Faculty of History, Oxford

It is our great pleasure to publish this booklet of abstracts of the 2nd Annual Edinburgh International Graduate Byzantine Conference entitled “Reception, Appropriation and Innovation: Byzantium between the Christian and Islamic Worlds”, taking place at the University of Edinburgh from 30 November-1 December 2018. We publish here the 28 abstracts submitted by all of our speakers, including our invited, keynote speakers, all of whom we thank for their commitment to making this conference a success – and their contribution towards this end shines through on each of the following pages.
From the beginning this conference has been the fruit of collaborative efforts amongst individual scholars and institutions, as well, from many different countries. First, within the University of Edinburgh itself, the conference marks an important development in interdisciplinary collaboration amongst schools and colleges, as it is co-organized by students from the School of History, Classics and Archaeology together with the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies.
Moreover, we are very happy to have welcomed here scholars from all over the world to present their research from 20 different institutions in several countries: France, Greece, Turkey, Finland, UK, USA, Austria, Egypt, Italy, Denmark and Israel. Finally, this fruitful and multi-faceted collaboration would not have been possible without the generous support of the Late Antique and Byzantine Studies Research Group of the School of History, Classics and Archaeology together with the Alwaleed Centre of the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, both of the University of Edinburgh, as well as generous support from the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies.
This booklet of abstracts has a twofold aim: 1) to situate this conference within the wider research context of the University of Edinburgh, highlighting the interdisciplinary work being conducted here with the hope of establishing these interdepartmental relations on solid ground for years to come, and 2) to make the fruits of these joint efforts readily available to a wider, global audience, both within academia and beyond, by means of various media and open-access publishing.

Byzantines considered themselves the legitimate heirs of the ancient world, a title they passionately defended against emerging empires east and west that also claimed hereditary rights to the Graeco-Roman past. From the fostering of cultural, scientific, and literary revivals and the commissioning of projects that used a well-established artistic and architectural vocabulary to the collection, conservation and display of consecrated ancient artefacts, anachronism was a powerful political and cultural tool, frequently used to build analogies with either past prosperity or a divine eternity. In addition, the use of deliberate archaism in literary forms and language served as both a demonstration of classical learning and elite status. Especially in Constantinople, ceremonial practices not only invited the participants to experience past events as if they were present, but also processed through consecrated landmarks from different historical periods – merging perception of space and time in a single, collective experience. Nevertheless, literary sources, such as the Parastaseis Syntomoi Chronikai, reveal that Byzantines sometimes had only a limited understanding of their own history and urban heritage. They compensate with interpretations, based on oral tradition and observation that often endowed ancient architectural remains and statues with a contemporary relevance. Subsequently this interpretation of the past was actively reshaped to fit contemporary worldviews. Lastly, extensive reuse of ancient material dominates our perception of Byzantium. Innovative aspects of its cultural output therefore often lie unnoticed and are deserving of greater scholarly attention.

Richard de Fournival et les sciences au XIIIe siècle. Textes réunis par Joëlle Ducos et Christopher Lucken, Firenze, SISMEL Edizioni del Galluzzo 2018 (Micrologus Library 88), pp. VI-444.
order online: http://www.sismel.it/tidetails.asp?hdntiid=1620

Chanoine et chancelier de la cathédrale d’Amiens, chirurgien et
probablement médecin, auteur d’une autobiographie astrologique
et peut-être d’un traité d’alchimie, possible auteur du De vetula
qui se fait passer pour l’oeuvre ultime d’Ovide, poète et écrivain,
Richard de Fournival apparaît comme l’une des figures les plus révélatrices de la culture encyclopédique du XIIIe siècle. En témoigne
tout particulièrement sa bibliothèque qu’il décrit dans la Biblionomia et qui apparaît comme une véritable synthèse des connaissances et des intérêts intellectuels de son temps. Réunissant les contributions de spécialistes des disciplines du quadrivium, de la médecine, de l’astrologie et de l’alchimie, cet ouvrage se propose d’étudier les sciences telles qu’elles apparaissent dans les oeuvres et les entreprises de cet auteur majeur du XIIIe siècle.