Serving Byzantium's emperors : the courtly life and career of Michael Attaleiates

Bibliographic Information

Serving Byzantium's emperors : the courtly life and career of Michael Attaleiates

Dimitris Krallis

(New approaches to Byzantine history and culture / series editors Floria Curta, Leonora Neville, Shaun Taugher)

Palgrave Macmillan, c2019

  • : hbk

Available at  / 3 libraries

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Description and Table of Contents

Description

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.

Table of Contents

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

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