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 it is able to be acquainted to the main historical features of the Byzantine civilization and its close interplay with the Medieval West, the Slavonic world and the Sasanian and Muslim Near East. Moreover, the student is able to assess the role played by Byzantium in the trasmission of classical, Hellenistic, Slavonic and Ottoman tradition to the cultural heritage of modern Europe.

Course contents

The course will be divided into two parts:

A) general part dedicated to a historical introduction to the Byzantine world (8 hours).

B) monographic part dedicated to the theme: Language and culture on the borders of the empire: the case of Sardinia (7^th – 11^th century) (22 hours).

Part A): general.

This part of the course consists of a brief introduction to the salient aspects of the Byzantine world. Being conceived as a propaedeutic unit to the contents of the monographic part, it will focus particularly on topics concerning political ideology, army, mentality, social values, and economy.

Part B): monographic.

The Byzantine empire, the historical successor of the Eastern Roman empire, since the 7th century accentuates its character of civilization based on the use of Greek as an everyday language. This phenomenon, in relation to the territories remained under the empire in the West, provokes a strong differentiation between some areas (such as the Venetiae, Ravenna, the Pentapolis and the Roman duchy) where the population continues to be largely Latin-speaking, and others (such as Sicily, especially its eastern part, and Calabria), in which the everyday language is Greek. In this context, until a few years ago, it was generally agreed that Sardinia was to be included among the regions belonging to the first type. But a series of studies carried out in the last fifteen years concerning archeology, epigraphy and sigillography of Sardinia in the early Middle Ages are showing that, on the contrary, the component of the Greek speakers significantly increased on the island beginning the 7th century onwards. The course aims to tackle this problem through the analysis of Sardinian epigraphic production between the 7^th and first half of the 11^th century, which consists of 18 epigraphs, considering those intact and fragmented ones. Along with epigraphs, sigillographic production will be examined too, based on the corpus of about 90 Greek-Latin seals (but mostly Greek) found near the church of S. George of Cabras (Oristano) in 1988.

The aforementioned epigraphic and sigillographic material will be read, translated and commented during class, in order to provide a basis for a discussion on the following aspects:

- did there really be an increase of Greek-speakers in early medieval Sardinia?

- if so, as it seems, what were the causes?

- Social classes in which the knowledge of Greek became more widespread;

- multiculturalism in early medieval Sardinia;

- political, religious and cultural ties with Constantinople;

- Byzantine heritage in medieval Sardinia.

N. B. For students who want to deepen aspects related to the non-literary texts of the Byzantine world, the course is propaedeutic to the Laboratory in Byzantine Epigraphy and Sigillography (40 h.), to be held at the Bologna campus between 13 and 18 May 2019.

 

Readings/Bibliography

Part A): general.

Mandatory reading of the following texts is required:

— Entry «Byzantine Empire», by A. Carile, in Grande Dizionario Enciclopedico UTET, III, Torino 1985, pp. 394-405.

— C. Mango, La civiltà bizantina, It. transl. Roma - Bari 1998 (or previous editions).

Part B): monographic.

Mandatory reading of the following texts is required:

— A. Guillou «L’età bizantina: politica e economia», in M. Guidetti (ed.), Storia dei Sardi e della Sardegna, I, Dalle origini alla fine dell’età bizantina, Milano 1987, pp. 329-372.

— Id., «La diffusione della cultura bizantina», ivi, pp. 373-423.

— S. Cosentino, «Politica e istituzioni nella Sardegna bizantina», in P. Corrias, S. Cosentino (eds), Ai confini dell’impero: Storia, arte e archeologia della Sardegna bizantina, Cagliari 2002, pp. 1-14.

— Id., «La Sardegna bizantina: temi di storia economica e sociale», ivi, pp. 55-68.

Inscriptions and seals will be read and commented on by drawing them from the following editions:

— A. Guillou, Recueil des inscriptions grecques médiévales d'Italie, Rome 1996 (Collection de l'École Française de Rome, 222).

— F. Fiori, Costantino hypatos e doux di Sardinia, Bologna 2001 (Quaderni della Rivista di Bizantinistica diretta da A. Carile, 16);

— P. G. Spanu, R. Zucca, I sigilli bizantina della Σαρδηνία, Roma 2004.

For non-attending students the reading of one of the following books is required:

— G. Paulis, Lingua e cultura nella Sardegna bizantina. Testimonianze linguistiche dell’influsso greco, Sassari 1983.

- P. G. Spanu, La Sardegna bizantina tra il VI e il VII secolo, Oristano 1998.

 

Teaching methods

Lectures.

Attendance to the course is strongly recommended due to the reading of inscriptions and seals during class.

Assessment methods

Passing the exam requires a written paper and an oral exam.

– paperwork: consists of a paper (12-15 pages long, excluding bibliography: page layout: side margins 2 cm, margins at the top and bottom: 2.5 cm, body font 12, line spacing 2) to be delivered to the teacher as an e-mail attachment one week before the date of the oral exam. Paperwork aims at verifying the skills and concepts learned by the student during part B (monographic) of the course.

— oral exam: it consists in the assessment of the notions related to part A of the course (general) and in a discussion of the contents of the paperwork related to the part B of the course (monographic).

The final evaluation for passing the exam is determined by the following scores: 10/30 for part A; 20/30 for part B.

Teaching tools

— Translation of sources

— distribution of photocopies

— power-point presentations.

Office hours

See the website of Salvatore Cosentino