Kazhdan, A. P. and S. Ronchey. L'aristocrazia bizantina. Postface by Luciano Canfora, rev. ed. Palermo: Sellerio, 1999.

L'aristocrazia bizantina, the historical, philological, diplomatic, and sigillographic study carried out over ten years by Kazhdan and Ronchey is based on a thorough analysis of the literary sources, together with the prodigious statistical examination of the careers of four hundred of the most important families of the empire between the 11th and 13th centuries. Carried out by Kazhdan during his Soviet period, the entire investigation is here revised, reorganised, and re-elaborated conceptually. The volume offers a compilation of both evidence provided by historians of the Byzantine notion of nobility (based on rigorous re-reading and updated re-interpretation of the texts from the standpoint of philology and hermeneutics) and physical evidence offered by archival documents and seals on the actual status of the aristocracy in Byzantium.  From this data, developing and clarifying Kazhdan’s earlier intuitions, the volume draws an important sociological theory on the “ascendant vertical dynamism” of élites in open oligarchies: if equality is not possible, there is an intermediate possibility which in Byzantium resides principally in “state-controlled education,” allowing new classes to ascend to the summit and gather around the centre – albeit for a short time – and thus guaranteeing, on the one hand, political-administrative exchange and, on the other hand, the continuity in the form of the state.  The extraordinary amount of material examined outlines a novel objective profile of the ruling class of the greatest Mediterraean empire at the height of its power.  In addition, the exhaustive documentation renders the work an accurate prosopographical repertory of use to scholars of the Eastern and Western Middle Ages.

The Nota sull'italianizzazione dei nomi di famiglia dei Bizantini Eminenti (pp. 31-32), appended to the introduction, does not attempt so much to resolve definitively the complex question of the Italianisation of Byzantine family names, the subject of debate among scholars for considerable time, as to provide criteria by which the names produced might be, if not normative models, at least coherent examples.  The proposed principles, outlined with in collaboration primarily with Albio Cassio, are offered as empirical criteria, dictated by rigorous grammatical consideration and common sense, in an effort to reconcile correct morphology and respect for customs of the academic community, together with the need to simplify reading. (As such, the Fondazione Lorenzo Valla officially adopted the criteria proposed here for Byzantine texts.)

 

REVIEWS

J. - C. Cheynet in Rivista storica italiana 113 (2001), pp. 413-40.  

N. Zorzi in Ateneo Veneto (1997), pp. 295-306.

E. Kislinger in Byzantinische Zeitschrift 92 (1999), p. 314.

R. Andreotti in Ritorni di fiamma. Augusto, Virgilio, Ovidio e altri classici. Milan: BUR, 2009, pp. 243-6.

 

CITED BY

C. Ehlers. Deutsche Königspfalzen – Beiträge zu ihrer historische und archäologische Erforschung , VIII, Places of Power- Orte Der Herrschaft- Lieux Du Pouvoir. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, pp. 65-7.

http://tinyurl.com/c59oqq7

E. Patlagean. Un medioevo greco. Bisanzio tra IX e XV secolo (preface by L. Canfora). Bari: Dedalo, 2009, p. 8.

http://tinyurl.com/cwsxu7x

A. Acconcia Longo in Byzantinische Zeitschrift 95.2 (2002), p. 810.