This title presents an original portrayal of Justinian's reign, its politics and theological disputes, focusing on the lives of two extraordinary women who wielded power and influence. A fascinating exploration of the corridors of power in Byzantium of the time of Justinian (527-565), the book reveals how Empress Theodora and Antonina, both alumnae of the theatre, were remarkable examples of social mobility, moving into positions of power and influence, becoming wives of key figures. Theodora had three aims: to protect those Christians who would not accept the Chalcedonian Creed; to advance the careers of her family and friends; and to defend the poor and assist the defenceless and, in particular, women - a mission which she claimed publicly. Finally, there was the allure of power, and though the exercise of power cannot be qualified as an 'aim', there can be no doubt that Theodora loved authority: she made and unmade marriage contracts, and appointed men to office, or destroyed them if they got in her way. Antonina was both friend and agent, and equally ruthless. She managed her husband, Belisarius, and advanced his career, though she was unfaithful to the marriage bed, and would outlive the main players of the age of Justinian.

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This title presents an original portrayal of Justinian's reign, its politics and theological disputes, focusing on the lives of two extraordinary women who wielded power and influence. A fascinating exploration of the corridors of power in Byzantium of the time of Justinian (527-565), the book reveals how Empress Theodora and Antonina, both alumnae of the theatre, were remarkable examples of social mobility, moving into positions of power and influence, becoming wives of key figures. Theodora had three aims: to protect those Christians who would not accept the Chalcedonian Creed; to advance the careers of her family and friends; and to defend the poor and assist the defenceless and, in particular, women - a mission which she claimed publicly. Finally, there was the allure of power, and though the exercise of power cannot be qualified as an 'aim', there can be no doubt that Theodora loved authority: she made and unmade marriage contracts, and appointed men to office, or destroyed them if they got in her way. Antonina was both friend and agent, and equally ruthless. She managed her husband, Belisarius, and advanced his career, though she was unfaithful to the marriage bed, and would outlive the main players of the age of Justinian.

Although Byzantium is known to history as the Eastern Roman Empire, scholars have long claimed that this Greek Christian theocracy bore little resemblance to Rome. Here, in a revolutionary model of Byzantine politics and society, Anthony Kaldellis reconnects Byzantium to its Roman roots, arguing that from the fifth to the twelfth centuries CE the Eastern Roman Empire was essentially a republic, with power exercised on behalf of the people and sometimes by them too. The Byzantine Republic recovers for the historical record a less autocratic, more populist Byzantium whose Greek-speaking citizens considered themselves as fully Roman as their Latin-speaking “ancestors.” Kaldellis shows that the idea of Byzantium as a rigid imperial theocracy is a misleading construct of Western historians since the Enlightenment. With court proclamations often draped in Christian rhetoric, the notion of divine kingship emerged as a way to disguise the inherent vulnerability of each regime. The legitimacy of the emperors was not predicated on an absolute right to the throne but on the popularity of individual emperors, whose grip on power was tenuous despite the stability of the imperial institution itself. Kaldellis examines the overlooked Byzantine concept of the polity, along with the complex relationship of emperors to the law and the ways they bolstered their popular acceptance and avoided challenges. The rebellions that periodically rocked the empire were not aberrations, he shows, but an essential part of the functioning of the republican monarchy.

This Handbook is the first to consider the interrelated subjects of gender and sexuality in the Eastern Roman Empire from an interdisciplinary perspective. Drawing on both modern theories and Byzantine perceptions, and considering multiple periods and religions (Eastern Orthodox, Islamic, and Jewish), it provides evidentiary textual and visual material support for an analysis of the two linked themes. Broadly, the essays demonstrate that gender and sexual constructs in Byzantium were porous. As a result, they expand our knowledge of not only how sex and gender were conceived and performed but also how ideas and practices shaped Byzantine life. The Routledge Handbook of Gender and Sexuality in Byzantium will be an indispensable guide for students and scholars of late antique and Byzantine religion, history, culture, and art, who will find it a useful critical survey of current scholarship and one that shines new light in their areas of research. The focus on issues of gender and sexuality may also be of interest to individuals concerned with Eastern Mediterranean culture, as well as to the broader public. Chapter 21 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

This volume is the first to focus solely on how specific individuals and groups in Byzantium and its borderlands were defined and distinguished from other individuals and groups from the mid-fourth to the close of the fifteenth century. It gathers chapters from both established and emerging scholars from a wide range of disciplines across history, art, archaeology, and religion to provide an accurate representation of the state of the field both now and in its immediate future. The handbook is divided into four subtopics that examine concepts of group and specific individual identity which have been chosen to provide methodologically sophisticated and multidisciplinary perspectives on specific categories of group and individual identity. The topics are Imperial Identities; Romanitas in the Late Antique Mediterranean; Macro and Micro Identities: Religious, Regional, and Ethnic Identities, and Internal Others; and Gendered Identities: Literature, Memory, and Self in Early and Middle Byzantium. While no single volume could ever provide a comprehensive vision of identities on the vast variety of peoples within Byzantium over nearly a millennium of its history, this handbook represents a milestone in offering a survey of the vibrant surge of scholarship examining the numerous and oft-times fluctuating codes of identity that shaped and transformed Byzantium and its neighbours during the empire’s long life.

This comparative study explores three key cultural and political spheres – the Latin west, Byzantium and the Islamic world from Central Asia to the Atlantic – roughly from the emergence of Islam to the fall of Constantinople. These spheres drew on a shared pool of late antique Mediterranean culture, philosophy and science, and they had monotheism and historical antecedents in common. Yet where exactly political and spiritual power lay, and how it was exercised, differed. This book focuses on power dynamics and resource-allocation among ruling elites; the legitimisation of power and property with the aid of religion; and on rulers' interactions with local elites and societies. Offering the reader route-maps towards navigating each sphere and grasping the fundamentals of its political culture, this set of parallel studies offers a timely and much needed framework for comparing the societies surrounding the medieval Mediterranean.