Byzantium, Late Antiquity, social and cultural history

Claudia Rapp is an internationally renowned scholar specialising in the social and cultural history of Byzantium. Her career spans three decades and two continents and has involved academic posts in five countries including visiting professorships as well as numerous fellowships (i.a. in Princeton, Jerusalem, Oxford). She also works as an evaluator and is a member of various editorial boards. In her research, Rapp focuses on investigating the experienced reality of social and cultural phenomena and on questioning established patterns of explanation. Many of her publications have arisen from her intensive study of hagiography descriptions of the lives of holy men and women; these unique resources shed light on everyday life as well as the concerns and mentalities of the middle and lower classes far from the capital of the Byzantine Empire, Constantinople. With her methods firmly anchored in basic research, in particular in codicology, Rapp also endeavours to research cultural and linguistic networks, for example in her work with the palimpsest manuscripts at St. Catherine`s Monastery in the Sinai, in which deleted writings in nine languages are being made legible again using digital technologies. Her first book, Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity: the Nature of Christian Leadership in an Age of Transition, develops a new tripartite explanatory model according to which the ascetic authority of the bishops enabled them both to present themselves as charismatic figures and to expand their powerbase within the church. Building on and developing Max Webers antithesis of charisma and institution, Rapps concept of ascetic authority has meanwhile been adopted in other fields of research. Her upcoming book, Brother-Making in Late Antiquity and Byzantium. Monks, Laymen and Christian Ritual, investigates a ritual known only from Byzantium: brother-making (Greek: adelphopoiesis) involves two men being established as spiritual brothers through prayers recited by a priest. Rapp demonstrates that these prayers originated in a little known form of monastic organisation among semi-eremitic monks in the 4th to 7th centuries. In these small, family-like groups two men would often ask their spiritual father for a blessing. The fact that this ritual was also used as a social networking tool among aristocrats from the 9th century onwards demonstrates the inter-contextual mobility of relationship patterns from the religious to the secular sphere. Rapps investigations of this and other topics related to small groups highlight the freedom of action available to people in the Middle Ages and the mechanisms of ritualization and legalisation that were adopted by church and state in an attempt to control such freedom. Mobility, Microstructures and Personal Agency is the title of the research programme Rapp launched after her appointment as professor at the University of Vienna in 2011. She pursues this programme in collaboration with the Austrian Academy of Sciences research team from the Department of Eastern Mediterranean Studies, a department she has headed since 2012. In order to promote networking within Byzantine studies and with other disciplines at national and international level, she initiated the semi-annual research colloquium Vienna Dialogues: Conversation and Cooperation. The Wittgenstein Award will now enable her to pursue these matters both within the Byzantine context and in connection with Western Europe as well as the Middle and Far East in three areas: the mobility of people and objects, the mobility of people and ideas, and cultural mobility and social practice. In this regard, her all-important basic research focusing on manuscripts and other artefacts will be complemented by analysis and interpretation, which will also involve dialogue at the international level. The findings will be discussed at colloquia and conferences, disseminated through publications and conveyed to a broader public via the Internet and through various events, including some for schools.

'Mobility, Microstructures, and Personal Agency' highlights the role of the medieval empire of Byzantium as a global culture interlinked with others and analyzes the internal flexibility of Byzantine society. It contributes to a re-evaluation of a society and culture that has traditionally been depicted as stiff, rigid and encumbered by its own tradition. The project featured a fresh approach to migration in Byzantium. Rather than investigating large movements by people who shared a culture, language or religion, it expanded the framework of inquiry by employing the lens of social history. Instead of migrations in and out of Byzantium or indeed within the empire, it studied phenomena of mobility on a broader scale. This meant investigating individuals and tracing the reasons for their mobility as well as the networks that facilitate such movements. The manifestations of such mobility are contacts and mutual influences across political, cultural and linguistic divides. The project focused in particular on Byzantium's connections to Italy, to Armenia and to Persia. Through lectures, workshops and conferences, both in Vienna and internationally, and in cooperation with scholars in Europe and the US, project team members brought this agenda to a larger scholarly audience and contributed to shaping current academic dialogues. A large number of publications serve to disseminate the project results. Particularly impactful is the open-access publication Mobility and Migration in Byzantium: A Sourcebook, which has put the study of these phenomena on a new level, making them accessible to a larger audience of non-specialists. Google searches that combine the words 'mobility' or 'migration' with 'Byzantium' result in dozens of hits related to the MoByz project. Project team members, most of them employed as post-doctoral researchers, continue to pursue the research agenda in their subsequent academic contexts. Collaborations and scholarly networks have been established on an international level. The PI has received international recognition through elections to academies and learned societies and the award of two prizes. Further outcomes include the establishment of an international research network for the study of prosopography across the medieval Mediterranean (PROSOPON), the FWF Project 'Entangled Charters of Anatolia' (PI Preiser-Kapeller), and the FWF Cluster of Excellence 'EurAsian Transformations. Resources of the Past and Challenges of Diversity' (PI Rapp).