Paul Magdalino-Byzantine City

Städte im lateinischen Westen und
im griechischen Osten zwischen

Spätantike und Früher Neuzeit
Topographie – Recht – Religion
Herausgegeben von
Elisabeth Gruber, Mihailo Popović,
Martin Scheutz, Herwig Weigl
ELEKTRONISCHER
SONDERDRUCK
2016
Böhlau Verlag Wien

BEITRAG aus: GRUBER, POPOVIČ, SCHEUTZ, WEIGL (HG.): STÄDTE IM LATEINISCHEN WESTEN UND IM GRIECHI-
SCHEN OSTEN ZWISCHEN SPÄTANTIKE UND FRÜHER NEUZEIT. ISBN 978-3-205-20288-2 © 2016 by BÖHLAU
VERLAG GMBH & CO.KG, WIEN KÖLN WEIMAR
Sixty Years of Research on the Byzantine City
Paul Magdalino
The Byzantine city became identified as a discrete historical entity, worthy of dedi-
cated research, in the 1950s. Since then it has generated a large and growing volume of
scholarship. My task in this paper is to give a brief review of the material, pointing out its
main landmarks and directions. The period under review will not correspond exactly to
the chronological limits of this volume. It ends in the fifteenth century, with the fall of
Constantinople, since I consider the Ottoman town to be a different phenomenon from
its Byzantine predecessor, and there are virtually no studies seriously linking the two.
On the other hand, I begin in the fourth century, with the foundation of Constantino-
ple. Despite the deep discontinuities between Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and
the problems of periodizing Byzantium, few Byzantinists would wish to exclude the age
of Justinian from their domain, and between the empire of Justinian and the empire of
Constantine no clean division can be drawn. Two of the most important monographs in
the field are titled „The Byzantine City in the Sixth Century“1. The geographical limits of
my survey are similarly defined by the existence of the Roman Empire of Constantinople:
I consider mainly those towns and cities that came within the political orbit of the Byzan-
tine imperial court and its splinter states.
Research on the Byzantine city has sought to answer basically the same questions that
have driven the study of urbanism in the medieval West: Was it a continuation of the
ancient city? What was its relationship to political and religious authority? Did the town
and is inhabitants have a distinct status with regard to the rest of society, and particu-
larly the population of its surrounding countryside? How was urban society divided, both
vertically and horizontally, and what was the relationship between private, public and
sacred space? What administrative, social, cultural and economic functions did it fulfil,
and which of all these was its raison d’être? In particular, was the economic function par-
amount, and within the urban economy, did consumption take precedence over produc-
tion and exchange? How did towns relate to each other, both spatially and in terms of size
and importance, and what differentiated towns, within the hierarchy of settlements, from
other settlement units? In short, what defined a city, what characterised the quality of
urban life, and what made some towns more urban than others?
The range of answers to these questions is necessarily limited and predictable for any
pre-industrial society. In a comparison between Byzantium and the West, however, the
1
Dietrich Claude, Die byzantinische Stadt im 6. Jahrhundert (Byzantinisches Archiv 13, München
1969); Helen G. Saradi, The Byzantine City in the Sixth Century. Literary Images and Historical Reality
(Athens 2006).
46 Paul Magdalino
questions and answers are conditioned by three structural features of Byzantine society
that made it distinctive, if not unique. One was the sheer continuity of the Roman state
as the supreme and ever-present authority that determined the social roles of soldiers and
civilians, and the economic relationship between town and countryside. A second was the
complete identification of state authority with one city, Constantinople, that towered over
all the others, and for most of the Middle Ages constituted the only megalopolis in the
Christian and Greek-speaking world. The third, which followed from the other two, was
the lack of any legal distinction between townsmen and countrymen, and the existence of
a social and cultural gulf separating Constantinople and the provinces, which made the
differences between metropolitans and provincials more significant than those between
provincial town-dwellers and country-dwellers2. Of course, these features of Byzantium
were not immutable or unequivocal: in Late Antiquity, Constantinople did not enjoy an
absolute monopoly while Antioch, Alexandria and Rome remained within the Empire,
and in the Later Middle Ages, the monopoly was broken for good by the political frag-
mentation that followed the Fourth Crusade (1204). Even so, Constantinople was the
polis par excellence for the Greek world in a way that neither Rome, nor any other city,
was ever quite the ultimate urbs for the Latin West.
Besides these structural differences, there is a difference in the quality of the written
evidence. We have no municipal archives or cathedral archives in the East, only isolated
charters of privileges and inventory descriptions of urban property. As for literary evi-
dence, it emanates overwhelmingly from Constantinople, with the significant exceptions
of Antioch in Late Antiquity, Thessaloniki and Trebizond in the Later Middle Ages, and
hagiography of all periods. Archaeological evidence is equally important in both East and
West, whether it consists of the planned excavation and survey of undeveloped sites, or
rescue excavations in modern city centres. The latter has produced some spectacular finds
in very recent years: witness the uncovering of the Theodosian harbour of Constantinople,
complete with 37 shipwrecks3, or the discovery of the central crossroads of Late Roman
Thessaloniki4, or the significant finds from Roman Londinium exposed deep beneath the
City of London5. But I would venture to suggest that the significance and the potential
of planned archaeology has always been greater in the East, where the medieval written
evidence is slim by comparison, the destruction of the medieval habitat has been more
complete, and the surface area of ancient urban sites not occupied by modern habitation
is relatively large.
2 Cf. Paul Magdalino, Constantinople and the Outside World, in: Strangers to Themselves. The Byzan-
tine Outsider. Papers from the Thirty-second Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, University of Sussex,
Brighton, March 1998, ed. Dion C. Smythe (Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies. Publications 8,
Aldershot 2000) 149–162; idem, Constantinople and the „exo chorai“ in the Time of Balsamon, in: Byzantium
in the 12th Century. Canon Law, State and Society, ed. Nicholas Oikonomides (Society of Byzantine and Post-
Byzantine Studies. Diptycha – Paraphylla 3, Athens 1991) 179–197. Both articles are reprinted in idem, Studies
on the History and Topography of Byzantine Constantinople (Variorum CSS 855, Aldershot 2007) X–XI.
3 Unpublished, cf. http://www.bsr.ac.uk/theodosius-harbour-and-yenikapi-byzantine-shipwrecks-exca-
vation-istanbul-turkey; http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/31/the-big-dig [accessed September

