Paul Stephenson
The Byzantine World emerged from conversation at the International Congress of Byzantine Studies, held in London in summer 2006. Richard Stoneman – classicist, historian, author and at the time publisher – attended a number of sessions, including one I had organized with Prof. Dame Averil Cameron. Largely because of Averil’s input, and her insistence that I chair the session, it appeared that I was capable of constructing and directing a compelling international collection of scholars with diverse interests. Maintaining that fiction through conversations with Richard, the project was conceived and placed within the “Routledge Worlds” series. I am grateful, therefore, to both Richard and Averil for their encouragement, but particularly to Averil for commenting on various drafts. I must thank also all those contributors who agreed to write chapters, and subsequently also to act as peer-reviewers for the chapters of others. I thank also the two editorial assistants who dealt with my queries patiently and with great care: Amy Laurens, and more recently Lalle Pursglove. The real editorial assistant was my wife, Brooke Shilling.
“Routledge Worlds” have no fixed format. From the outset we determined not to pursue the approach of The Late Antique World, ed. P. Esler, which achieves an encyclopedic range through two long volumes. This was neither desirable nor necessary in Byzantine studies, which for the past two decades has been blessed with The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, ed. A. Kazhdan, and more recently has seen the publication of a range of handbooks of greater and lesser scope, including now most authoritatively The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Studies, ed. Elizabeth Jeffreys, John Haldon and Robin Cormack. Nor was the work conceived as a composite history to compete with the excellent Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire, ed. Jonathan Shepard, a contributor to this volume.
This work is unashamedly a collection of essays that covers a very great deal, but far from all, that will interest the student of the Byzantine World. Byzantinists have published a myriad edited volumes and collected studies, most the proceedings of conferences. Consequently, most offer a range of views and voices on particular themes aimed at specialists who frequent academic libraries (they tend to be rather expensive). Remarkably, however, there has been no major general collection of essays aimed at a broader audience of those interested in Byzantine civilization, culture and history. Certainly, I know of nothing in English on the scale of The Byzantine World.
Our aim is to offer the views of specialists to other specialists, certainly, but also to a broader readership. Our target audience – for one must both have and specify such a thing to those creating a marketing strategy – is diverse, messy indeed, for it embraces advanced undergraduates, postgraduate and postdoctoral scholars in all fields of Byzantine and medieval studies, Barnes and Noble browsers and Amazon searchers, Wikipedians seeking more authoritative updates (or sources of information to plagiarize for their updating), and anyone who has bought or read a narrative history of Byzantium and been left wanting a little more. Perhaps those who teach undergraduate courses will look most fondly upon such a collection, and that has partly determined its structure and content.
The Byzantine World provides access to the latest thinking in a broad range of related fields of study. Each chapter offers an innovative approach to a well-known topic or a diversion from a well-trodden path. Readers will be introduced to Byzantine women and children, men and eunuchs, emperors, patriarchs, aristocrats and slaves. They will explore churches and fortifications, monasteries and palaces, from Constantinople to Cyprus and Syria in the east, and to Apulia and Venice in the west. Secular and sacred art, profane and spiritual literature will be revealed to the reader, who will be encouraged to read, see, smell and touch. The worlds of Byzantine ceremonial and sanctity, liturgy and letters, Orthodoxy and heresy will be set out for readers, who will also find insights into the emergence of modern Byzantine studies and of popular Byzantine history. Among those readers I hope will be the Shillings, to whom the volume is dedicated.
Barnes, Friday 13 March 2009