The essays which comprise this book aim to identify and discuss aspects of the Byzantium heritage, whose principal beneficiaries were the Greeks, the Slavs and, most prominently, Russia. These 12 studies divide into three groups: the first is concerned with general aspects of Slavo-Byzantine relations; the second deals with the specific features of the acculturation process; and the third, which includes among others Russia's Byzantine Heritage is concerned with the contacts between Byzantium and medieval Russia.

These reprints of articles, reviews, and other short pieces by the well-known Byzantinist, Ihor Sevčenko, are gathered together in one volume for the first time. The collection reflects the author's wide-ranging interests and his significant contributions to the study of the relationship between Byzantine and East Slavic culture. A number of the original articles have been provided with addenda by the author. Among the articles are the author's now famous study, "Fragments of the Toparcha Gothicus," in which he demonstrates their nineteenth-century provenance at the hands of their "discoverer" Karl Benedikt Hase; the analysis of the impact on Muscovite political ideology of the writings of Deacon Agapetus; the discovery of the Greek prose original of the putative poem contained in the Life of the Slavic Apostle Cyril; and the find, made at St. Catherine's Monastery, of Constantine Tischendorf's letters regarding the transfer of the Codex Sinaiticus to St. Petersburg. Other articles include the author's studies on the impact of Byzantine elements in early Ukrainian culture and in some Kievan texts; and his observations on Byzantine social history at the time of the Slavic Apostles. Sevčenko offers these studies up as a challenge to the younger generation of scholars engaged in new approaches within these fields. Of further interest to Byzantinists and Slavists alike are the author's reviews and retrospectives, including retrospectives of George Christos Soulis, George Ostrogorsky, Francis Dvornik, and Michael Cherniavsky. Taken as a whole, the volume is a lively guide along a varied journey through the world of Byzantium and the Slays and reconstructs the relationship between the two in the light of texts, both literary and scientific. It also reflects the history of Slavic and Byzantine studies in the United States and Europe.

This book describes the role of Byzantine diplomacy in the emergence of Moscow in the fourteenth century.

With the help of the reader, two detectives search for the letters of the alphabet.

A leading historian argues that in the empire we know as Byzantium, the Greek-speaking population was actually Roman, and scholars have deliberately mislabeled their ethnicity for the past two centuries for political reasons. Was there ever such a thing as Byzantium? Certainly no emperor ever called himself “Byzantine.” And while the identities of minorities in the eastern empire are clear—contemporaries speak of Slavs, Bulgarians, Armenians, Jews, and Muslims—that of the ruling majority remains obscured behind a name made up by later generations. Historical evidence tells us unequivocally that Byzantium’s ethnic majority, no less than the ruler of Constantinople, would have identified as Roman. It was an identity so strong in the eastern empire that even the conquering Ottomans would eventually adopt it. But Western scholarship has a long tradition of denying the Romanness of Byzantium. In Romanland, Anthony Kaldellis investigates why and argues that it is time for the Romanness of these so-called Byzantines to be taken seriously. In the Middle Ages, he explains, people of the eastern empire were labeled “Greeks,” and by the nineteenth century they were shorn of their distorted Greekness and became “Byzantine.” Only when we understand that the Greek-speaking population of Byzantium was actually Roman will we fully appreciate the nature of Roman ethnic identity. We will also better understand the processes of assimilation that led to the absorption of foreign and minority groups into the dominant ethnic group, the Romans who presided over the vast multiethnic empire of the east.