2015].
4 Unpublished, cf. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-21743758 [accessed September 2015]; see
also Anastasia Tourta, Thessalonike, in: Heaven and Earth 2. Cities and Countryside in Byzantine Greece, ed.
Jenny Albani–Eugenia Chalkia (Athens 2013) 75–93, at 77.
5
Unpublished, cf. http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/apr/09/archaeologist-objects-roman-london-
find [accessed September 2015].
Sixty Years of Research on the Byzantine City 47
With these parameters in mind, I shall go over the literature on Byzantine cities from
the 1950s roughly decade by decade, highlighting (1) general studies of Byzantine towns,
(2) studies of individual Byzantine towns, (3) general books on Byzantium that devote
significant sections to urban life. Insofar as there is room to go beyond a mere catalogue
of publications, I shall pay attention to two main issues. One is the debate about urban
transformation versus decline in the Late Antique and early Byzantine period. The other
is the question of the relationship between town and country at all periods: to what ex-
tent did Byzantine urbanism involve a ruralisation of the urban habitat or, conversely, a
dispersion of urban functions to other types of habitat, the monastery, the pilgrimage site,
the aristocratic villa or castle, the coastal trading post (emporion). Unfortunately, I have to
leave out of consideration the immense body of literature that deals only indirectly with
the phenomenon of the Byzantine town, either because it studies the historical geogra-
phy of larger regional units, or because it is concerned with individual aspects of urban
activity. Thus I can only mention in passing the admirable Tabula Imperiii Byzantini 6,
and I can do no more than to refer, anonymously and collectively, to the great advances
that have been made in the study of saints’ cults, the liturgy, trade and markets, silk pro-
duction, book production, ceramic and glass production, medicine, law, education and
other such aspects of Byzantine civilization that were mainly, if not exclusively urban. In
order to keep my narrative simple and manageable, I must also refrain from complicating
it with details of the spadework that lies behind the synthesis: the excavation projects and
surveys that span decades and many of which are still on-going. I mention only a few
names of sites where significant Late Antique and Byzantine remains have been excavated
(For those sites where useful information on the finds can be accessed online, see the ap-
pendix):
Gre e c e a n d t h e Ba l k a n s : Amphipolis, Athens, Boeotia, Butrint, Caričin Grad
(Justiniana Prima), Corinth, Gortyn, Lakonia (Sparta), Maroneia, Nikopolis, Nea Anchi-
alos (Thessalian Thebes), Philippi, Stobi, Thebes.
A s i a Mi n o r, Sy r i a a n d Pa l e s t i n e : Amorion, Anemurium, Androna, Caesarea
Maritima, Ephesos, Hierapolis, Laodicea, Miletus, Myra, Nicomedia, Patara, Pergamon,
Priene, Sagalassos, Sardis, Scythopolis, Xanthos.
In this connection, it is salutary to note that in most sites, including some of those
with the longest-running excavations, only a fraction of the Late Antique urban area has
been uncovered.
The excavation of these ancient urban sites prompts one final remark: insofar as
Byzantine cities were continuations of ancient cities, the study of Byzantine urbanism is
as old as classical scholarship, and some of the foundational works on Byzantine urban
institutions were written by ancient historians who had no intention of being read by
Byzantinists. Thus there is a whole category of studies which, though they will not be
mentioned here, have been important as starting points: such are A. H. M. Jones on
the ancient Greek city7, Glanville Downey and Wolf Liebeschuetz on Antioch8, C. H.
6 See the project website: http://www.oeaw.ac.at/byzanz/tibpr.htm; see also Johannes Koder, Perspek-
tiven der Tabula Imperii Byzantini. Zu Planung, Inhalt und Methode. Geographia antiqua 5 (1996) 75–86;
Mihailo Popović, Historische Geographie und Digital Humanities. Eine Fallstudie zum spätbyzantinischen
und osmanischen Makedonien (Peleus. Studien zur Archäologie und Geschichte Griechenlands und Zyperns
61, Mainz–Ruhpolding 2014) 10–17.
7 Arnold H. M. Jones, The Greek City from Alexander to Justinian (Oxford 1940).
8 Glanville Downey, A History of Antioch in Syria from Seleucus to the Arab Conquest (Princeton
48 Paul Magdalino
Kraeling on Jerash9. The first medieval Byzantine city to receive scholarly attention was
Thessaloniki, to which the Romanian historian O. Tafrali devoted two monographs just
after the city had been liberated from Ottoman rule10. More generally, the phenomenon
of the Byzantine city came into scholarly focus in 1917, the year of the Russian Revolu-
tion, with the publication of A. P. Rudakov’s „Researches on Byzantine culture based on
the evidence of Greek saints’ lives“11. Rudakov was the first to assert that „the late an-
tique cities continued an uninterrupted existence into medieval times“, and he „advanced
most emphatically“ the view that „the Byzantine Empire, in the seventh century as in
older times, was an aggregate of cities (poleis)“12. The theme of urban continuity from the
ancient world was taken up again in the 1930s by another Romanian historian, G. Bră-
tianu, in a study growing out of his pioneering work on the Byzantine economy13. While
remaining essentially within the tradition of francophone scholarship (Henri Pirenne,
Ferdinand Lot, Charles Diehl), and not citing Max Weber, Brătianu effectively made a
Weberian distinction between the Byzantine city, which was a „Konsumentenstadt“ on
the ancient Greek and Roman model, and the western „Produzentenstadt“, which was the
result of a commercial revolution, „vraiment une creation de la renaissance économique
du XIe siècle“14. The contrast he draws is worth quoting at length, because it is a clear
statement of the assumptions that drove or provoked all subsequent scholarship on the
Byzantine city.
On the one hand, in the west, „c’est toute une révolution qui s’accomplit, par laquelle
s’effectue l’avènement d’une nouvelle classe sociale et qui sépare définitivement la ville
libre, privilégiée, de la campagne soumise au régime domanial des seigneurs, au cens et au
servage. Mais enfin et surtout, cette révolution politique, qui ne laisse pas d’être violente
dans bien des cas, est à son tour le résultat d’une révolution économique. Les institutions
communales sont nées sous le signe du progrès et de l’expansion d’une population enri-
chie par les métiers et le négoce“15.
On the other hand, in Byzantium, „A cette époque, les villes n’ont pas perdu le carac
tère qu’elles avaient déjà aux derniers siècles de l’Antiquité. C’étaient, ce sont toujours des
centres administratifs, des forteresses ou encore des résidences pour les propriétaires de la
région voisine16 ... Il ne faut pas que le décor de la capitale et de quelques grandes villes …
fasse illusion: la vie byzantine, depuis que le pouvoir impérial est en déclin, c’est dans les
campagnes féodales qu’il faut la chercher plus que dans les villes. En tout cas, c’est la vie
rurale, ce sont les produits de l’agriculture et de l’élevage qui représentent les principaux
1961); John H. W. G. Liebeschuetz, Antioch. City and Imperial Administration in the Later Roman Empire
(Oxford 1972).
9
Carl Herman Kraeling, Gerasa. City of the Decapolis (New Haven, Conn. 1938).
10
Oreste Tafrali, Topographie de Thessalonique (Paris 1913); idem, Thessalonique au quatorzième siècle
(Paris 1913).
11 Aleksandr P. Rudakov, Očerki vizantijskoj kultury po dannymj grečeskoj agiografij [Contributions
to Byzantine Culture Drawn from Greek Hagiography] (Moskva 1917, reprinted with introduction by G. L.
Kurbatov–G. E. Lebedeva, Sankt-Peterburg 1997).
12 Ibid. 71s., as cited by George Ostrogorsky, Byzantine Cities in the Early Middle Ages. DOP 13
(1959) 45–66, cit. 48.

13 Gheorghe Brătianu, Privilèges et franchises municipales dans l’Empire byzantin (Paris 1936).
14 Ibid. 17.
15 Ibid. 103s.
16 Ibid. 104.

