Edited by Shaun Tougher, the volume Studies in Byzantine History and Culture: A Festschrift for Paul Magdalino consists of twenty-five chapters devoted to “celebrat[ing] and honour[ing]” the work of Paul Magdalino, “one of the foremost Byzantinists of his generation” (2). Magdalino’s career as an active scholar is long, his research interests wide-ranging: on his staff profile, he lists these concisely as “the society, culture, and economy of the Byzantine world, 6th to 13th centuries” [1]. This thematic and historical expansiveness is mirrored in Magdalino’s festschrift. The contributions in the volume cover a broad historical range, spanning from the fourth century to the 2010s. Central to most, if not all, of the contributions is that they seek to pick up and respond to focal points of Magdalino’s work—from the topography of Constantinople and its monuments to monasticism, emperors and imperial dynasties, historical geography, Byzantium’s relationship with its (Western) neighbours and Ottoman successors, and historiography and literature.
One of the major themes weaving through the volume is that of the engagement with Byzantine literature across genres. Shaun Tougher considers the Life of Basil the Younger as a source of information on Macedonian Constantinople and its historical (in)accuracy; Roger Scott, John Burke, and Paul Tuffin examine George Kedrenos’s eleventh-century Synopsis historion through its portrayal of Jews and their role in world history and in relation to Orthodox Christianity. Other texts and questions addressed in the volume include liturgical complaints of the twelfth century (Elizabeth and Michael Jeffreys), imperial typika of Athonite monasteries composed in the 970s and in 1045 (Rosemary Morris), and the fourteenth-century patriarchal register as a source of information on the legal history of Byzantium (Eleftheria Papagianni).
Most prominently, the volume focuses on the imperial capital of Constantinople, one of the pillars of Magdalino’s research: the city, its relationship with other regions, its reception in Byzantine literature, and specific monuments, sites, and artworks in Constantinople are at the heart of the majority of the chapters—ranging for example from Rome as “the rhetorical mirror of Constantinople” (Evangelos Chryssos, 181) to Michael Kaplan on the location and topography of the church of Saints Cosmas and Damian; Michael Angold on the church of the Theotokos Pharos and its Oikokyra icon; Paul Stephenson on medieval travel between Rome and Constantinople; and T. S. Brown on the relationship between Ravenna and Constantinople in the Late Antique and medieval periods. Margaret Mullett discusses the peripatetic movement of Byzantine emperors and their court and the ways in which the itinerant imperial tents relate to the stationary capital of Constantinople. Anthony Kaldellis’s chapter investigates the forum of the fourth-century emperor Theodosius I. Little is known about the building, with only a handful of archaeological remains surviving and a lack of securely datable and reliable material and textual sources. In short, Kaldellis’s task faces many of the same hurdles regularly encountered by those working on the material and visual culture of Byzantium, and potentially offers some new avenues of approach. Instead of trying to reconstruct what the forum might have looked like, Kaldellis focuses on tying visual and textual evidence to the forum and its significance. He constructs the forum as a “textual space” (13) that conveyed a powerful message on behalf of Theodosius and his dynasty and whose network of meaning unfolded both within and beyond Constantinople. The Byzantine capital as a thematic hinge is also picked up by Christine Angelidi, who examines four depictions of the Mother of God and Christ associated with the church of the Chalkoprateia, the cult practices surrounding them, and their role in the Chalkoprateia’s attempt at (re)positioning itself in the liturgical landscape of Constantinople.
The volume ventures beyond the timeframe (and media) normally associated with Byzantium to offer new interpretations of Constantinople. The afterlife of the historical city is the focus of Nina Macaraig’s contribution on the sensory aspects of Ottoman tombs, specifically the 1619 mausoleum of Sultan Ahmed I in Istanbul, which presents a rich investigation of the visual and other sensory modalities—from censers to Quranic recitations—and Islamic eschatology in a funerary context. Kostas Zafeiris argues in his piece on “The Protagonist and the City” (416–24) that Ottoman Constantinople, its monuments, and its exploration are central to the gameplay and its historical anchoring of the action-adventure videogameAssassin’s Creed: Revelations. Stathis Gauntlett offers a study on “Constantinople, Queen of Rebetika” (404-15), which takes its origins in Gauntlett and Magdalino’s shared love of rebetika music and discusses nineteenth- and twentieth-century Constantinople as an “epicentre of musical commerce” (410) and the development of rebetika music in Istanbul and beyond, including the Greek diaspora.
Some of the chapters are more directly and more explicitly in dialogue with Magdalino’s work than others, citing publications or specific material that they seek to expand on or to use as springboards for their own investigation. For example, Lenia Kouneni’s chapter on antique sculptures of Hercules in Constantinople (25-49) responds to Magdalino’s 2015 chapter on pagan sculpture in Christian Constantinople by investigating antique statues of Hercules and their reception by later Constantinopolitan audiences, including empresses and artists. Jean-Claude Cheynet appeals to Magdalino’s work on Constantinople in his contribution on the nomenclature, responsibilities, and relationship to imperial power of the city’s eparchs between 1025 and 1204. And John Haldon confesses to “exploit[ing]” (115) Magdalino’s work on De thematibus to explore the three eastern Roman military regions of Thrace, Thrakesion, and Hellas through the lens of imperial problem-solving.
A particular strength of the volume lies in highlighting how the same material can yield multifaceted questions and approaches that span the breadth of the sub-disciplines of Byzantine studies. A number of contributions revisit textual sources prominent in Magdalino’s work—such as De thematibus—to explore other, related issues, whilst other chapters consider a shared source event, to very different effects. For example, Marie-France Auzépy examines the 717-718 Arab siege of Constantinople as a watershed moment in the perception of the Theotokos as the protectress of the city, whereas Marc D. Lauxtermann returns to the same event to investigate its liturgical commemoration. Literary compilations, in particularBook 6 of Theophanes Continuatus, form the subject of contributions by Paolo Odorico, Michael Featherstone, and Athanasios Markopoulos, in which the texts are examined for taxonomy and terminology, authorship, and as sources of information on Byzantine schooling in the ninth and tenth centuries. Beyond these examples, the variety of methodological approaches to the major themes and materials of Magdalino’s work includes textual analysis, historiography, art historical analysis, archaeology, and historical geography.
This effect is heightened through Shaun Tougher’s editing. The structure of the book is considered and effective: the contributions, as well as being in rough chronological order, are grouped thematically. Although the chapters work equally well as standalones, providing insights into specific subjects for both general and specialist readers, the festschrift unfolds progressively by reading on, with successive chapters (re)turning to similar or identical source material and questions to add interpretative layers. Cumulatively, the volume underlines the impact of Paul Magdalino, his work, and those shaped by it—his students, colleagues, and friends—on the field of Byzantine studies as a whole.
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Note:
1. Prof. Paul Magdalino, University of St Andrews,https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/people/pm8/.