75994 - Cultural History of Byzantium

Learning outcomes

The course aims at conveying to the student the political and religious conceptions of the Easter Roman empire empire, as well as its social values and the structure of its economic organization. At the end of the course the student is able to know the main historical features of the Byzantine civilization and the close interplay it  had  with the Medieval Occident, the Slavonic world and the Sasanian and Muslim Near East. Moreover, the student is able to assess the role played by Byzantium in the making of Modern Europe. 

Course contents

Title of the course: The deeds of Digenis. Epic, war and loves on literary frontier between Byzantium and Islam.

During the 12th century an anonymous author wrote one of the first examples of literary works written in vernacular Greek, by collecting possibly folk songs composed in the previous centuries. The work has been handed down to us in several versions, among whom the most complete one is that of Grottaferrata (ms. Z. α. XLIV). The tale narrates the deeds of a warrior born of a Muslim father - the emir of Edessa - and a Christian mother, and just for this called Digenis (namely "generated from a double ancestry"). In the background of the struggle between Christians and Muslims along the Cappadocian border, the poem offers a series of original elements for the knowledge of the values, mentality and ideals of a military class living on frontier. The elements that make up this culture, heroism, bellicosity, courage, love, vitality, turn out in fact to be quite different from the aristocratic ethos spread by the courtly Constantinopolitan models. The analysis will concentrate on the second nucleus of the poem, which tells of the education of Digenis and his enterprises.

Readings/Bibliography

The work will be read in the following edition:

- Digenis Akritas, poema epico bizantino, a cura di P. Odorico, Firenze 1995.

 

Selected bibliography:

- A. Pertusi, "Tra storia e leggenda: akritai a ghâzi sulla frontiera orientale di Bisanzio", in Actes du XIVe Congrès International des Etudes Byzantines, Bucarest 1974, pp. 232-283;

- N. Oikonomides, "L' "épopée de Digénis et la frontière orientale de Byzance au Xe et XIe siècles", in Travaux et Mémoires 7 (1979), pp. 375-397;

- R. Beaton, "Was Digenies Akrites and Oral Poem?", inByzantine and Modern Greek Studies 7 (1981), pp. 7-27.

- R. Beaton - D. Ricks (eds), Digenes Akrites. New Approaches to Byzantine Heroic Poetry, Aldershot 1993 (saggi di R. Beaton, A. Bryer, T. Papadopoullos).

 

N. B. All students that did not take introductory courses of Byzantine history or Byzantine Civilization are recommended to read the entry "Bizantino, impero" by A. Carile, in Grande Dizionario Enciclopedico UTET, III, Torino 1985, pp. 394-405.

Teaching methods

Lectures

Assessment methods

Preparation of a paperwork (15-20 pages) on an aspect concerning the course and its discussion with the teacher.

Teaching tools

Reading, translation and commentary by the teacher of the Digenis Akritas. Written evidence will be integrated with visual sources concerning the argument under question.  

Office hours

See the website of Salvatore Cosentino