Books by Leslie Brubaker
Byzantine 'iconoclasm' is famous and has influenced iconoclast movements from the English Reforma... more Byzantine 'iconoclasm' is famous and has influenced iconoclast movements from the English Reformation and French Revolution to Taliban and IS, but it has also been woefully misunderstood: this book shows how and why the debate about images was more complicated, and more interesting, than it has been presented in the past. It explores how icons came to be so important, who opposed them, and how the debate about images played itself out over the years between c. 680 and 850. Many widely accepted assumptions about 'iconoclasm' - that it was an imperial initiative that resulted in widespread destruction of images, that the major promoters of icon veneration were monks, and that the era was one of cultural stagnation - are shown to be incorrect. Instead, the years of the image debates saw technological advances and intellectual shifts that, coupled with a growing economy, concluded with the emergence of medieval Byzantium as a strong and stable empire.
Iconoclasm, the debate about the legitimacy of religious art that began in Byzantium around 730 a... more Iconoclasm, the debate about the legitimacy of religious art that began in Byzantium around 730 and continued for nearly 120 years, has long held a firm grip on the historical imagination. Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era is the first book in English to survey the original sources crucial for a modern understanding of this most elusive and fascinating period in medieval history. It is also the first book in any language to cover both the written and the visual evidence from this period, a combination of particular importance to the iconoclasm debate. The authors, an art historian and a historian who both specialise in the period, have worked together to provide a comprehensive overview of the visual and the written materials that together help clarify the complex issues of iconoclasm in Byzantium.
Iconoclasm, the debate about the legitimacy of religious art that began in Byzantium around 730 a... more Iconoclasm, the debate about the legitimacy of religious art that began in Byzantium around 730 and continued for nearly 120 years, has long held a firm grip on the historical imagination. Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era is the first book in English to survey the original sources crucial for a modern understanding of this most elusive and fascinating period in medieval history. It is also the first book in any language to cover both the written and the visual evidence from this period, a combination of particular importance to the iconoclasm debate. The authors, an art historian and a historian who both specialise in the period, have worked together to provide a comprehensive overview of the visual and the written materials that together help clarify the complex issues of iconoclasm in Byzantium.
The Byzantines used imagery to communicate a wide range of issues. In the context of Iconoclasm -... more The Byzantines used imagery to communicate a wide range of issues. In the context of Iconoclasm - the debate about the legitimacy of religious art conducted between c. AD 730 and 843 - Byzantine authors themselves claimed that visual images could express certain ideas better than words. Vision and Meaning in Ninth-Century Byzantium deals with how such visual communication worked and examines the types of messages that pictures could convey in the aftermath of Iconoclasm. Its focus is on a deluxe manuscript commissioned around 880, a copy of the fourth-century sermons of the Cappadocian church father Gregory of Nazianzus which presented to the Emperor Basil I, founder of the Macedonian dynasty, by one of the greatest scholars Byzantium ever produced, the patriarch Photios. The manuscript was lavishly decorated with gilded initials, elaborate headpieces and a full-page miniature before each of Gregory's sermons. Forty-six of these, including over 200 distinct scenes, survive. Fewer than half however were directly inspired by the homily that they accompany. Instead most function as commentaries on the ninth-century court and carefully deconstructed both provide us with information not available from preserved written sources and perhaps more important show us how visual images communicate differently from words.
Translated Books by Leslie Brubaker
Italian edition and traslation of "Inventing Byzantine Iconoclasm"(Bristol Classical Press, 2012)... more Italian edition and traslation of "Inventing Byzantine Iconoclasm"(Bristol Classical Press, 2012).
Byzantine 'iconoclasm' is famous and has influenced iconoclast movements from the English Reformation and French Revolution to Taliban and IS, but it has also been woefully misunderstood: this book shows how and why the debate about images was more complicated, and more interesting, than it has been presented in the past. It explores how icons came to be so important, who opposed them, and how the debate about images played itself out over the years between c. 680 and 850. Many widely accepted assumptions about 'iconoclasm' - that it was an imperial initiative that resulted in widespread destruction of images, that the major promoters of icon veneration were monks, and that the era was one of cultural stagnation - are shown to be incorrect. Instead, the years of the image debates saw technological advances and intellectual shifts that, coupled with a growing economy, concluded with the emergence of medieval Byzantium as a strong and stable empire.
