Serving Byzantium's Emperors

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 theEuropean and the Near Eastern historical experience.

Uses the life and work of the state official and historian Michael Attaleiates to examine Byzantine bureaucracy and culture in the eleventh century Explores the links between various classes and institutions in the cities of and across the Byzantine Empire Casts fresh light on the world and lives of the mandarins who turned the Byzantine emperor's word into policy

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.