Thesiss

In 1439, at the ecclesiastical Council of Ferrara-Florence, representatives of the Byzantine empire and the Eastern Orthodox churches signed a reunion agreement with the Roman Catholic church. At the time, both parties accorded this council ecumenical status, meaning that its de…

The archaeological record and literary sources indicate that the interiors of churches in the early Byzantine Empire were richly adored from floor to ceiling. In this study, it is asserted that all of the surfaces which received decoration were integral components of the overall…

This dissertation reports on the results of the clearing and partial excavation of an early Christian church at Ras el Bassit, on the North Syrian coast. The church is built on a synagogue attested by two inscriptions and by the menorah of an early sixth-century floor mosaic; it…

This thesis examines how medieval Byzantium is represented in French epics, romances, and chronicles of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries within a discursive triangle formed by Exoticism/Orientalism/Otherness. Despite their geographical proximity with the Muslim world, …

Islam established itself as a force to be reckoned with both as a religion and a civilization. During the early 5th century, the two titans, Rome and Iran, were in the midst of major conflict, providing the opportunity for a third party to rise in their absence. The objective of…

From the time Otto the Great was proclaimed Western Emperor in 962 to the conquest of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204, numerous ambassadors traveled east on errands from their principals. The diplomacy they engaged in at the Byzantine capital infected every aspect o…

The Islamic-Byzantine frontier ( al-thughur ) traditionally has been described either as a "no-man's land" or as a closed fortified border dominated by a line of castles. Such perceptions convey a sense of propaganda and hyperbole, as the frontier was neither an empty wilderness…

The Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, Germany, houses a collection of ca. 2000 papyri from Egypt inscribed in several different languages, principally Greek. In this dissertation, I edit thirty-four previously unpublished Greek documents, offering for each papyrus a transcr…

This thesis studies the process of intellectual, cultural, and political osmosis between Greeks and Romanians in the pre-modern period mainly by examining crucial aspects of early Modern Greek moral and political literature, as it was cultivated in Wallachia in the late seventee…

The monastery tou Libos is one of the most important imperial foundations to survive in Constantinople. The earlier church, dedicated to Theotokos Panachrantos, was erected in the early tenth century by Constantine Lips, a high military official of the imperial army. At the end …

The Church of Cyprus became an independent exarchy in the fifth century. This cultural autonomy provided Cypriots with a sense of pride and freedom that was not shared by other Byzantine provinces. Since the late fourth century, the Church built many wooden roofed basilicas on t…

This work is an exploration of the papyrological evidence from sixth-century CE Egypt within the theoretical framework of social network analysis, and an attempt to use network analysis to challenge scholarly orthodoxies of the period. I argue that the behavior of the elites in …

Spanning a 1,123 year period between Late Antiquity and the Italian Renaissance, the Byzantine Empire was the legitimate continuation of the imperium Romanum. Although the main defender of Christianity against the encroachments of Islam in the 8th- and 9th-centuries and the bulw…

The author argues that the mosaic of Justinian and Constantine offering gifts to the enthroned Virgin and Child in the southwest vestibule of Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, presents the viewer with an image of salvation. Previous interpretations of the mosaic focused on the offerings o…

Based mostly on unknown manuscripts, this study offers the first analysis of the historical contours and cultural contexts of the early Muslim tradition of dream interpretation (700 A.D.-1100 A.D.), a divinatory technique that seeks to predict the future through an analysis of d…

This dissertation deals with the testimony of John of Ephesus as a source for the history of Constantinople in the sixth century. John's passages which are concerned with the capital are dispersed within his extant works and within his works which were recycled by other Syriac-w…

The 1978 stratigraphic excavation of the Esbous North Church at Hesban, Jordan, resulted in the discovery of a well-preserved church plan, nicely executed, inscription bearing mosaics, dual reliquaries, preserved in situ, in the reliquarium under the altar in the three phase cha…

Cilicia, a province along the east Mediterranean in Asia Minor, produced numerous late Roman and early Byzantine floor mosaics. These mosaics are either discovered at excavation campaigns in the ancient sites, during rescue excavations, unearthed naturally, and or at illicit exc…

The historiography of the Fourth Crusade has neglected long-term macroeconomic developments and its influence on the Fourth Crusade within the Byzantine Empire and the Italian states of Venice, Pisa, and Genoa. It is well-established that the Venetians rerouted the crusading for…

During archaeological excavations over the last century, fifty-seven separate coin deposits have been found in ancient synagogues from Late Antique Palestine and the Diaspora. This project provides an overview of these deposits, the buildings they were discovered in, and the spe…