éléments de l’économie de l’empire grec, dès l’époque des premières croisades“17. In the
West, „les institutions communales et les privileges de la bourgeoisie sont le résultat des
échanges plus frequents, du movement commercial plus intense qui groupe les marchands
dans les faubourgs et absorbe peu à peu les anciennes cités épiscopales“18. Thus when wes-
tern merchants settled in Byzantine towns, „les colonies étrangères représentent l’activité
commerciale des centres urbains de l’Occident, tandis que la ville grecque se rapproche du
type antique et conserve le rôle administratif et religieux de la πόλις. Les concessions ita-
liennes représentent non seulement une technique commerciale plus avancée, mais aussi
un sens plus évolué de la vie urbaine, aussi différent de celui du monde byzantin, que le
navire hauturier des mers du Ponant l’était de la galère méditerranéenne“19.
Even without his use of the words „bourgeois“ and „féodal“, it is clear that Brătianu
belonged to a school of thought, indeed to an era of historical scholarship, which saw me-
dieval urbanism as the binary opposite, but also the binary accompaniment, of feudalism.
This explains why it was in the Soviet bloc, after the death of Stalin in 1953 (the same
year that Brătianu died in a communist prison camp), that the problem of the Byzan
tine city entered the regular agenda of Byzantine studies. Byzantium was safe for good
Marxist-Leninists to study if it could be forced into the straitjacket of the feudal mode
of production. Most Russian Byzantinists as well as the Czech Byzantinist E. Frances20
looked for feudalism in the social and economic structures that Byzantium had inherited
from the Later Roman Empire, and they followed Rudakov and Brătianu in assuming the
continuous existence of the Byzantine city as a traditional Greco-Roman social unit, dom-
inated by a landowning elite who owned and exploited the resources of the surrounding
countryside.
There was, however, a famously dissident voice: Alexandr Petrovič Každan, who in an
article published in 1954, and then more extensively in a monograph of 1960, presented
Byzantine feudalism in terms of a profound discontinuity with the ancient world21. He
posited the complete ruralisation of the Byzantine provincial society in the seventh and
eighth centuries, together with the almost complete disappearance of provincial cities,
whose reappearance in the eighth and ninth centuries and subsequent revival and growth
was thus an entirely medieval phenomenon. Každan’s thesis offered the possibility of see-
ing the Byzantine town, indeed Byzantine civilization as a whole, as being on a similar
trajectory of expansion to that which had long been accepted for the medieval West. The
model proved immensely fruitful, and has ultimately come to prevail in histories of the
middle Byzantine period. At the time, however, it was not accepted by Každan’s Soviet
colleagues, or by the great émigré Russian Byzantinist, George Ostrogorsky, who in a
paper delivered at Dumbarton Oaks in 1957, and published in Dumbarton Oaks Papers
two years later, argued strongly that Byzantine cities remained alive and flourishing dur-
ing the crisis period of the seventh century22. His arguments – the abundant gold coinage
17
Ibid. 105s.
18 Ibid. 17s.
19
Ibid. 18s.
20 E. Francès, La féodalité et les villes byzantines au XIIIe et au XIVe siècles. BSl 16 (1955) 76–96.
21 Alexandr Petrovič Každan, Vizantijskie goroda v VII–XI vekach [Byzantine Towns from the 7th to the
11th Century]. Sovetskaja Archeologija 21 (1954) 164–183; idem, Derevnja i gorod v Vizantii IX–X vv. Očerki
po istorii vizantijskogo feodalizma [Village and Town in Byzantium, 9.–10. Centuries. Contributions to the
History of Greek Feudalism] (Moskva 1960).
22 Ostrogorsky, Byzantine Cities (cit. n. 12).
50 Paul Magdalino
from the period, and the long lists of bishops in attendance at church councils of the
seventh and eighth centuries – overlooked the question of everyday commercial exchange,
and the quality of urban life in the numerous episcopal sees. However, Ostrogorsky’s ar-
ticle helped to prolong the life of the continuity thesis. It was also symptomatic of the
extent to which interest in the problem of the Byzantine town had spread to the wider
international community of Byzantinists. The organisers of the 11th International Con-
gress of Byzantine Studies, held at Munich in 1958, decided to include a main report
on the Byzantine city. The result, Ernst Kirsten’s forty-eight page paper, „Die byzanti-
nische Stadt“ was a landmark in the scholarship of the subject, and it still remains the
only global treatment of the phenomenon that reviews the whole Byzantine period23.
Kirsten established a periodization – early, middle and late – that makes perfect sense,
and a method of analysis according to four aspects of urban history that remain perfectly
valid, although one might be tempted to add to them or rearrange their order of priority.
These aspects are: administrative (verwaltungsgeschichtlich), social (sozialgeschichtlich),
settlement type (siedlungstypologisch oder geographisch), architectural and topographical
(architekturgeschichtlich, archäologisch-topographisch). It is surprising that the economy
does not feature as a distinct category of urban existence, and not altogether satisfactory
that Kirsten subsumes it under the social aspect, as a function of occupational special-
isation. One is also struck by the fact that the appearance and topography of the built
environment are at the bottom of the list, and by the way the author almost apologises
for bringing this into a historical discussion – something unimaginable in our interdis-
ciplinary age, but very academically correct at the time, as one can see in the work of A.
H. M. Jones whom Kirsten cites as the leading authority on the ancient Greek city24.
Nevertheless, Kirsten’s essay is still worth reading, in the twenty-first century, because he
was himself an interdisciplinary scholar, whose specialisation in the historical geography
of Ancient Greece, together with his work on early medieval Italy for the „Reallexicon
für Antike und Christentum“, allowed him to view the Byzantine evidence in a broad
comparative perspective. He was, if I am not mistaken, the first to formulate the evolution
of the early medieval Byzantine town as a transition from polis to kastron, and he came
up with some valuable insights, e. g. the idea that the foundation of Constantinople was
a boost to the manufacturing economies of other cities in the region, and the hypothesis
of „die Beschränkung der Stadtbewohner auf die Besitzer kleinerer Güter auf dem Stadt-
Territorium, damit eine Reduzierung der bewohnten Stadtfläche wie der Stadtfunktion.
In ihr konnte die Polis wahrhaft zur ‚Stadt‘ im mittelalterlichen westeuropäisch Sinne
werden, in der die Handwerker für die Bedürfnisse der umwohnenden Grundherren und
ihrer Bauern produzieren“25. Kirsten also perceptively linked Cherson, on the Black Sea
coast, with Venice, Naples and Amalfi as Byzantine frontier cities whose special adminis
trative status was linked to their strategic frontier situation. In terms of the history of
scholarship, Kirsten provided a link between the classicist perspective of A. H. M. Jones
and the medievalist perspective of the Soviet-school Byzantinists.
23 Ernst Kirsten, Die byzantinische Stadt (Berichte zum XI. Internationalen Byzantinistenkongress, Heft
V/3, München 1958).

24 Jones, The Greek City (cit. n. 7); see also idem, The Later Roman Empire 1 (Oxford 1964, reprint
Baltimore 1986) 712–766.

