In this book, Liz James offers a comprehensive history of wall mosaics produced in the European and Islamic middle ages. Taking into account a wide range of issues, including style and iconography, technique and material, and function and patronage, she examines mosaics within their historical context. She asks why the mosaic was such a popular medium and considers how mosaics work as historical 'documents' that tell us about attitudes and beliefs in the medieval world. The book is divided into two part. Part I explores the technical aspects of mosaics, including glass production, labour and materials, and costs. In Part II, James provides a chronological history of mosaics, charting the low and high points of mosaic art up until its abrupt end in the late middle ages. Written in a clear and engaging style, her book will serve as an essential resource for scholars and students of medieval mosaics.

This volume brings into being the field of Byzantine intellectual history. Shifting focus from the cultural, social, and economic study of Byzantium to the life and evolution of ideas in their context, it provides an authoritative history of intellectual endeavors from Late Antiquity to the fifteenth century. At its heart lie the transmission, transformation, and shifts of Hellenic, Christian, and Byzantine ideas and concepts as exemplified in diverse aspects of intellectual life, from philosophy, theology, and rhetoric to astrology, astronomy, and politics. Case studies introduce the major players in Byzantine intellectual life, and particular emphasis is placed on the reception of ancient thought and its significance for secular as well as religious modes of thinking and acting. New insights are offered regarding controversial, understudied, or promising topics of research, such as philosophy and medical thought in Byzantium, and intellectual exchanges with the Arab world.

This volume addresses the important mediaeval dynamic of the competition between those sees from an imperial Romano-Byzantine perspective, that is, from the point of view of how the imperator-basileus and his deputy, the oecumenical patriarch, interpreted scriptural and ecclesiastical tradition, canon law, and Roman political theory to buttress the late Roman and Byzantine vision of imperial vicegerency in the Roman Christian mundus-oikoumene. In so doing, the essay serves as an advantageous foil for the insightfully argued and Roman Catholic-centred perspective of Anastos's close colleague at Dumbarton Oaks, Francis Dvornik, in the latter's study, Byzantium and the Roman Primacy.

History of the Byzantine Empire.