journey as are the latest theoretical advances and practical discoveries, making this the most advanced narrative of British archaeology available.