The Great Palace in Constantinople


Book Description

The Byzantine Great Palace, located adjacent to the Hagia Sophia, is arguably the most important Western complex to have disappeared from the architectural archive. Despite this absence, it may be argued that the representational halls of the palace - crown halls, basilicas, and reception halls or triclinia - served as models for the ascription of imperial symbolism, and for emulation by rival political centres. In a later phase of its existence, Byzantine emperors, in turn, looked to the example of Islamic palaces in constructing settings for diplomatic exchange. While the Great Palace has been studied through the archaeological record and Byzantine texts, its form remains a matter of conjecture, however in this study, a novel focus upon the operation of ascription of meaning applied to architectural forms, and their emulation in later architecture will enable a sense of how the forms of the palace were understood by their inhabitants and their clients and visiting emissaries. Through comparative analysis of both emulative models and copies, this study proposes a hypothesis of the layout of the complex both in its physical and social contexts.







The Emperor's House


Book Description

Evolving from a patrician domus, the emperor's residence on the Palatine became the centre of the state administration. Elaborate ceremonial regulated access to the imperial family, creating a system of privilege which strengthened the centralised power. Constantine followed the same model in his new capital, under a Christian veneer. The divine attributes of the imperial office were refashioned, with the emperor as God's representative. The palace was an imitation of heaven. Following the loss of the empire in the West and the Near East, the Palace in Constantinople was preserved – subject to the transition from Late Antique to Mediaeval conditions – until the Fourth Crusade, attracting the attention of Visgothic, Lombard, Merovingian, Carolingian, Norman and Muslim rulers. Renaissance princes later drew inspiration for their residences directly from ancient ruins and Roman literature, but there was also contact with the Late Byzantine court. Finally, in the age of Absolutism the palace became again an instrument of power in vast centralised states, with renewed interest in Roman and Byzantine ceremonial. Spanning the broadest chronological and geographical limits of the Roman imperial tradition, from the Principate to the Ottoman empire, the papers in the volume treat various aspects of palace architecture, art and ceremonial.




The Emperor and the World


Book Description

Offers a new perspective on Byzantine imperial imagery, demonstrating the role foreign styles and iconography played in the visual articulation of imperial power.




Imperial Passions - The Great Palace


Book Description

Constantinople, 1057. Anna Dalassena's family sits at the summit of the empire, only to lose it all. Instead, Anna's closest friend, Eudokia, becomes empress as wife to the power-hungry Constantine Ducas. After his death, Eudokia marries Anna's cousin, the handsome and brilliant general, Romanus Diogenes, who struggles to push back the Turkish invaders threatening to overcome the Roman Empire. Anna, Eudokia and Romanus and their children fight life and death battles against the enemies that invade their empire, as well as those who would destroy it from within.







Imagining the Byzantine Past


Book Description

The first comparative, cross-cultural study of medieval illustrated histories that engages in a direct, confrontational dialogue with Byzantine historical memory.




Byzantine Constantinople


Book Description

This collection of papers on the city of Constantinople by a distinguished group of Byzantine historians, art historians, and archaeologists provides new perspectives as well as new evidence on the monuments, topography, social and economic life of the Byzantine imperial capital.




Late Antique Palatine Architecture


Book Description

Late Antique palaces and palace culture is a definitive analysis of dramatic shifts in architecture and design, and embodies urban planning, public works and patronage in the Imperial cities of Rome and Constantinople, and the first palatine centres of the Holy Roman Empire. Written with a view to the new historiographies, this volume provides a wealth of detailed information of, and perspectives on, Late Antique and Early Mediaeval design practices, with emphasis on the new spatial configurations and their decorative schema. This volume is an edited book of essays which provide groundbreaking narratives on palatine architecture and culture in this period, integrating cross-cultural dialogues from Rome as centre of imperial palace architecture with detail of late palace embellishments and ceremonial usage to the fore, as the discussion shifts to the new imperial capital of Nova Roma, Constantinople, and thence to the Carolingian centres via Rome and Ravenna. A developing parallel discussion emerges, where prototypes for palaces and ceremonial courts were imported and reinterpreted through a process of citation. Principal interest resides in the contrasts of palatial and residential complexes presented to demonstrate new ceremonies and the practices enacted within and through them. The volume then moves focus on to eastern and western provincial and rural high status residences and landscapes of power, and examines the relationships between palaces and late Roman villas and the court and court culture, revealing a political agenda in use in the language of architecture. This will then be transposed onto early medieval architecture over the passage of time.




RULING THE LATER ROMAN EMPIRE P


Book Description

In this highly original work, Christopher Kelly paints a remarkable picture of running a superstate. He portrays a complex system of government openly regulated by networks of personal influence and the payment of money. Focusing on the Roman Empire after Constantine's conversion to Christianity, Kelly illuminates a period of increasingly centralized rule through an ever more extensive and intrusive bureaucracy. The book opens with a view of its times through the eyes of a high-ranking official in sixth-century Constantinople, John Lydus. His On the Magistracies of the Roman State, the only memoir of its kind to come down to us, gives an impassioned and revealing account of his career and the system in which he worked. Kelly draws a wealth of insight from this singular memoir and goes on to trace the operation of power and influence, exposing how these might be successfully deployed or skillfully diverted by those wishing either to avoid government regulation or to subvert it for their own ends. Ruling the Later Roman Empire presents a fascinating procession of officials, emperors, and local power brokers, winners and losers, mapping their experiences, their conflicting loyalties, their successes, and their failures. This important book elegantly recaptures the experience of both rulers and ruled under a sophisticated and highly successful system of government.