The Post-1204 Byzantine World: New Approaches and Novel Directions

This volume offers fresh perspectives on the Byzantine world in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade and the conquest of Constantinople in 1204: a world of small-state complexities that upended centuries of empire focused on the imperial city.

Across six parts, it pursues new directions in the study of this fragmented late Byzantine world, from Southern Italy via Epiros to Trebizond. Part I reconsiders the so-called key dates of 1204, 1261 and 1453, making a compelling case against investing any of them with teleological meaning or treating them as definitive cut-off points. Part II critically revisits key concepts, such as the oft-employed ‘successor state’ or Byzantine ‘Greekness’. Part III explores the shifting fortunes of Constantinople from the years after 1261 into the early Ottoman era, highlighting points of convergence across Byzantine and Ottoman – and indeed Italian and South-Slavonic – narratives and practices. Part IV reassesses the continuing significance of rhetorical production in the late Byzantine period and its close connection to the workings of empire. Part V examines these workings anew, with attention to networks of petition, imperial effigies and often unexpected connections across the wider Mediterranean world. The final part offers an annotated transcript of the last two Spring Symposium papers delivered by the late Ruth Macrides: an exciting glimpse of her final project, ‘Sharing the Throne’.

Rich in scope and insight, this book will be of interest to students of the late Byzantine and late medieval Mediterranean worlds, as well as to scholars of the early Ottoman empire.