Chapters by Leslie Brubaker
in D. Ariantzi (ed.), Coming of Age in Byzantium: Adolescence and Society, Berlin, 2017
the ways thatm ale and female experiences of childhood, adolescence, adulthood and olda ge were d... more the ways thatm ale and female experiences of childhood, adolescence, adulthood and olda ge were discussed.³ Her focus waso nt he archaeological and textual evidence for family roles across the life courses of both men and women from late antiquity until the thirteenth century. Davies' key findingsa bout Byzantine adolescents mayb es ummarised as follows.⁴ Byzantine authors sawadolescencesomewhat differentlyt han we do, though then as now the potential emotional and physical eruptions of male adolescents weref requentlyn oted, decried, and (often) later forgivena sy outhful indiscretions. The idea of the 'teenager',h owever,i sn ot found; the Byzantines seem to have viewed 'youth' as beginning roughlya round the ageo f1 2o r1 3(for girls) or 14 or 15 (for boys) and ending,a tl east for males, around the ageo f25. As this indicates, the ways that Byzantine authorsdiscussed 'youth' weregendered. Normally, they described femaleyouth in terms of beauty,with marriagethe signal marker of transition from youth to maturity.M ale youth, in contrast, was described in terms of activity, physical strength, and socialisation. When the ageo fa dolescents is specificallyr ecorded (whichi sn ot common), there are no years that are especiallyp rominent for males; for females, however,virtually the onlya ge mentioned is 12,which was apparentlyt he symbolic turning point for females exual awakening: Mary of Egypt,f or example, was 12 when she rejected her familyt or un riot in Alexandria.⁵ In short,as eries of distinctive textual conventions cluster around descriptions of both male and femalea dolescence. Davies was not able to look at how the visual evidence from Byzantium intersects with the writtena nd archaeologicalr ecord, and, as it happens, the distinctive nature of adolescencenoted in Byzantine written sources is onlypartially seen in Byzantine visual sources. How and whythis is the case, and what this tells us about the significanceofthe Byzantine experience of, and social response to,adolescence, are the subjects of this chapter.
Alchermes, J.D., Evans, H.C., & Thomas, T.K. (eds.) ANAVHMATA EORTIKA: Studies in Honor of Thomas F. Mathews. Mainz, 2009
Byzantine Orthodoxies. Papers from the 36th Spring Symposium, 2006
Byzantine Style, Religion and Civilisation. In Honour of Sir Steven Runciman, 2006
in M. Maas (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian, Cambridge, 2005
Cristianità d’occidente e cristianità d’oriente (secoli VI-XI), 2004
In common scholarly parlance, narrative imagery tells a story using fi gur es and various other p... more In common scholarly parlance, narrative imagery tells a story using fi gur es and various other props, iconic imagery shows a single static fi gur e, and aniconic imagery omits human figures altogether. Interpreted literally, aniconic means 'without images', but it is normally applied metaphorically to mean 'without people'. Art historians follow this convention, and use the term aniconic to designate two types of imagery: non-representational (non-mimetic ornament) and non-fi gural (representations of architecture, crosses, crowns, urns, plants and sometimes even animals). Aniconic decoration existed long before the Christian era, and continued in Christian use throughout the period that is the focus of this volume. It is usually discounted or ignored, presumably because to the modern viewer aniconic decoration seems to have no 'meaning', and very little has been written about it 1 • It is, however, precisely this absence of a narrative voice that allows aniconic decoration to play two very important roles in Christian �rt. First, it establishes tone. Second, although aniconic decoration has no explicit narrative content in itself, it creates and structures the meaning of its (l) Notable exceptions are 0. Gl<AttAR, 1'he mediatio11 of ornament, Princeton, l!l92 and, dealing with a later period, H. NEl,SUN, I'a/cwologan illumirwte<I or,wm,•11!
Conrad, L. I. & Haldon, J. The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East VI: Elites Old and New in the Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East. Princeton, N.J., 2004
in L. Brubaker & J. Smith (eds.), Gender in the Early Medieval World: East and West, 300-900, Cambridge, 2004
James, L. (ed.) Women, Men and Eunuchs: Gender in Byzantium. London & New York., 1997
New Constantines. The Rhythm of Imperial Renewal in Byzantium, 5th-13th Centuries, 1994
Articles by Leslie Brubaker
History and Cultures Digitial Journal, 2021
This article evaluates the significance of processions in Byzantine Constantinople and the role o... more This article evaluates the significance of processions in Byzantine Constantinople and the role of dancing within in them. Evidence is drawn from literary sources concerning imperial, church-sponsored, guild, hippodrome and more spontaneous urban processions, as well as from material culture. Medieval Constantinople saw a large number of processions, perhaps two a week, and they traversed all areas of the city. They were noisy affairs, accompanied by chanting, acclamations and, often, musical noise, so that even when they were not directly visible, they were audible more or less everywhere in the city. Dancing was incorporated in all but liturgical processions (though it may also have been part of these, on occasion). Processions could create a sense of urban unity, or become expressions of conflict: audience participation was normal, and sometimes violent. Hence one keythough unofficialrole played by processions in the Byzantine capital was to give voice to the urban population.
