Centre and Periphery in the Age of Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos: from De cerimoniis to De administrando imperio

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Centre and Periphery in the Age of Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos: from De cerimoniis to De administrando imperio

Veranstalter
Center for Hellenic Traditions, Central European University, Budapest; Archaeological Institute, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest; Cluster of Excellence 'Religion and Politics'/Sub-project D7, University of Münster; Csanád Bálint; Ádám Bollók; Niels Gaul Volker Menze; András Németh
Veranstaltungsort
Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Fri & Sun) | Central European University (Sat
Ort
Budapest
Land
Hungary
Vom - Bis
12.11.2009 - 14.11.2009
Website
http://www.cht.ceu.hu/CHT/porphyrogennetos.pdf
Von
Niels Gaul

Traditionally, the age of Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos (r. 913/45–59), fourth emperor of the so-called ‘Macedonian dynasty’, is perceived as the apogee of Byzantium’s ‘imperial centuries’. For a variety of reasons, Constantine’s rule coincided with a period of Byzantine history attractive to the modern mind; after centuries of fighting for the empire’s mere and meek survival, Byzantine power was once again expanding. In spite of the proverbial splendour of Constantine’s court – Liudprand of Cremona’s report above all encoded its ceremonial into western cultural memory – the mid-tenth century appears to be one of the few periods of Byzantine history commonly perceived as relatively free of ‘decay’ and ‘decadence’. The ‘soft factors’ Byzantine culture became so famous for – its art and architecture, its, latissimo sensu, set of cultural and religious beliefs and ideologies, in short, its savoir vivre – were exported to, and coveted around, the Mediterranean and beyond to an unprecedented degree.
All these factors, plus the emperor’s literary interests resulting in a number of source texts of unique value, helped turn the age of Constantine Porphyrogennetos into an ideal stock-topic of undergraduate and graduate teaching. Without the famous ‘Book of Ceremonies’ (De cerimoniis) – the only surviving copy of which was once kept in King Mathias Corvinus’ library in medieval Hungary –; the treatise ‘On the Administration of the Empire’ (De administrando imperio); or the tract ‘On the Themes’ (De thematibus), all produced by a circle of learned men at Constantine’s court and presumably partly supervised and organized by the emperor himself, our knowlegde of tenth-century Byzantine history and culture would be infinitely poorer.
Much research on Constantine VII and his age was conducted during the first decades of the second half of the twentieth century, culminating in a conference held at Delphi in 1987, with the proceedings published in 1988. The coincidence of two anniversaries in November 2009 provides an exceptional opportunity to revisit, and discuss from new and multidisciplinary perspectives, the age of Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos at an international symposium jointly hosted in Budapest by the Archaeological Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and Central European University’s Center for Hellenic Traditions.
(1) Constantine VII himself, often viewed as the major sponsor of the tenth-century classical revival in Constantinople, died a thousand and fifty years ago on November 9, 959.
(2) Gyula Moravcsik (1892–1972), founding father of Hungarian Byzantine Studies and a leading figure of international Byzantine Studies of his generation, first published his groundbreaking critical edition of Constantine VII’s De administrando imperio, a seminal source for a number of disciplines, in Budapest some sixty years ago, in 1949.

Programm

THURSDAY, 12 NOVEMBER 2009
Venue: Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest V., Roosevelt tér 9

15:30
Registration, coffee & tea

16:30
Csanád Bálint (Budapest)
Welcome on behalf of HAS

16:45
Howard Robinson (Budapest)
Welcome on behalf of CEU

17:00
Terézia Olajos (Szeged)
A tribute to the life and work of Professor Gyula Moravcsik

17:20
Niels Gaul (Budapest)
A ‘theory’ of circulation: centre, province, and periphery in tenth-century Byzantium

18:00 EVENING LECTURE
Peter Schreiner (Cologne/Munich)
Konstantinos VII. Porphyrogennetos: Person und Werk im Wandel der
Jahrhunderte

19:15
Opening reception

FRIDAY, 13 NOVEMBER 2009
Venue: Central European University, Budapest V., Nádor utca 9

1. At court
Chair: András Németh

9:15
Günter Prinzing (Mainz)
Konstantinos VII. und Berengar II. unter Mordverdacht. Indizien für ein Komplott zur Beseitigung der Kinder König Hugos, Bertha-Eudokia und Lothar

9:45
Ádám Bollók (Budapest)
The Carolingian and middle Byzantine artistic ‘revivals’: mutual exchange or parallel universes?

