The Excerpta Constantiniana and the Byzantine Appropriation of the Past

by: Nemeth, A.

The Excerpta project instigated by the Byzantine emperor Constantine VII turned the enormously rich experience offered by Greek historiography into a body of excerpts distributed across fifty-three distinct thematic collections. In this, the first sustained analysis, András Németh moves from viewing the Excerpta only as a collection of textual fragments to focusing on its dependence from and impact on the surrounding Byzantine culture in the tenth century. He introduces the concept of appropriation and also uses it to study some other key texts created under the Excerpta's influence (De thematibus, De administrando imperio and De ceremoniis). Unlike world chronicles, the Excerpta ignored the chronological dimension of history and fostered the biographical turn in Byzantine historiography. By exploring theoretical questions such as classification and retrieval of historical information and the relationship between knowledge and political power, this book provides powerful new ways for exploring the Excerpta in Byzantine studies and beyond.

The first in-depth analysis of the historical excerpts, including many key historians from classical and late antiquity, in the context of their production in Byzantium
Proposes a new and coherent interpretative framework of several key works produced at Byzantine Court in the tenth century
Tackles theoretical problems beyond Byzantium, such as the understanding of time, history, textual coherence, the practical reading of history and managing information overload

Table of Contents
1. Imperial court and knowledge production
2. Appropriation of the past: theory and practice of excerpting historiography
3. Constructing a research engine of the past
4. Information management in Constantine VII's treatises
5. Renewal of historiography under Constantine VII
6. Distorsion and expansion of the past in the Excerpta
7. Classification of the past in the Excerpta
8. The reading of the Excerpta
9. The Suda: the lexicographer and the excerptor
Conclusions
Appendices A. Edition of the proem and the poem
B. The imperial manuscripts of the Excerpta.

Ο ΚΡΑΤΗΡΑΣ ΤΟΥ ΔΕΡΒΕΝΙΟΥ

by: ΓΙΟΥΡΗ, Ε.

• The Archaeological Society of Athens, ΑΘΗΝΑ / Athens, 1978

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ΤΟ ΜΕΤΑ ΘΑΝΑΤΟΝ ΤΑΞΙΔΙ ΤΗΣ ΠΑΝΑΓΙΑΣ ΣΤΗ ΒΥΖΑΝΤΙΝΗ ΤΕΧΝΗ : ΑΠΟ ΤΗΣ ΕΙΣ ΑΔΟΥ ΚΑΘΟΔΟ ΕΩΣ ΤΗΝ ΑΝΟΔΟ ΣΤΟΝ ΟΥΡΑΝΟ / Le Voyage outre-tombe de la Vierge dans l’art byzantin. De la Descente aux enfers a la Montee au ciel

by: ΣΕΜΟΓΛΟΥ, Α. / Semoglou, A.

• ISBN-13: 9789607856111
• ISBN-03: 9607856112
• ΚΕΝΤΡΟ ΒΥΖΑΝΤΙΝΩΝ ΕΡΕΥΝΩΝ / Byzantine Research Centre, ΘΕΣΣΑΛΟΝΙΚΗ / Thessaloniki, 2003

Lexikon der Platonischen Begriffe

by: Perls, H.

• Francke Verlag, Bern, 1973

The Excerpta Constantiniana and the Byzantine Appropriation of the Past

by: Nemeth, A.

• ISBN-13: 9781108423632 / 978-1-108-42363-2
• ISBN-03: 1108423639 / 1-108-42363-9
• Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2018