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Why Byzantium? JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES MAKING AND REMAKING OF BYZANTIUM AUTHORS: JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES _____________________ISSN 1820-0869 Jovana ANĐELKOVIĆ, Faculty of Philosophy, _____________________Broj 2/2016 University of Belgrade, Serbia Editorial Board: Ivo GOLDSTEIN, Eric GORDY, Anthony KALDELLIS, Ohio State University, Egidio IVETIĆ, Dušan JANJIĆ, USA Predrag MATVEJEVIĆ, Anđelka MIHAJLOV, Aleksandar MIRKOVIĆ, Tomasz LABUK, University of Silesia, Darko TANASKOVIĆ, Christine SINAPI, Aleksandra STUPAR, Josip Katowice, Poland VRANDEČIĆ, Marc PILKINGTON, Ognjen RADONJIĆ, Pritam SINGH, Maximilian LAU, JSPS Postdoctoral Research Faruk ULGEN Fellow, Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, Japan Edited by Milena REPAJIĆ Larisa VILIMONOVIĆ Dragoljub MARJANOVIĆ, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Published by Serbia Charis MESSIS, L’École des hautes études en Belgrade, Francuska 14 E-mail: h.edu@eunet.rs sciences sociales, Paris, France www.limesplus.rs; www.hedu.biz www.komunikacija.org Th eresia RAUM, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Tübingen, Germany For Publisher Zorica STABLOVIĆ BULAJIĆ Milena REPAJIĆ, Faculty of Philosophy, Editor-in-Chief University of Belgrade, Serbia Nikola SAMARDŽIĆ Milena REPAJIĆ, Faculty of Philosophy, Executive Editorial Offi ce: University of Belgrade, Serbia Haris DAJČ, Zorica STABLOVIĆ BULAJIĆ, Ivana STOJANOVIĆ Maja VASILJEVIĆ secretary, Larisa VILIMONOVIĆ, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Design Serbia Kristina Radovanović Technical Editor CIP - Каталогизација у публикацији Predrag Knežević Народна библиотека Србије, Београд 32 Sale and Subscription LIMES plus : časopis za društvene i humanističke nauke / h.edu@eunet.rs; +381 11 72 46 023 odgovorni urednik Nikola Samardžić. - 2004, br. 1- . - Beograd : Hesperia edu, 2004- (Beograd : Instant system). - 24 cm Printed by Tri puta godišnje Instant system, Beograd ISSN 1820-0869 = Limes plus COBISS.SR-ID 114047756 Content No. 2/2016 FOREWORD 5 Larisa VILIMONOVIĆ and Milena REPAJIĆ: Introduction: Why Byzantium? Part I – PAPERS 21 Charis MESSIS and Anthony KALDELLIS: Conjugal Violence and the Ideological Construction of Byzantine Marriage 41 Th eresia RAUM: When Events Like Streams Flood the Earth – Th reat Discourse in the Reign of Herakleios 55 Milena REPAJIĆ: Th e Political Th ought of Psellos in the Chronographia: the Wise Advisor, the Clever General, and the City 87 Maximilian LAU: Rewriting the 1120s: Chronology and Crisis under John II Komnenos 109 Dragoljub MARJANOVIĆ: Th e Term τρισκατάρατος in Byzantine and Serbian Medieval Literature Part II – REVIEWS 131 Tomasz LABUK: Review of: Miller, Timothy S. and John W. Nesbitt. 2014. 135 Jovana ANĐELKOVIĆ: Radić, Radivoj. 2014. Drugo lice Vizantije. UDC: 94495.02 FOREWORD 94495.02:930 Review scientifi c paper Larisa VILIMONOVIĆ INTRODUCTION: Milena REPAJIĆ Faculty of Philosophy 1 Why Byzantium? University of Belgrade The present volume is coincidentally published in the year of the 23rd International Congress of Byzantine studies which took place in Belgrade in August 2016.2 International congresses held once every fi ve years are for byzantinists a sort of a checkpoint of progress and current de- velopment of the scholarship in the fi eld. Th is issue of Limes Plus, the fi rst one dedicated to Byzantium, on a smaller scale, points to seveal important and more recent directions the fi eld has been taking, particularly in terms of social history, discourse theory, and political thought. A few months ago we were given the opportunity to prepare one issue of Journal for Social sciences and Humanities Limes Plus that would be dedicated to Byzantium. It was not an easy task. We had to think of an insightful contextual basis that would provide our readers with current topics discussed within the fi eld of Byzantine studies. Also, we had to keep in mind the audience of the journal that mainly covers subjects from modern and contemporary history with strong emphasis on public policies, institutional development, and economy. Some, or even many, would pose a question – how does Byzantium fi t in the context of progressive interdisciplinary studies in the fi eld of social sciences and humanities? Th is peculiar friendship is not so extravagant when one takes into account the lat- est bibliography in the fi eld of Byzantine studies which opened its doors to literary criticism, narratology, gender studies, and feminism. We have intentionally started with literary criticism since Byzantinists, even when they choose to deal with top- ics pertinent to social sciences, cannot use the same methodology, precisely be- 1 Th is introduction presents the results of research on the international scientifi c