Audience and Action in Byzantine Ceremonies I: Audience and the Senses
Audience and Action in Byzantine Ceremonies II: Audience in the Text

Organizers: Nikolas C. Churik, Princeton University, and Erik Ellis, Hillsdale College

Processions celebrating feasts and festivals abounded in Byzantium. These were public events, traversing city-streets and making claims on civic space. The descriptions and instructions for these processions concentrate largely on the top of the social hierarchy involved and consequently their proper order was a major concern. However, these were public events whose success depended on their ability to move the citizenry. Yet the crowd’s place in public ceremonies remains understudied. 

Building on emerging scholarly literature and recent events, these panels investigate how Byzantine political culture functioned and to what extent public ceremonies offered opportunities for the exertion and extension of elite authority, popular disruption and challenges to that authority, and irenic cooperation. The panels attempt to recover Byzantine audience experience through the exploration of textual, topographical, and visual evidence.