25 Kirsten, Die byzantinische Stadt (cit. n. 23) 14.
The 1950s ended with the third Settimane di studio at Spoleto being devoted to the
subject of „La città nell’alto medioevo“. Byzantium was represented by Franz Dölger26.
The 1960s began and ended with the first two monographs on the Byzantine city, al-
ready mentioned: Každan’s „Derevnja i gorod“ (1960), and Claude’s „Die byzantinische
Stadt im 6. Jahrhundert“ (1969)27. Like Kirsten, Claude had interests that ranged beyond
Byzantium – his thesis was on the cities of Bourges and Poitiers in the eleventh century,
and his Habilitation on the first two centuries of the archbishopric of Magdeburg. After
an introduction on „Der Forschungsstand“, Claude’s book had five chapters, devoted to
„Die Topographie“, „Die Verfassung der frühbyzantinischen Stadt“, „Bevölkerung, Han-
del und Wirtschaft“, „Der Stadtbegriff des 6. Jahrhunderts“, and „Frühbyzantinische
und fränkische Städte im 6. Jahrhundert“. We should note that he gave pride of place to
the built environment, since his chapter on topography is not only the first chapter but
also the longest, comprising substantial subsections on the walls, streets and squares, and
monuments. Claude made thorough use of such archaeology as was available at the time,
reproducing plans of sixteen sites.
By focussing on the sixth century, Claude prudently avoided the controversy over
urban continuity and rupture in the seventh century. Yet the controversy continued. The
Greek Byzantinist Dionysios Zakythinos accepted the case for a rupture in urban life in
mainland Greece during the ,Dark Ages‘, thus launching an intensified search for the
symptoms and causes of settlement change throughout the whole of the Balkan peninsula
during the whole of Late Antiquity28. Meanwhile, the Greek-American Byzantinist Speros
Vryonis, who was strongly influenced by Ostrogorsky, was preparing to restate the case for
urban continuity in Asia Minor. The 1970s opened with the publication of his massive
book, which was dedicated to demonstrating that the disruption to Graeco-Roman civili-
zation in Asia Minor did not really begin until the late eleventh century, when the Byzan
tine state, weakened by feudalism and economic decline, failed to prevent the irruption
of the Islamic, nomadic hordes29. „Obviously what had happened to the Byzantine urban
settlements in the Balkans did not occur in Anatolia“30. This was the first major study of
Byzantine Asia Minor, indeed of any medieval Byzantine region apart from the Pelopon-
nese31, and it appeared to tip the balance decisively by the weight of its scholarship. Yet
the Ostrogorskyan assumptions on which Vryonis based his assessment of early medieval
Byzantium and the eleventh-century situation would be seriously challenged over the next
twenty years, and his picture of a seamless transition from the ancient to the Middle
Byzantine Anatolian town was soon to be shattered by a series of detailed case studies. In
a series of publications, notably his three „urban biographies“ devoted to Sardis, Ankara,
and Ephesus, Clive Foss argued from archaeological evidence, that in town after town
the area of urban habitation dramatically contracted or shifted, usually to a fortified cita
26
Franz Dölger, Die frühbyzantinische und byzantinisch beeinflusste Stadt (V.–VIII. Jahrhundert), in:
Atti del 3o Congresso internazionale di studi sull’alto medioevo (Spoleto 1959) 65–100.
27
Cit. n. 1 and 21.
28 Dionysios A. Zakythinos, La grande brèche dans la tradition historique de l’Hellénisme du septième
au neuvième siècle, in: Χαριστήριον εις Α. Κ. Ορλανδον, ΙΙΙ (Athens 1966) 320-327.
29 Speros Vryonis Jr, The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor and the Process of Islamization
from the Eleventh through the Fifteenth Century (Berkeley–Los Angeles–London 1971).
30 Ibid. 7.
31 Antoine Bon, Le Péloponnèse byzantin jusqu’en 1204 (Paris 1951).

52 Paul Magdalino
del, and the quality of life within the inhabited area drastically declined32. Foss would
subsequently be criticised for tying the beginnings of this process to a single, catastrophic
event, the Persian invasions of the second decade of the seventh century33. Moreover, his
conclusions did not entirely put an end to the continuity debate; rather, they shifted its
focus to the question whether the dislocation he described was the end or the beginning
of long-term changes, and the related question as to whether the process of change should
be seen in terms of transformation or of decline. Foss’s reading of some evidence would
be challenged, and new evidence would turn up. However, there is no denying that he
was the first to read the archaeological evidence for the end of Antiquity in Asia Minor,
and this evidence confirmed Každan’s reading of the numismatic data that pointed to the
seventh century as the most critical phase of the crisis.
Foss continued his work in the 1980s, with publications on Kotyaion (Kütahya)34
and on Byzantine fortifications35. By the end of the decade, Wolfram Brandes was able to
publish a detailed monograph on the cities of Asia Minor in the seventh and eighth cen-
turies that took Foss’s results into account36. It remains the most thorough and convincing
overview of the disappearance or contraction of urban settlements – the polis to kastron
transition – in „Dark Age“ Anatolia, although its clear picture has been nuanced by more
recent archaeological work, especially the excavations at Amorion that began in 198737.
The same decade saw the publication of major works on the Balkans: J.-M. Spieser’s
monograph on the early churches of Thessaloniki (1984)38, and, in the same year, a col-
lective volume, edited by G. Dagron, on the cities and population of Late Antique Illy-
ricum39. This was not quite the first collective volume on Late Antique urbanism, that
honour belonging to a small collection edited by Robert Hohlfelder (1982)40. Both the
international Byzantine congresses of the 1980s had papers on Byzantine urban life41. The
Washington Congress of 1986 deserves special mention because it featured two meth-
odologically innovative main papers: by Johannes Koder on the „network theory“ of ur-
32
Clive Foss, Byzantine and Turkish Sardis (Cambridge, Mass. 1976); idem, Late Antique and Byzantine
Ankara. DOP 31 (1977) 27–87; idem, Ephesus after Antiquity. A Late Antique, Byzantine and Turkish City
(Cambridge 1979). See also: idem, Archaeology and the „Twenty Cities“ of Byzantine Asia. AJA 81 (1977)
469–486. Most of Foss’s important articles on Byzantine Anatolia were reprinted in: idem, History and Archae
ology of Byzantine Asia Minor (Variorum CSS 315, Aldershot 1990).
33
Clive Foss, The Persians in Asia Minor and the End of Antiquity. EHR 90 (1975) 721–747 [reprinted
in idem, History and Archaeology of Byzantine Asia Minor (Variorum CSS 315, Aldershot 1990) XII].
34 Clive Foss, Survey of Medieval Castles of Anatolia 1. Kütahya (BAR International Series 261, Oxford
1985).
35 Clive Foss–David Winfield, Byzantine Fortifications. An Introduction (Pretoria 1986).
36 Wolfram Brandes, Die Städte Kleinasiens im 7. und 8. Jahrhundert (Amsterdam 1989 bzw. Berliner
byzantinistische Arbeiten 56, Berlin 1989).

37 For full documentation, see the project website listed in the Appendix.
38 Jean-Michel Spieser, Thessalonique et ses monuments du IVe au VIe siècle. Contribution à l’étude
d’une ville paléochrétienne (Paris 1984).