project Christian Culture in the Balkans in the Middle Ages: Byzantine Empire, Serbs and Bulgarians from the 9th to the 15th century, No. 177015, fi nanced by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia. 2 Th e plenary papers from the Congress are published in: Marjanović-Dušanić ed. 2016. larisa.orlov@f.bg.ac.rs; milena.repajic@f.bg.ac.rs 5 Larisa Vilimonović and Milena Repajić Introduction cause of the source basis they have at their disposal (Kaldellis 2010, 61). Th is is mainly what makes us more of “literary deconstructionists” than “sociologists” but it still does not prevent us from reading our sources through the lenses of various familiar social disciplines that deal with people in diverse surroundings, whether such diversities derive from chronological, ethnic, gender or any other similar dis- cursive frame that scholars choose in order to set their research within a particular context. For a non-byzantinist reader of this volume, a short introduction about the reasons the fi eld only recently opened its doors to not-so-recent theoretical frameworks might be needed. It will maybe further illustrate the importance of a Byzantine issue of a journal for social studies and humanities. Byzantine studies are, in a way, a younger and neglected sibling of both clas- sical and medieval studies. Th is fact is due to the still extant prejudices towards Byzantium as a static, retrograde and isolated society, falling short to its classical Graeco-Roman antecedents when it comes to intellectual and artistic achieve- ments, while also lacking the freshness brought about by new barbarian settle- ments in the medieval West. Th at tradition had started with Edward Gibbon in the late 18th century (Gibbon 1776−1789), and it was reinforced during the 19th and 20th centuries when the otherness of Eastern Europe, mirrored in its “despot- ism” (particularly Russian) and “backwardness” (the Ottoman Empire and modern states and nations emanating from it), was invented3 and its origins sought for in its medieval, Byzantine past. One of the most acknowledged medievalists and post- modernists, Aaron Gurevich, a Soviet dissident even wrote an article explaining why he was not a byzantinist from this very standpoint, in a volume of Dumbarton Oaks Papers in honor of his friend and one of the most highly esteemed Soviet byzantinists, Alexander Kazhdan (Gurevich 1992). Eastern European scholars, on their hand, readily adopted this basis of their otherness, or exclusivity, which found its best expression in the infl uential study of Dimitri Obolensky named indicatively Th e Byzantine Commonwealth: Eastern Europe, 500–1453. (Obolensky 1971), par- ticularly popular among historians in Russia and in the Balkans. Political background notwithstanding, byzantinists themselves contributed in no small part to the peripheral position of the fi eld and its virtual invisibility in broader scholarly discourse. Somewhat ironically, the very traits commonly asso- ciated with Byzantine society – isolationism, resistance to change, traditionalism 6 3 A brilliant and groundbreaking study about inventing Eastern Europe: Wolf 1994. LIMES+ Vol. XIII (2016), No. 2: pp. 5–18 and obedience to intellectual authorities – characterized the Byzantine studies in the past century (and to some extent persevere even today). Th erefore modern tendencies in social sciences and humanities have almost completely bypassed the fi eld until recently, and a positivist and historicist outlook on Byzantine history is still prevalent in peripheral environments. It is at the crossroads of these two problems – the underlying political and culturological frame and the development of the Byzantine studies – that the why of this Byzantine issue of Limes Plus lies. We fi nd that it is benefi cial, if not neces- sary, to express the issues pertinent to modern Byzantine studies in a journal unu- sually conceived from a perspective of classic Byzantine studies, to present them to a wider and more diverse audience, and to regard them as an integral part of the scholarly discussion in social sciences and humanities. A similar attempt was made several years ago with one Byzantine issue of the Journal of Social History (Godišnjak za društvenu istoriju XVIII/2, 2011), a journal dealing primarily with 20th-century topics, and it proved to be a success. Th is time around, however, the issue is in English, and more accessible. It comprises contributions from both Ser- bian (Marjanović, Repajić) and foreign scholars, as well as book reviews of recent titles published abroad (Labuk on Miller–Nesbitt 2014) and in Serbia (Anđelković on Radić 2014), thus placing contemporary Serbian scholarship within a broader horizon of modern Byzantine studies. Th is is particularly important since con- servatism is still largely present in
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