Acknowledgments

A single-volume encyclopedia such as this must necessarily select and compress from a great deal of material. It can make no claim to originality other than the selection process, most important of which has been my desire to state the most salient assessments at the beginning of each entry. Such judgments I take responsibility for. However, the information itself is derived from the selected bibliography. Some works were consulted more than others; some areas of the bibliography were consulted infrequently, especially those areas having to do with civilization and culture: for this book is chiefly about important people, places, and major events. Much has been published since this book first appeared in 2001. It has been necessary to add dozens of new entries and to revise many previous entries. The additional bibliography reflects the many new studies that have appeared since 2001.

For dictionary entries that have to do with people and events, much of the information is quite basic and available from a variety of sources (see I.A. Introductions, in the bibliography), as well as being ingrained in memory from my years of teaching the history of Byzantium. However, information on places was sometimes another matter. Without the work of C. Foss, I would have had a much more difficult time locating basic information about a number of cities and regions in Asia Minor. Biographical and other dates were sometimes questionable; when in doubt, I relied on the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, 3 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), by A. P. Kazhdan et al. (eds.). I also depended on this work for a number of definitions having to do with titles and offices. In a book of this type, getting basic details correct is important. I apologize for any typographical or other such errors.

I would like to think that the dictionary is relatively free of personal or scholarly bias. Only two biases I am conscious of. One concerns the Crusades. Byzantinists take a fairly dim view of the Crusades, in particular the Fourth Crusade. The second has to do with the wide scope of the dictionary entries. Only a wide panorama can, in my opinion, do justice to Byzantium. Those whom we call “Byzantines” would certainly have acknowledged the uniqueness of their civilization, but they would have also professed its magnetic power to attract peoples from well beyond Byzantium’s borders. It is this magnetism, the charismatic quality of Byzantine civilization, that the author acknowledges.

The photograph of Saint Neophytos between the Archangels Michael and Gabriel, as well as the photograph of the interior of Hagia Sophia, are used with the permission of Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C. All other photographs are by the author. The following plans and sections are used with the permission of Dufour Editions, Inc.: Plan of Constantinople; Section through the Theodosian Land Walls; Plan of Hagia Sophia; and Hagia Sophia: Section through nave, facing east. The map entitled “The Byzantine Empire in 565” is used with the permission of Oxford University Press and the University of Chicago Press. The maps entitled “The Byzantine Empire in 1265” and “The Byzantine Empire and Ottoman Turks in 1355” are used with the permission of University Press of America and University of Chicago Press.