Dr%20Catherine%20Holmes: List of publications

This chapter examines the significance of religious identity in the late medieval eastern Mediterranean, in particular the role that it played in broader social and political change. It engages with some thought-provoking recent analyses of late medieval identity-making among Greeks and Latins as well as with a conspicuous strand of current thinking in the historiography of the Crusades, which argues for the central importance of distinct, and usually hostile, religious identities in medieval contexts. It suggests that before we make assumptions about religion as a unifying factor which provided long-term immutable boundaries between different communities, we should pay close attention to the social and political contexts within which the evidence for clearly defined religious identities was produced. Among the most important of those contexts was intense religious competition, itself a product of the fluid and flexible political structures that so often typified the region.

This chapter examines the significance of religious identity in the late medieval eastern Mediterranean, in particular the role that it played in broader social and political change. It engages with some thought-provoking recent analyses of late medieval identity-making among Greeks and Latins as well as with a conspicuous strand of current thinking in the historiography of the Crusades, which argues for the central importance of distinct, and usually hostile, religious identities in medieval contexts. It suggests that before we make assumptions about religion as a unifying factor which provided long-term immutable boundaries between different communities, we should pay close attention to the social and political contexts within which the evidence for clearly defined religious identities was produced. Among the most important of those contexts was intense religious competition, itself a product of the fluid and flexible political structures that so often typified the region.

This chapter analyses a very important aspect of the history of surrender: the question of the mass mutilation of prisoners of war. This is done by assesssing whether the blinding of all the soldiers of a captured Bulgarian army by Byzantine emperor Basil II in 1014 was historical fact or a later fiction. This chapter concludes that some sort of mass blinding did occur, even if the immense numbers of victims as well as the decisiveness of this Byzantine victory over the Bulgarians can be questioned. It goes to ask whether the mutilation of prisoners of war was common in other medieval contexts beyond Byzantium. This chapter suggests that among medieval polities, it was great empires, including the Byzantines and the Carolingians, that were the more frequent perpetrators of mass cruelties rather than other more supposedly violent groups such as the Vikings. Imperial expansion was a crucial context to the mutilation of prisoners of war in the Middle Ages.

The Byzantine World presents the latest insights of the leading scholars in the fields of Byzantine studies, history, art and architectural history, literature, ...

The reign of Emperor Basil II is usually considered the high-water mark of medieval Byzantium. During Basil's reign, Byzantine political authority extended from southern Italy to the Euphrates. With the conversion of the Rus to Orthodoxy in 988, the empire's cultural influence stretched still further. Basil portrayed himself as a soldier emperor who was as implacable towards his domestic opponents as against his foreign neighbours. His brutal conquests later earned him the sobriquet 'Bulgar-slayer'. This book considers the problems inherent in governing such a large, multi-ethnic empire; it examines the solutions that Basil adopted particularly on the Byzantine frontiers. It explains how the extant sources make unmasking the political realities of this period so difficult, and demonstrates that a convincing picture of Basil's reign only emerges once these sources are understood in their original contexts. Particular attention is paid to the impact that the Synopsis Historion (also known as the Synopsis Historiarum) of John Skylitzes, a little-studied text from the reign of Emperor Alexios Komnenos (1081-1118), has on our understanding of Basil. As the late 11th-century context in which Skylitzes operated is exposed, so the political, military, and administrative history of Basil's reign is reconstructed. Basil's Byzantium is revealed as a state where the rhetoric of imperial authority became reality through the astute manipulation of force and persuasion.

This collection of papers offers a variety of new perspectives on the related topics of literacy, education and manuscript transmission in Byzantium and among neighbouring cultures by analysing recently discovered or rarely consulted ...

The eastern frontier of Byzantium and the interaction of the peoples that lived along it are the themes of this book.