Byzantinische Zeitschrift, volume 117, number 3 (2024).

CONTENTS INCLUDE

Dressed to impress: signet rings in the middle Byzantine period
Brad Hostetler

Signet rings held a unique position in Byzantine material culture. Contemporary sources tell us that while signet rings resembled jewelry, they were ,for both practical and legal purposes, distinct from it. Despite this status, scholarship has regarded signet rings only as personal adornment, overlooking the unique properties that these objects possessed. This essay examines the complex ways in which signet rings functioned as objects of personal adornment and as sealing implements in middle Byzantine society, focusing on a tenth-century signet ring at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.The irregularities of this ring’s inscription, including the inconsistent letterforms and abbreviations, raise questions regarding how this and other signet rings were made, acquired, used, and perceived. This essay argues that signet rings served functions beyond that of jewelry and seals, and worked in conjunction with a host of other visual signifiers of rank and status.

Toasting the defeat of the barbarians? A new type of ceramic drinking bowl from Istanbul
Eric Ivison

This article discusses two examples of a new type of Byzantine ceramic vessel excavated at Yenikapı in Istanbul, that are here identified as drinking bowls and dated to the first half of the seventh century. Despite good evidence for their manufacture in pottery workshops in or near Constantinople, the Yenikapı drinking bowls are unique by reason of their distinctive shape, here argued to be of non-Roman derivation, and for their decoration with representations of human faces, here identified as stereotypical images of Asiatic barbarians that draw upon contemporary non-Roman artistic conventions. This article also argues for the identification of a similarly decorated object in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection as a silver example of this type of drinking bowl. The barbarian representations on these vessels are here identified as those of Avars,and the creation of the drinking bowls is tentatively linked to the events and aftermath of the great Avar-Persian siege of Constantinople in 626.This article discusses how these vessels, in combination with other sources, shed light on Byzantine cultural construction of the Avar “barbarian,” and on historical events in seventh-century Constantinople, concluding that critical analyses of material culture can yield new insights on Byzantine concepts of outsider ethnicities and Romano-Byzantine collective identity

Writing a Byzantine zoobiography: the case of the octopus
Przemysław Marciniak

This article examines the zoobiography of a single species: the octopus. It explores Byzantine perspectives on the biological properties of the octopus as well as the metaphorical applications of its perceived characteristics. While the majority of the material is derived from the middle Byzantine period (10th–12th centuries), the study also incorporates earlier and later sources to provide a comprehensive panorama.

Anna Komnene, the Kontostephanoi, and the Norman invasions of 1107 –1108 and 1147 – 1149
Lucas McMahon

In her account of the second Norman invasion of the Balkans in 1107–1108 in the Alexiad, Anna Komnene speaks poorly of the activities of the megas doux of the fleet, Isaakios Kontostephanos. She claims that he was dispatched under threat of blinding, made an abortive attack on Italy, and then failed in his task at stopping Bohemond, and only after all this was he relieved of command. The following examines this in detail and posits that Anna interpreted events so as to blacken Isaakios’s reputation and distance her father Alexios I Komnenos from a failed invasion of Italy. More specifically, Anna constructed her history in response to the deposition of the patriarch Kosmas II Attikos and the Norman attack in 1147. Both of these events were instrumental in the Kontostephanos family securing their position at the highest echelons of the Komnenian aristocracy. The Kontostephanoi sought to develop a quasi-imperial image of their house, which Anna contested.

The Greek will of Aurelius Pauchab and a Coptic inventory of household objects: A complete edition of P.Cair.Masp. III 67324: new discoveries on testaments in sixth-century Aphrodite
Maria Nowak, Loreleï Vanderheyden, and Constantinos Balamoshev

In this article, we offer a complete edition of P.Cair.Masp. III67324 recto and verso, preceded by an introduction on wills in the Aphroditan archives  and on instrumenta publica in sixth-century Egypt. The recto preserves a fragment of a will written for an inhabitant of the village, Aurelius Pauchab, while the verso contains a list of objects and persons written in Coptic, which could be connected to the will. The article also provides new arguments to the discussion on the continuity of municipal archives and competences of the defensores civitati in sixth-century Egypt and to the broader topic of the implementation of statutory law in the province. Finally, it addresses the problem of making official copies.

The origin of the toponym “Galata” (suburbs of Constantinople) in light of an unpublished inscription from Nicaea in Bithynia
Pawel Nowakowski

This article attempts to clarify the etymology and origin of the name “Galata”, the northern suburb of Constantinople. Firstly, the literary evidence from the 9th century onwards and current hypotheses are discussed. The first publication of a funerary inscription from Nicaea in Bithynia follows which mentions a married couple who had moved from τὰ Γαλάτουto Nicaea. This place name is identified with the Byzantine Galata, which means that the inscription contains the earliest evidence for the use of this place name. The inscription cannot be dated later than the 6th or 7th century, although the year 421 cannot be ruled out.