39 Villes et peuplement dans l’Illyricum protobyzantin. Actes du colloque organisé par l’École française
de Rome (Rome, 12–14 mai 1982), ed. Gilbert Dagron (Collection de l’École française de Rome 77, Rome
1984).
40
City, Town and Countryside in the Early Byzantine Era, ed. Robert L. Hohlfelder (Boulder, Colo-
rado 1982).
41 They were held in Vienna (1981) and Washington, D. C. (1986) respectively. The papers from the
Vienna Congress were published in JÖB 32/1–7 (1982); fascicles 2 and 3 contain papers on aspects of Byzantine
urban life. For papers from the Washington Congress, see the following notes.
ban distribution in early Byzantine Greece42, and by James Russell on the limitations of
archaeological evidence, based on his experience in excavating the site of Anemurium
in Cilicia43. There was also a paper by Cyril Mango on the urban development of
Constantinople44, which largely reproduced the results of a small book published in Paris
the previous year45. Despite everything that had been written on the political and social
history and the topography of Constantinople in the past, this was the first attempt to put
it together in a focused examination of the built environment. Mango had previously paid
attention to cities in his general book on Byzantium, which broke new ground in devot-
ing a whole chapter to „The disappearance and revival of cities“46.
Two other publications of the 1980s deserve to be recorded. Hugh Kennedy’s „From
Polis to Madina“ discussed the cities of sixth-century Syria, and concluded that the local
transition from the Late Roman to the Islamic city, with its narrow, winding souks and
its lack of secular monumental architecture, was under way well before the Islamic con-
quests47. Michael Angold, in „The Shaping of the Middle Byzantine ‚City‘“, portrays the
medieval Byzantine provincial town or city as a kastron that failed to fulfil its urban po-
tential because it was „evolving into a centre of noble privilege and military organization“,
where the dominance of archontes and dynastai, the parasitic pull of Constantinople, and
the intrusion of Italian businessmen from the eleventh century onwards constricted the
nascent market economy48.
That Angold put the word „City“ in quotation marks is telling. His picture was more
nuanced but not so different from that of Brătianu, and while incorporating Každan’s dis-
continuity model, it reproduced the then still prevailing notion of the Byzantine city fol-
lowing the ancient city as a consumer city serving the needs of non-productive, landowning
rentiers. The same notion was reinforced in the two important studies of the Byzantine
economy by Michael Hendy and Alan Harvey49. Neither work has much to say about
towns, presenting them as redistribution centres in an essentially fiscal and agricultural sys-
tem, whose owners aimed at autarky rather than pre-capitalist accumulation of wealth. Nor
42
Johannes Koder, The Urban Character of the Early Byzantine Empire. Some Reflections on a Settle-
ment Geographical Approach to the Topic, in: The 17th International Byzantine Congress, Dumbarton Oaks/
Georgetown University, Washington, D. C., August 3–8, 1986. Major Papers (New Rochelle, N. Y. 1986) 155–
187. Koder has developed this approach in later publications, notably: idem, Land Use and Settlement: Theore-
tical Approaches, in: General Issues in the Study of Medieval Logistics. Sources, Problems and Methodologies,
ed. John F. Haldon (History of Warfare 36, Leiden 2006) 159–183; idem, Regional Networks in Asia Minor
during the Middle Byzantine Period, Seventh–Eleventh Centuries, in: Trade and Markets in Byzantium, ed.
Cécile Morrisson (Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Symposia and Colloquia, Washington, D. C. 2012) 147–175.
43 James Russell, Transformations in Early Byzantine Urban Life: The Contributions and Limitations of
Archaeological Evidence, in: 17th International Byzantine Congress (cit. n. 42) 137–154.
44 Cyril Mango, The Development of Constantinople as an Urban Center, in: 17th International By-
zantine Congress (cit. n. 42) 117–136; reprinted in: idem, Studies on Constantinople (Variorum CSS 394,
Aldershot 1993) I.
45 Cyril Mango, Le développement urbain de Constantinople (IVe–VIIe siècles) (Travaux et Mémoires du
Centre d’histoire et civilisation de Byzance. Monographies 2, Paris 1985, reprinted with addenda 1990, 2004).
46 Cyril Mango, Byzantium, the Empire of New Rome (London 1980).
47
Hugh Kennedy, From Polis to Madina. Urban Change in Late Antique and Early Islamic Syria. Past
and Present 106 (1985) 3–27. See also idem, The Last Century of Byzantine Syria: A Reinterpretation. Byzan-
tinische Forschungen 10 (1985) 141–183.
48 Michael Angold, The Shaping of the Middle Byzantine „City“. Byzantinische Forschungen 10 (1985)
1–37.
49 Michael F. Hendy, Studies in the Byzantine Monetary Economy, c. 350–1450 (Cambridge 1985); Alan
Harvey, Economic Expansion in the Byzantine Empire, 900–1200 (Cambridge 1989).

54 Paul Magdalino
did J.-M. Spieser discuss the economic function of the town in the chapter that he contri
buted to a collaborative volume on the early Byzantine economy50. I may add that I myself
made two complementary (and superficially contradictory) contributions to the picture in
a pair of articles where I presented, in one case, a profile of Byzantine social snobbery as an
essentially urban and nouveau-riche phenomenon, and in the other case, an argument for
the primacy of the oikos as the basic social and settlement unit of the Byzantine elite51.
The 1990s were notable for major advances in the study of the urban history of Con-
stantinople: a re-edition of the tenth-century trade regulations, the Book of the Eparch52, a
monograph on the city’s development in the medieval period (1996)53, and three conferences
held at Oxford (1993), Dumbarton Oaks (1998), and Istanbul (1999); the proceedings were
published respectively in 199554, 200055, and 200156. The monumental planning of Con-
stantinople was compared with that of Rome and Ephesos in a monograph by F. A. Bauer
(1996)57. 1996 also saw the appearance of studies by Clive Foss on Nicaea and Nicomedia58,
as well as the first monograph on Byzantine Thessaloniki since Tafrali59, and the comparative
study of early Byzantine urban space in Thessaloniki and neighbouring cities60. Meanwhile,
Alexandr Každan, now established at Dumbarton Oaks, returned to the question of Byzan-
tine towns in two of his last publications. In a comparison of Byzantine and Italian cities in
the Later Middle Ages (1995), he concluded that they were more similar, and the activity of
Byzantine traders and craftsmen was greater, than generally believed61. He also returned to
the question of Byzantine urban identity, and the terminology of polis and kastron as used by
the main historical sources for the transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages62.
50
Jean-Michel Spieser, L’évolution de la ville byzantine de l’époque paléochrétienne à l’iconoclasme, in:
Hommes et richesses dans l’Empire byzantin, I: IVe–VIIe siècle (Réalités byzantines 1, Paris 1989) 97–106.
51
Paul Magdalino, Byzantine Snobbery and The Byzantine Aristocratic Oikos, in: The Byzantine Ari-
stocracy, IX to XIII Centuries, ed. Michael Angold (BAR International Series 221, Oxford 1984) 58–78 and
92–111, both reprinted in Paul Magdalino. Tradition and Transformation in Medieval Byzantium (Variorum
CSS 343, Aldershot 1991) I–II.
52 Das Eparchenbuch Leons des Weisen, ed. Johannes Koder (CFHB 33, Wien 1991).
53
Paul Magdalino, Constantinople médiévale. Études sur l’évolution des structures urbaines (Travaux et
Mémoires du Centre de recherche d’histoire et civilisation de Byzance. Monographies 9, Paris 1996).
54 Constantinople and its Hinterland. Papers from the Twenty-seventh Spring Symposium of Byzantine
Studies, Oxford, April 1993, ed. Cyril Mango–Gilbert Dagron (Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Stu-
dies: Publications 3, Aldershot 1995).
55
Eight papers from the symposium, plus two other articles on Constantinople, were published in DOP
54 (2000).
56
Byzantine Constantinople. Monuments, Topography and Everyday Life, ed. Nevra Necipoğlu (The
Medieval Mediterranean 33, Leiden 2001).
57 Franz Alto Bauer, Stadt, Platz und Denkmal in der Spätantike. Untersuchungen zur Ausstattung des
öffentlichen Raums in den spätantiken Städten Rom, Konstantinopel und Ephesos (Mainz 1996).
58 Clive Foss, A Byzantine Capital and Its Praises (The Archbishop Jakovos Library of Ecclesiastical and
Historical Sources 21, Brookline, Mass. 1996); idem, Survey of Medieval Castles of Anatolia 2. Nicomedia
(BAR International Series 261, Oxford 1996).
59 Angeliki Konstantakopoulou (Κωνσταντακοπουλου), Βυζαντινή Θεσσαλονίκη. Χώρος και ιδεο
λογία [Byzantine Thessaloniki. Space and Ideology] (Ioannina 1996).

