Literature and Culture in Late Byzantine Thessalonica

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The 'long' fourteenth century perhaps can be seen as Thessalonica's heyday. Alongside its growing commercial prowess, the city was developing into an important centre of government, where members of the Byzantine imperial family of the Palaiologoi ruled independently under full imperial titles, striking coinage and following an increasingly autonomous external policy. It was also developing into a formidable centre for letters, education, and artistic expression, due in part to Palaiologan patronage. This volume sets out the political and commercial landscape of Thessalonica between 1303 and 1430, when the city fell to the Ottoman Turks, before focusing on the literary and hymnographical aspects of the city's cultural history and its legacy. The cosmopolitan nature of urban life in Thessalonica, the polyphony of opinions it experienced and expressed, its multiple links with centres such as Constantinople, Adrianople, Athos, Lemnos and Lesvos, and the diversity and strength of its authorial voices make the study of the city's cultural life a vital part of our understanding of the Byzantine Eastern Mediterranean.

Reviews

It is a fact that Russells book offers the reader a different perspective on interesting aspects of the literal and cultural atmosphere of post-Byzantine Thessalonica ... [It is] an important tool for those interested in the Palaiologan era and Byzantine studies generally. The historic, literary and prosopographical information that it provides and the methodology of the research that follows are particularly interesting, in a way that makes the book a useful aid not only for students and young researchers, but also for the scientific world in general. * The Journal of Hellenic Studies *

Author Bio

Eugenia Russell is Lecturer in History at St Mary's University, Twickenham, UK. She is the author of St Demetrius of Thessalonica: Cult and Devotion in the Middle Ages (2010), 'Two Greek excerpts by Johannes Cuno (1463-1513) in London Arundel 550', Renaissance Studies 24 (2010), 'Donors, texts and images. Visualisation of the hagiographical cycle of St Panteleimon' (with Teodora Burnand), Byzantion 81 (2011) and the editor of Spirituality in Late Byzantium (2009).