This book is a microhistory of eleventh-century Byzantium, built around the biography of the state official Michael Attaleiates. Dimitris Krallis presents Byzantium as a cohesive, ever-evolving, dynamic, Roman political community, built on traditions of Roman governance and Hellenic culture. In the eleventh century, Byzantium faced a crisis as it navigated a shifting international environment of feudal polities, merchant republics, steppe migrations, and a rapidly transforming Islamic world. Attaleiates' life, from provincial birth to Constantinopolitan death, and career, as a member of an ancient empire's officialdom, raise questions of identity, family, education, governance, elite culture, Romanness, Hellenism, science and skepticism, as well as political ideology during this period. The life and work of Attaleiates is used as a prism through which to examine important questions about a long-lived medieval polity that is usually studied as exotic and distinct from both the European and the Near Eastern historical experience.

Autorentext

Dimitris Krallis is Associate Professor at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Centre for Hellenic Studies at Simon Fraser University, Canada. He writes on questions of politics, society, intellectual culture, and governance in the middle Byzantine period.

Inhalt

Chapter 1 Introduction

Chapter 2 Attaleiates' Time: Byzantium in the Eleventh Century

Chapter 3 Paper, Parchment and Ink: The Sources for Attaleiates' Biography

Chapter 4 Attaleia: The Busy, Bustling Fringe

Chapter 5 To the Capital Seeking Wisdom

Chapter 6 Attaleiates' Household

Chapter 7 The Courts of Justice, The Court and the Courtiers

Chapter 8 The Army in Society The Society of the Army

Chapter 9 The Judge on Horseback The Empire at War

Chapter 10 Byzantine 'Republicanism': Attaleiates' Politics of Accommodation and Self-Interest

Chapter 11 Piety, Tax-Heavens and the Future of the Family

Chapter 12 Culture Wars and a Judge's Roman Piety

Chapter 13 A Short Conclusion