60
Kara M. Hattersley-Smith, Byzantine Public Architecture between the Fourth and Early Eleventh
Centuries AD with Special Reference to the Towns of Byzantine Macedonia (Makedonikē bibliothēkē 83,
Thessaloniki 1996).
61 Alexander Kazhdan, The Italian and Late Byzantine City. DOP 49 (1995) 1–22.
62 Alexander Kazhdan, Polis and kastron in Theophanes and in Some Other Historical Texts, in: ΕΥΨΥΧΙΑ.
Mélanges offerts à Hélène Ahrweiler 2 (Publications de la Sorbonne. Série Byzantina Sorbonensia 16, Paris 1998)
345–360.
The nature of this transition continued, indeed, to be the main problem that drove
research on the Byzantine city. Catherine Saliou referred to it in the preface to her new
critical edition, with translation and commentary, of the sixth-century Palestinian book
of urban planning regulations by Julian of Ascalon: „dans ce petit traité du droit de voisi-
nage, les maisons se construisent et les ateliers fonctionnent, les rues s’animent, l’eau coule
dans les canalisations, le droit n’est pas une discipline universitaire mais un ensemble de
pratiques, et la ville médiévale commence à percer sous la ville antique“63. Three impor-
tant articles of the 1990s proposed different approaches to the process by which the medi-
eval city began to show through. Most provocatively, Mark Whittow took a fresh look at
the changes that preceded the seventh-century break, and came up with a challenging new
interpretation: the cities were not in a state of economic decline in the second half of the
sixth century, and the replacement of the city councils by more informal associations of
local notables with the bishop at their head, did not diminish the vitality of urban life64.
Archie Dunn dissected the complexity of settlement typology and transition in the Bal-
kans65, while Clive Foss, moving his methodology from Asia Minor to Syria, found overall
a longue durée of urban prosperity into the seventh century, though with local variations
that showed a balance in favour of the countryside66. The decade also saw some attempt at
synthesis. Averil Cameron’s chapter on „Urban change and the end of antiquity“ offered
a balanced overview of the new data from the full extent of the Roman Mediterranean67,
while the trickle of collaborative publications continued68, and gathered pace with the Eu-
ropean Science Foundation’s multinational project on the „Transformation of the Roman
World (TRW)“, which produced two volumes on towns and urbanism69.
Underlying all these ventures was the more or less stated conviction that the changes
undergone by the cities of the Roman and post-Roman world in the fourth to sixth cen-
turies could not simply be characterised in terms of decline. Indeed, part of the agenda
of the TRW was to find an alternative narrative to the „Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire“ as the beginning of European history. Not all historians of the period were happy
with this, and the editors of one of the volumes on towns, Gian Pietro Brogiolo and
Bryan Ward-Perkins registered their unease in their introduction. „From the perspective
of any research into urbanism that starts with the Roman period, it is very difficult to
view developments in the sixth and seventh centuries, except for the late antique Chris-
tianization of the city, as part of some neutral (or even positive) ‚transformation‘ “70.
63
Catherine Saliou, Le traité d’urbanisme de Julien d’Ascalon (Travaux et Mémoires du Centre de recher-
che d’histoire et civilisation de Byzance. Monographies 8, Paris 1996) 7.
64 Mark Whittow, Ruling the Late Roman and Early Byzantine City: A Continuous History. Past and
Present 129 (1990) 3–29, reprint in: Late Antiquity on the Eve of Islam, ed. Averil Cameron (Formation of the
Classical Islamic World 1, Farnham 2013) Nr. 6.
65 Archibald Dunn, The Transition from polis to kastron in the Balkans (III–VII cc.): General and Regio-
nal Perspectives. BMGS 18 (1994) 60–80.

66 Clive Foss, Syria in Transition, A.D. 550–750: An Archaeological Approach. DOP 51 (1997) 189–269.
67 Averil Cameron, The Mediterranean World in Late Antiquity, AD 395–600 (London 1993, reprint
2012) 152–175.
68 The City in Late Antiqiuity, ed. John Rich (London–New York 1992).
69 The Idea and Ideal of the Town between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. Gian Pietro
Brogiolo–Bryan Ward-Perkins (The Transformation of the Roman World 4, Leiden–Boston–Köln 1999);

Towns and their Territories between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. Gian Pietro Brogiolo–
Nancy Gauthier–Neil Christie (The Transformation of the Roman World 9, Leiden–Boston–Köln 2000).
70 Idea and Ideal (cit. n. 69) XV.
56 Paul Magdalino
Ward-Perkins would go on to write a book in which he fully rehabilitated the idea that
Rome declined and fell, and that this was a bad thing71. His focus was on the West, and
he recognised that the big disruption in the East did not occur until the seventh century,
a proposition with which most Byzantinists would now agree72. And yet the first ever
monograph devoted to the city in Late Antiquity, and based largely on the evidence from
the eastern provinces in the fifth and sixth centuries, would be published in 2001 under
the title „The Decline and Fall of the Ancient City“73. Another major monograph that
appeared in 2006 would also construct a narrative of decline from an enormous wealth of
sixth-century evidence74, and a recent detailed survey of monumental space in the cities of
western Asia Minor in the fifth and sixth centuries does not conclude on a happier note75.
Since 2000, research on the Late Antique and Byzantine city has mushroomed enor-
mously, and to do justice to it would require a long review article in its own right. Here I can
only draw attention to the main publications and trends. There have been significant studies
of individual cities (Aizanoi76, Amorion77, Antioch78, Athens79, Cherson80, Constantinople81,
71 Bryan Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization (Oxford 2005).
72 The author had dealt more specifically with the East, in an article where he nuanced the arguments of
Foss and Kennedy: Bryan Ward-Perkins, Urban Survival and Urban Transformation in the Eastern Mediterra-
nean, in: Early Medieval towns in the Western Mediterranean. Ravello, 22–24 September 1994, ed. Gian Pietro
Brogiolo (Documenti di archeologia 10, Mantova 1996) 143–153.
73 John H. W. G. Liebeschuetz, The Decline and Fall of the Roman City (Oxford 2001).
74 Saradi, Byzantine City (cit. n. 1).
75
Ine Jacobs, Aesthetic Maintenance of Sacred Space. The „Classical“ City from the 4th to the 7th c. AD
(Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 193, Leuven 2013).
76
Philipp Niewöhner, Aizanoi, Dokimion und Anatolien. Stadt und Land, Siedlungs- und Steinmetzwesen
vom späteren 4. bis ins 6. Jahrhundert n. Chr. (Archäologische Forschungen 23 = Aizanoi 1, Wiesbaden 2007);
see also: idem, Aizanoi and Anatolia. Town and Countryside in Late Antiquity. Millennium 3 (2006) 239–253.
77 Among several publications (listed in the excavation project’s website: http://www.amoriumexcavations.
org/ [accessed May 2015]), see: Amorium Reports 3: Final Reports and Technical Studies, ed. Christopher S.
Lightfoot–Eric A. Ivison (Istanbul 2012).
78
Les sources de l’histoire du paysage urbain d’Antioche sur l’Oronte. Actes des journées d’études des 20
et 21 septembre 2010 (Digital publication, Paris 2012).
79
Charalambos Bouras, Βυζαντινή Ἀθήνα, 10ος–12ος αἰ [Byzantine Athens, 10th–12th Centuries]
(Athens 2010).
80
Alla I. Romančuk, Studien zur Geschichte und Archäologie des byzantinischen Cherson (Colloquia
Pontica 11, Leiden–Boston 2005).
81 Sarah Bassett, The Urban Image of Late Antique Constantinople (Cambridge 2004); Paul Magda-
lino, Studies on the History and Topography of Byzantine Constantinople (Variorum CSS 855, Aldershot
2007); Peter Hatlie, The Monks and Monasteries of Constantinople ca. 350–850 (Cambridge 2007); James
Crow, The Infrastructure of a Great City: Earth, Walls and Water in Late Antique Constantinople, in: Tech-
nology in Transition, A. D. 300–650, ed. Luke Lavan–Enrico Zanini–Alexander Sarantis (Late Antique Ar-
chaeology 4, Leiden 2007) 261–286; Çiğdem Kafesçoğlu, Constantinopolis/Istanbul. Cultural Encounter,
Imperial Vision, and the Construction of the Ottoman Capital (University Park, PA 2009); Hippodrome/
Atmeydanı. A Stage for Istanbul’s History 1, ed. Brigitte Pitarakis. 2, ed. Ekrem Işın (Istanbul 2010); Two
Romes. Rome and Constantinople in Late Antiquity, ed. Lucy Grig–Gavin Kelly (Oxford 2012); Alessandra
Ricci, Architettura costantiniana a Costantinopoli, in: Costantino I. Enciclopedia costantiniana. Sulla figura e
l’immagine dell’imperatore del cosidetto editto di Milano, 313–2013, vol. 2 (Roma 2013) 759–775.
Ephesos82, Germia83, Miletos84, Thessaloniki85), major monographs on the city in general, or