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 2009
What could or should be visually represented was a contested issue across the medieval Christian ... more What could or should be visually represented was a contested issue across the medieval Christian and Islamic world around the year 800. This article examines how Islamic, Byzantine, Carolingian and Palestinian Christian attitudes toward representation were expressed, and differed, across the seventh and eighth centuries. Islamic prohibitions against representing human figures were not universally recognised, but were particularly-if sometimes erratically-focused on mosque decoration. Byzantine 'iconoclasm'-more properly called iconomachy was far less destructive than its later offshoots in France and England, and resulted in a highly nuanced re-definition of what representation meant in the Orthodox church. Carolingian attitudes toward images were on the whole far less passionate than either Islamic or Orthodox views, but certain members of the elite had strong views, which resulted in particular visual expressions. Palestinian Christians, living under Islamic rule, modulated their attitudes toward images to conform with local social beliefs. Particularly in areas under Orthodox or Islamic control, then, representation mattered greatly around the year 800, and this article examines how and why this impacted on local production.
Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 2004
Scross the medieval Mediterranean, luxury goods were exchanged as objects of tr I as spoils of wa... more Scross the medieval Mediterranean, luxury goods were exchanged as objects of tr I as spoils of war, and as gifts.' For a cultural historian, the interest of exchange or e port of goods lies less in the fact of the exchange itself than in why a particular artifact (or type of artifact) was selected for export or import, pillage, or gift exchange and how object was redefined once it was in a new context. The complexities of trade, war, an diplomacy give way to the ambiguities of socially constructed meaning, which is itself static: moving an object changes its meaning. Sometimes the new meaning was calculated by the exporter. In 506 Cassiodorus ordered Boethius to take a water clock to the ruler of the Burgundians, and to show the B gundians how it worked, so that, in Cassiodorus's words, "when they have turned fro their amazement, they will not dare to think themselves the equals of us, among whom they know, sages have thought up such devices."2 In 757 the East Roman emperor Co stantine V may have had similar hopes when he sent the Frankish king Pepin an orga along with Byzantines to show the Franks how to use it.3 Later described by Notker as "most remarkable of organs ever possessed by musicians,"4 the instrument-like the c sent by Cassiodorus to Burgundy-represented technology not available to its recipien and thus had the potential to demonstrate the superiority of the sender. It is a pleasure to thank participants in the Symposium on Realities in the Medieval Mediterranean, an later, the Byzantine Seminar at Oxford, for their comments after this paper was delivered. I am grateful to anonymous readers for helpful comments; to Mayke de Jong, David Ganz, Rosamond McKitterick, and J Nelson for advice on Carolingian bibliography; and, as always, to Chris Wickham.
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Books by Leslie Brubaker
A major new survey of this most elusive and fascinating of periods of medieval history
Combines the expertise of a world-renowned art historian and historian, both specialists in the visual and written evidence of the period
Challenges many traditional views and places the period firmly in its broader political, cultural and social-economic context
http://history.princeton.edu/about/publications/byzantium-iconoclast-era-c-680-850-history
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Translated Books by Leslie Brubaker
Byzantine 'iconoclasm' is famous and has influenced iconoclast movements from the English Reformation and French Revolution to Taliban and IS, but it has also been woefully misunderstood: this book shows how and why the debate about images was more complicated, and more interesting, than it has been presented in the past. It explores how icons came to be so important, who opposed them, and how the debate about images played itself out over the years between c. 680 and 850. Many widely accepted assumptions about 'iconoclasm' - that it was an imperial initiative that resulted in widespread destruction of images, that the major promoters of icon veneration were monks, and that the era was one of cultural stagnation - are shown to be incorrect. Instead, the years of the image debates saw technological advances and intellectual shifts that, coupled with a growing economy, concluded with the emergence of medieval Byzantium as a strong and stable empire.
Chapters by Leslie Brubaker
Articles by Leslie Brubaker
A major new survey of this most elusive and fascinating of periods of medieval history
Combines the expertise of a world-renowned art historian and historian, both specialists in the visual and written evidence of the period
Challenges many traditional views and places the period firmly in its broader political, cultural and social-economic context
http://history.princeton.edu/about/publications/byzantium-iconoclast-era-c-680-850-history
http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/european-history-450-1000/byzantium-iconoclast-era-c-680850-history?format=PB
Byzantine 'iconoclasm' is famous and has influenced iconoclast movements from the English Reformation and French Revolution to Taliban and IS, but it has also been woefully misunderstood: this book shows how and why the debate about images was more complicated, and more interesting, than it has been presented in the past. It explores how icons came to be so important, who opposed them, and how the debate about images played itself out over the years between c. 680 and 850. Many widely accepted assumptions about 'iconoclasm' - that it was an imperial initiative that resulted in widespread destruction of images, that the major promoters of icon veneration were monks, and that the era was one of cultural stagnation - are shown to be incorrect. Instead, the years of the image debates saw technological advances and intellectual shifts that, coupled with a growing economy, concluded with the emergence of medieval Byzantium as a strong and stable empire.