Le monastère de Saint-Anastase-le-Perse à Rome à travers les légendes hagiographiques du haut Moyen Âge
Daniel Oltean

The paper discusses the links between the monastery of St Anastasios the Persian, founded in the 7th century in Rome, and texts circulating in the papal city. Some hagiographical accounts, such as the Greek and Irish Acts of Peter and Paul by Pseudo-Marcellus, Martyrology of Florus of Lyon, Passio of Christopher, and Passio of Gordian, deliberately include elements that increased the monastery’s popularity. To attract pilgrims, other texts written or modified in the same period, such as the Acts of Paul and Thecla, Acts of Sylvester, Life of Constantina, and Acts of Timothy, contain various legends that changed the established customs. These interpolations question the role of the Eastern migration to Rome in developing the Byzantine hagiography and liturgical calendar.

The Chalcedonian Cyrillianism of Abba Maxentius the Scythian (fl. ca. 518 –523): Reassessing the beginnings of the Theopaschite controversy
Marius Portaru

The aim of the present research is twofold. On the one hand, it tries to explain how Abba Maxentius the Scythian (fl. ca.518–523) arrived at the complex Christological stance of reaffirming Cyrillian Theopaschism as a necessary article of any anti-Nestorian confession of faith. This genealogical research uncovers the long-standing Cyrillian tradition of Scythia Minor, its deep connections with Palestinian Chalcedonism, and Maxentius’ doctrinal conflict with metropolitan Paternus of Tomis as the initial trigger of what we have dubbed the Scythian phase of the Theopaschite controversy. It also traces more closely the history of the Theopaschite formula. On the other hand, it revisits Maxentius’ specifically Christological contribution, departing from previous narratives, which tend to reduce his theological impact by subsuming the Scythian controversy to Justinian’s political actions. It is suggested that Maxentius had a non-negligible influence on Palestinian Chalcedonian Cyrillianism and the future  emperor Justinian.

“Because I don’t speak human” – literary concepts of verbal and nonverbal human-animal communication up to the Middle Byzantine period
Tristan Schmidt

The Byzantine literary tradition presents a rich spectrum of sound-based, tactile, performative and even verbal communication between humans and animals. This article investigates the different, at times contradictory concepts of such communication in three distinct groups of texts (hagiography, secular “heroic” narratives, and Homeric exegesis) that were read, copied or written du-ing the Middle Byzantine era and often derived from Ancient narrative traditions. The fundamental assumption is that the presentation of animal-human engagement in a text depends not only on the literary traditions and the prevailing (Christian‐)zoological concepts in a given milieu or society, but on the degree to which a narrative space was meant to relate to the material world (worldedness).Taking this as a basis, the study highlights different strategies to either make seem-ngly “rational”animal communication thinkable in a culture dominated by the paradigm of aloga, or frame them as markers of separation between the narrative space and the kosmos familiar to the writers and audiences.

Hymnography as literature in the commentaries by Gregory of Corinth, Theodore Prodromos, and Eustathios of Thessalonike
Baukje van den Berg

This article explores reflections on literature, authorship, and language in the commentaries written by Gregory of Corinth, Theodore Prodromos, and Eustathios of Thessalonike on the canons o fKosmas of Jerusalem and John of Damascus. In particular, it focuses on the ways in which these twelfth-century commentators approach the canons as literary artefacts belonging to the long tradition ofGreek poetry that began with Homer. This genealogical connection enabled them to approach both pagan and Christian poetry from the interpretive standpoint established in Byzantine literary education. By studying the commentators’ notions of authorship, their practices of reading and strategies of interpreting, and their re-flections on the relation between language and devotion, this article demonstrate show the study of ancient literature and language was brought to bear on the interpretation of the liturgical canons.

More than “the last monument of Byzantine rule in Cyrenaica”: Taucheira in Late Antiquity
Miranda Williams, Tim Penn, and Ine Jacobs

The city of Taucheira (modern Tocra) in Cyrenaica, Libya, has played a prominent role in established narratives of the 7th-c. Arab conquest of Byzantine North Africa ever since excavations by Richard Goodchild in the 1960s uncovered a substantial walled compound there. Goodchild interpreted the compound as a fortress – “the last monument of Byzantine rule in Cyrenaica” – built in haste in the face of the approaching Arabs inside a much larger set of walls traditionally ascribed to the reign of Justinian I (r. 527–565). In the more than half a century since Goodchild’s publication of the walled compound, late antique and Byzantine studies have undergone radical transformations, but narratives around the walled compound at Taucheira, and about the city itself, have not been considered critically. This article presents a combined historical and archaeological reassessment of the city in light of contemporary developments in scholarship and argues that Taucheira was a vibrant urban centre throughout late antiquity, provided with walls at some point between the late 5th c. and the Justinianic period. Detailed re-examination of the walled compound indicates it could not have served an effective defensive function and is better interpreted as an administrative area. Moreover, an Anastasian construction date is more probable than the conventionally accepted date in the 640s CE.