groups of cities, at the end of antiquity86, some memorable general articles87 and a profusion
of collaborative volumes88. Discussion of the urban context features in recent volumes on the
Byzantine economy89, and in three major works of synthesis90. On the other hand, chapters
on cities are not as ubiquitous as one might expect in the general literature on Byzantium that
has proliferated over the past fifteen years, neither in the introductions, textbooks, handbooks
82
Ephesos in byzantinischer Zeit, ed. Falko Daim–Sabine Ladstätter (Mainz 2011).
83
Philipp Niewöhner et al., Bronze Age höyüks, Iron Age hilltop forts, Roman poleis and Byzantine
pilgrimage in Germia and its vicinity. „Connectivity“ and a Lack of „Definite Places“ on the Central Anatolian
High Plateau. Anatolian Studies 63 (2013) 97–136.
84 Philipp Niewöhner, Neue spät- und nachantike Monumente von Milet und der mittelbyzantinische
Zerfall des anatoloischen Städtewesens. AA 2013/2 165–234.

85
Symposium on Late Byzantine Thessalonike, ed. Alice-Mary Talbot (DOP 57, Washington, D. C.
2003).
86
In addition to the already cited monographs of Liebeschuetz, Saradi and Jacobs (cit. n. 1, 71–73),
see Luca Zavagno, Cities in Transition: Urbanism in Byzantium between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle
Ages (BAR International Series 2030, Oxford 2009).
87
Jean-Michel Spieser, The City in Late Antiquity: A Re-Evaluation, in: Urban and Religious Spaces
in Late Antiquity and Early Byzantium (Variorum CSS 706, Aldershot 2001) I; Hans Buchwald, Byzantine
Town Planning – Does it Exist?, in: Material Culture and Well-Being in Byzantium (400–1453). Proceedings
of the International Conference (Cambridge, 8–10 September 2001), ed. Michael Grünbart–Ewald Kislin-
ger–Anna Muthesius–Dionysios Ch. Stathakopoulos (Veröffentlichungen zur Byzanzforschung 11 = ÖAW,
phil.-hist. Kl., Denkschriften 356, Wien 2007) 57–73; Marlia Mundell Mango, Monumentality versus Econo-
mic Vitality: A Balance struck in the Late Antique City?, in: Proceedings of the 22nd International Congress of
Byzantine Studies, Sofia 22–27 August 2011, vol. 1 (Sofia 2011) 239–262.
88
Die spätantike Stadt und ihre Christianisierung. Symposion vom 14. bis 16. Februar 2000 in Halle-
Saale, ed. Gunnar Brands–Hans-Georg Severin (Spätantike, frühes Christentum, Byzanz. Reihe B: Studien
und Perspektiven 11, Wiesbaden 2003); Urban Centers and Rural Contexts in Late Antiquity, ed. Thomas S.
Burns–John W. Eadie (East Lansing, MI 2001); Post-Roman Towns, Trade and Settlement in Europe and
Byzantium 1. The Heirs of the Roman West. 2. Byzantium, Pliska, and the Balkans, ed. Joachim Henning
(Millennium Studies 5, Berlin–New York 2007); Die Stadt in der Spätantike – Niedergang oder Wandel? Ak-
ten des internationalen Kolloquiums in München am 30. und 31. Mai 2003, ed. Jens-Uwe Kraus–Christian
Witsche (Historia Einzelschriften 190, Stuttgart 2006); Recent Research in Late-Antique Urbanism, ed. Luke
Lavan (JRA Supplementary Series 42, Portsmouth, RI 2001); Urbanism in Western Asia Minor. New Studies
on Aphrodisias, Ephesos, Hierapolis, Pergamon, Perge and Xanthos, ed. David Parrish (JRA Supplementary
Series 45, Portsmouth, RI 2001); The Transition to Late Antiquity on the Danube and Beyond, ed. Andrew G.
Poulter (Proceedings of the British Academy 141, Oxford 2007); The City in the Classical and Post-Classical
World. Changing Contexts of Power and Identity, ed. Claudia Rapp–Harold A. Drake (Cambridge 2014);
New Cities in Late Antiquity (Late 3rd to 7th Centuries AD): Documents and Archaeology, ed. Efthymios Ri-
zos–Alessandra Ricci (Bibliothèque de l’Antiquité Tardive, Turnhout 2016, forthcoming); Byzantine Greece:
Microcosm of Empire?, ed. Archibald W. Dunn (Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies Publications,
Farnham forthcoming).
89
Especially in: Economic History of Byzantium 1–3, ed. Angeliki E. Laiou (Washington, D. C. 2002);
Trade and Markets in Byzantium, ed. Cécile Morrisson (Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Symposia and Collo-
quia, Washington, D. C. 2012); less so in: Byzantine Trade, 4th–12th Centuries. The Archaeology of Local,
Regional and International Exchange. Papers of the Thirty-eighth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, St
John’s College, University of Oxford, March 2004, ed. Marlia Mundell Mango (Society for the Promotion of
Byzantine Studies Publications 14, Farnham 2009).
90 Chris Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages. Europe and the Mediterranean 400–800 (Oxford
2005) 591–692; Leslie Brubaker–John Haldon, Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era c. 650–850. A History
(Cambridge 2011) 531–572; Florin Curta, The Edinburgh History of the Greeks, c. 500 to 1050. The Early
Middle Ages (Edinburgh 2011) passim but especially 48–65.
58 Paul Magdalino
and companions91, nor in the catalogues from the blockbuster exhibitions of Byzantine art92.
The absence is curious given the increasing emphasis on everyday material culture.
At the risk of gross over-simplification and omission, I would point to the following
results that point to the directions for future research:
1. The major monographs have broadly reinforced the idea of a decline of urban monu-
mental space that went along with a decline in civic institutions, in the fifth and sixth
centuries. However, the chronology of decline, the role of imperial government in
promoting or preventing it, and the function of church buildings in the planning (or
lack of it) of public urban space do not present a clear and consistent picture. More-
over, as the archaeological evidence for commercial and artisanal vitality throughout
the period and well into the seventh century continues to accumulate, the relation-
ship between this activity and the decline of the traditional urban fabric becomes ever
harder to rationalise93.
2. Archaeological investigation at various sites, notably the excavations at Amorion,
Ephesos and Miletos, has shown that the transition from polis to kastron was a less
abrupt and more complex process than previously imagined.
3. The archaeology of the countryside in Greece, Syria and Asia Minor suggests that in
areas where the urban habitat was stagnant or declining, rural society prospered and
expanded. The distinctions between the towns and other types of settlement – above
