Skip to main content

IMC 2020: Sessions

Session 211: Natural Borders, Cultural Frontiers, Symbolical Boundaries: Byzantium and Its Neighbours in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages

Monday 6 July 2020, 14.15-15.45

Organiser:Andra Jugănaru, School of Pastoral & Social Theology Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Moderator/Chair:Christopher Heath, Department of History, Politics & Philosophy, Manchester Metropolitan University
Paper 211-aNegotiating Emotions across Cultural Boundaries in Early Byzantium
(Language: English)
Ecaterina Gabriela Lung, Facultatea de Istorie, Universitatea din Bucureşti
Index terms: Byzantine Studies, Historiography - Medieval, Mentalities
Paper 211-bCrossing the Threshold of the Earthly Paradise: Going In and Out of Early Byzantine Monasteries, 4th-6th Centuries
(Language: English)
Andra Jugănaru, School of Pastoral & Social Theology Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Index terms: Byzantine Studies, Ecclesiastical History, Monasticism
Paper 211-cConstructing an Imperial Authority across Byzantine Cultural Borders
(Language: English)
Sandro Nikolaishvili, Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University, Budapest
Index terms: Byzantine Studies, Historiography - Medieval, Political Thought
Abstract

This session explores the complex role of borders in shaping relationships within the Byzantine space and between the Empire and its neighbors in the Early Middle Ages. In the monastic environment, natural, or constructed frontiers with the non-monastic world had a symbolical function. The physical borders of the empire acted as a cultural delineator, as they determined the way in which emotions were embodied by the Byzantines, in contrast to the Others. Yet at the periphery of the Byzantine world, in the Georgian society, the imperial authority crossed the physical and the cultural threshold of the Empire.