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Five - Alternatives to Commonwealth

Modes of Connectivity between Byzantium and Medieval Eastern Europe

from I - Patterns, Paradigms, Scholarship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 October 2024

By
Christian Raffensperger
Edited by
Elizabeth S. Bolman ,
Scott Fitzgerald Johnson  and
Jack Tannous
Elizabeth S. Bolman
Affiliation:
Case Western Reserve University, Ohio
Scott Fitzgerald Johnson
Affiliation:
University of Oklahoma
Jack Tannous
Affiliation:
Princeton University, New Jersey
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Summary

Abstract:The Byzantine Commonwealth has been used as a descriptive category, a tool ofanalysis, and a framework for understanding (and dividing) the medieval world since its creationin the 1970s by Dmitri Obolensky. This article examines the scholarship on the ideaof ByzantineCommonwealth, both positive and negative that have been put forth over the intervening fiftyyears.Following this examination, the article suggests alternatives to this still pervasive ideawhich might expressin new wayssome of the key realities of interaction in this medieval space.Those alternatives include utilizing kinship structures as well as world system theory to look atthe relationship between Byzantium and the medieval eastern European world.

Keywords

Byzantine CommonwealthRus’SerbiaDmitri ObolenskyGarth FowdenByzantiumMedievaleasternEurope
Type
Chapter
Information
Worlds of Byzantium
Religion, Culture, and Empire in the Medieval Near East
 , pp. 98 - 120
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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