10:15
Etele Kiss (Budapest)
The imperial renewal of ornament under Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos

10:45
Coffee & tea

2. Ideology and writing
Chair: György Geréby (Budapest)

11:15
Claudia Sode (Cologne)
Vom Umgang mit der Geschichte. Historisch-antiquarische Texte im Zeremonienbuch Konstantinos’ VII.

11:45
András Németh (Budapest)
A database for reconceiving imperial ideology?
Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos and his excerpts

12:15
Michael Grünbart (Münster)
Die Briefe Konstantinos’ VII. Porpyhrogennetos

12:45
Lunch

3. Performing liturgy and the law
Chair: Gábor Klaniczay (Budapest)

14:00
Theodora Antonopoulou (Athens)
Homiletic literature in the Macedonian era: orators, Greek myths and the Byzantine Renaissance

14:30
Karin Krause (Basle)
Relics at the court of Constantine VII and their fate after 1204

15:00
Leonora Neville (Washington, DC)
Legal performance and ordering provincial society

15:30
Coffee & tea

4. Capital city, provincial cities
Chair: Ádám Bollók

16:00
Alessandra Ricci (Istanbul)
The paradox of archaeological absences: the city of Constantinople and its suburbs during the the age of Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos

16:30
Christopher S. Lightfoot (New York)
Amorium: a thematic capital at the time of Constantine VII Porpyhrogennetos

17:00
Archibald Dunn (Birmingham)
Administrative structures on the Greek mainland: Constantine VII, archives, and archaeology

18:00 EVENING LECTURE
Paul Magdalino (St Andrews)
Life at the centre: the material, social and cultural
environment of tenth-century Constantinople

19:15
Reception

SATURDAY, 14 NOVEMBER 2009
Venue: Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest I., Országház utca 30

5. Looking east
Chair: Aziz Al-Azmeh (Budapest)

9:15
James Howard-Johnston (Oxford)
Tenth-century Byzantium: facing the Islamic world

9:45
Koray Durak (Istanbul)
The question of trade with the Islamic world during the Byzantine expansion toward the east in the tenth century

10:15
Paul Stephenson (Durham)
Central and peripheral views on the martyrdom of Byzantine soldiers in the tenth century

10:45
Coffee & tea

6. Around the Black Sea
Chair: Miklós Takács

11:15
Bejan Javakhia (Tbilisi)
Byzanz und Georgien zur Zeit Konstantinos’ VII. Porphyrogennetos

11:45
Péter Langó & András Patay-Horváth (Budapest)
Byzantinizing minor objects in the tenth-century Carpathian Basin

12:15
Daniel Ziemann (Budapest)
‘How to appear more formidable’: Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos and the Bulgarians

12:45
Lunch

7. The Balkan peninsula and beyond
Chair: Tijana Krstić (Budapest)

14:00
Miklós Takács (Budapest)
Die Zeit Konstantinos’ VII. und die Balkanhalbinsel aus Sicht der Archäologie

14:30
Ljubomir Maksimović (Belgrade)
Constantine VII and the past of the Serbs: on the genesis of De administrando imperio, chapter 32

15:00
Neven Budak (Zagreb)
Byzantium and Croatia in the tenth century

15:30
Coffee & tea

8. On campaign
Chair: István Perczel (Jerusalem)

16:00
Ádám Biró (Budapest)
The face of Byzantine battle in the tenth century: the case of the northern frontier

16:30
Florin Leonte (Washington, DC)
Politics of deliberation: Constantine VII addressing his soldiers

17:00
Volker Menze (Münster)
‘Blessed be who crushes the children of Persia with stones’: Byzantine sacralization of war, seventh to tenth centuries

18:00 EVENING LECTURE
Athanasios Markopoulos (Athens)
Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos and the Macedonian dynasty in contemporary and modern historiography

19:15
Symposium dinner

Kontakt

Center for Hellenic Traditions
Central European University
Nádor utca 9
1051 Budapest

tel +36.1/327-3235
fax +36.1/327-3055
cht@ceu.hu

http://www.cht.ceu.hu/CHT/porphyrogennetos.pdf
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