Inscriptions in Byzantium and Beyond

The present book, the first collective volume entirely devoted to aspects of Byzantine epigraphy, a discipline which has long been neglected, mainly comprises papers delivered at two international meetings: a workshop entitled Byzantinische Epigraphik: Wege zu einem Corpus held on 18 May 2010 at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna, and a round table titled Towards a Corpus of Byzantine Inscriptions convened on 24 August 2011 at the 22nd International Congress of Byzantine Studies at the University of Sofia. It is the aim of this book to provide fresh impetus for the field of Byzantine epigraphy. Critical editions of inscriptions, their detailed interdisciplinary analysis, and research on their significance for Byzantine culture are still desiderata in our field. The book is divided into four sections: after an introductory article which deals with the manifold history of the discipline of Byzantine epigraphy from the end of the 19th century until now four contributions are to be found in the section Inscriptions in Byzantium and Beyond. At first, Cyril Mango tries to define the term Byzantine inscription and its limits. Vincent Debiais offers some interesting observations by comparing medieval Latin inscriptions from the West with Byzantine epigraphic traditions. A short overview about Bulgarian efforts to contribute to Byzantine epigraphy is offered by Vasil Gjuzelev. Andrey Vinogradov analyses the content of Greek inscriptions preserved at the northern Black Sea region; the corpus he is referring to will soon be published online. The second section of the book bears the title Methods of Editing Byzantine Inscriptions: while the paper of Peter Schreiner discusses the urgent necessity of creating a new epigraphic initiative within Byzantine Studies, Walter Koch describes the Western medieval inscription projects in detail by offering models which could also meet the requirements of a future corpus of Byzantine inscriptions. Both Guglielmo Cavallo and Errki Sironen discuss guidelines which will have to be regarded within a new initiative for a Corpus of Byzantine inscriptions. Charlotte Roueché stresses the advantages of creating online-corpora, and Joel Kalvesmaki describes his recently published epigraphic font Athena Ruby. The third section covers articles which report current epigraphic projects: two projects from Greece presented by Katerina Nikolaou, Irene Chrestou and Sophia Kalopissi-Verti will be published within databases. Maria Xenaki discusses the epigraphic wealth of Cappadocia and its hardly studied graffiti, while Alexandra Evdokimova gives some insights in her project about the Greek graffiti from St Sophia, Constantinople. The last section is devoted to case studies articles. Their content ranges from Late Antiquity (Sencer Sahin, Mustafa Sayar) until the late Byzantine period (Linda Safran). Kazimir Popkonstantiv analyses Greek inscriptions from Bulgaria which date to the 9th century, while Ida Toth discusses 11th century inscriptions which clearly differ from their predecessors.