ABSTRACT

In spite of the striking abundance of extant primary material, Byzantine epigraphy remains uncharted territory. The volume of the Proceedings of the 49th SPBS Spring Symposium aims to promote the field of Byzantine epigraphy as a whole, and topics and subjects covered include: Byzantine attitudes towards the inscribed word, the questions of continuity and transformation, the context and function of epigraphic evidence, the levels of formality and authority, the material aspect of writing, and the verbal, visual and symbolic meaning of inscribed texts. The collection is intended as a valuable scholarly resource presenting and examining a substantial quantity of diverse epigraphic material, and outlining the chronological development of epigraphic habits, and of individual epigraphic genres in Byzantium. The contributors also discuss the methodological questions of collecting, presenting and interpreting the most representative Byzantine inscriptional material, and addressing epigraphic material to make it relevant to a wider scholarly community.

chapter |14 pages

Opening address

ByCyril Mango

part I|90 pages

After Late Antiquity

chapter 1|18 pages

The process of ‘Byzantinization’ in late antique epigraphy

BySylvain Destephen

chapter 2|16 pages

Village churches and donors at the end of Antiquity

ByIne Jacobs

chapter 3|22 pages

Reading, viewing and inscribing faith

Christian epigraphy in the early Umayyad Levant
BySean V. Leatherbury

chapter 4|32 pages

The epigraphy of the Abgar Story

Traditions and transitions
ByIda Toth

part II|39 pages

Legibility and readability

chapter 5|15 pages

Inscriptions and the Byzantine beholder

The perception of script
ByAndreas Rhoby

part III|63 pages

Church and state

chapter 7|15 pages

The house of inscriptions

The epigraphic world of the Middle Byzantine church
ByGeorgios Pallis

chapter 8|27 pages

State, strategy, and ideology in monumental imperial inscriptions

ByNicholas Melvani

chapter 9|19 pages

Inscriptions of church and state officials on Byzantine lead seals

ByAlexandra-Kyriaki Wassiliou-Seibt

part IV|55 pages

Formal and informal inscriptions in Athens

chapter 10|23 pages

The (in)formality of the inscribed word at the Parthenon

Legibility, script, content
ByMaria Xenaki

part V|70 pages

Objects, texts and images

chapter 12|24 pages

Towards a typology for the placement of names on works of art

ByBrad Hostetler

chapter 13|18 pages

Word of image

Textual frames of early Byzantine icons
ByMaria Lidova

chapter 14|26 pages

Short texts on small objects

The poetics of the Byzantine enkolpion
ByIvan Drpić

part VI|42 pages

Case studies

chapter 15|10 pages

A Byzantine verse inscription from Konya

ByMarc D. Lauxtermann, Peter Thonemann

chapter 17|12 pages

A Lombard epigram in Greek

ByMarc D. Lauxtermann