all the village and the rural fortress, but also the monastery, the extra-urban pilgrim
sanctuary, and the trading post (emporion) – were becoming less clear. The typology,
and relative topography, of settlements from the sixth to ninth centuries should be
high on the agenda for future research. It is clearly becoming less and less appropriate
to describe the situation purely in terms of urban decline or even ruralisation; what we
are seeing, it seems to me, is the fragmentation and dispersal, followed in some cases
by the regrouping and enclosure, for defence reasons, of the constituent elements of
ancient urbanism. The work of Myrto Veikou in Epiros94, Archie Dunn in southern
Boiotia95, and of Philipp Niewöhner for Asia Minor has been most instructive in this
regard. Particularly challenging is Niewöhner’s thesis of the ruralisation of the provin-
cial elite in Asia Minor, which takes up and develops the theme of the „flight of the
91 Exceptions are: The Oxford History of Byzantium, ed. Cyril Mango (Oxford 2002); The Cambridge
Companion to the Age of Justinian, ed. Michael Maas (Cambridge 2005); The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine
Studies, ed. Elizabeth Jeffreys–John Haldon–Robin Cormack (Oxford 2008). One should also mention: The
Cambridge Ancient History XIV. Late Antiquity: Empire and Successors, A. D. 425–600, ed. Averil Came-
ron–Bryan Ward-Perkins–Michael Whitby (Cambridge 2000); this actually contains a wealth of discussion
on cities, but divided between the sections on administration, economy, provinces and architecture.
92
The outstanding exception is the exhibition Heaven and Earth: Art of Byzantium from Greek Collec-
tions. National Gallery of Art, Washington D. C., and J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 2013–2014 (Athens
2013); the second volume of the catalogue was devoted entirely to studies of urbanism in Byzantine Greece,
with articles on 14 cities: Heaven and Earth 2 (cit. n. 4). To some extent, this was anticipated in an earlier
exhibition: articles by Georgios P. Lavvas and Eutychia Kourkoutidou-Nikolaidou, in: Everyday Life in
Byzantium, ed. Demetra Papanikola-Bakirtzi (Athens 2002).
93
The best discussion to date is Luke Lavan, From polis to emporion? Retail and Regulation in the Late
Antique City, in: Trade and Markets (cit. n. 89) 333–377.
94 Myrto Veikou, Byzantine Epirus. A Topography of Transformation. Settlements of the Seventh–Twelfth
Centuries in Southern Epirus and Aetoloacarnania, Greece (The Medieval Mediterranean 95, Leiden 2012).
95
Archibald Dunn, The Rise and Fall of Towns, Loci of Maritime Traffic, and Silk Production: the Pro-
blem of Thisvi-Kastorion, in: Byzantine Style, Religion and Civilization. In Honour of Sir Steven Runciman,
ed. Elizabeth Jeffreys (Cambridge 2006) 38–71.
curiales“ that A. H. M. Jones and J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz had seen as the main factor
in the decline of the ancient city96. Niewöhner considers the rural prosperity of Late
Antique Anatolia to be an indication that the urban elites had transferred their resi-
dence and their investment to the countryside. They only returned to the cities in the
seventh-century conditions of foreign invasion, and it is this, he believes, along with
the local stationing of troops, that explains the new, reduced fortification circuits built
in that period, e. g. at Miletos, Ephesos, Patara, and Sagalassos. But even before the
Arab invasion threat had passed, the elites resided by preference out of town, and they
were completely countrified in the peaceful and prosperous conditions of the eleventh
century, before the Seljuks arrived. It is an attractive explanation, and the idea of for-
eign invasions boosting urban concentration by a security threat is one that could be,
and has been, usefully applied elsewhere97.
4. In the context of considering the breakdown of cities into their constituent elements,
it is important to note that much pioneering work has been done on individual com-
ponents of the urban fabric (other than churches, which have always been privileged);
I would particularly draw attention to recent publications on Late Antique housing98,
governors’ residences99, shops and markets100, water supply101, and fortifications102.
5. Although it is the late antique sites that have received most investigation and yielded
the richest results, significant advances have been made in the study of the medieval,
and particularly the late medieval period. The 2003 volume of Dumbarton Oaks Papers
published the papers from a symposium on late Byzantine Thessaloniki. The doctoral
thesis of Niels Gaul, published in 2011, pioneered the study of the „literary“ ideo
logy of the medieval Byzantine city by an exhaustive analysis of the rhetorical oeuvre
of Thomas Magistros within the civic and urban framework of his native Thessalo-
96
See his publications on Aizanoi and Miletos (cit. n. 76, 84) and idem, What Went Wrong? Decline
and Ruralisation in Eleventh-Century Anatolia. The Archaeological Record, in: Eleventh-Century Byzantium.
Social Change in Town and Country, ed. James Howard-Johnston (Oxford, forthcoming).
97 By Mark Whittow, Nikopolis ad Istrum: Backward and Balkan? in: The Transition to Late Antiquity
(cit. n. 88) 375–390. On the reduction of fortified areas, see also Chavdar Krilov, The Reduction of the Forti-
fied City Area in Late Antiquity: Some Reflections on the End of the „Antique City“ in the Lands of the Eastern
Roman Empire, in: Post-Roman Towns (cit. n. 88) 2 3–24.
98
Housing in Late Antiquity. From Palaces to Shops, ed. Luke Lavan–Lale Özgenel–Alexander Saran-
tis, with Simon Ellis–Yuri Marano (Late Antique Archaeology 3/2, Leiden 2005).
99
Luke Lavan, The Praetoria of Civil Governors in Late Antiquity, in: Recent Research (cit. n. 88) 39–56.
100
Efthymios Rizos, The Late Antique Walls of Thessalonica and their Place in the Development of Eas-
tern Military Architecture. JRA 24 (2011) 451–468; Luke Lavan, Fora and Agorai in Mediterranean Cities
during the 4th and 5th c. A. D., in: Social and Political Life in Late Antiquity, ed. William Bowden–Adam
Gutteridge–Carlos Machado (Late Antique Archaeology 3/1, Leiden 2005) 195–249; idem, From polis to
emporion? (cit. n. 93) 333–377 (as the title shows, this a fundamental discussion of the transformation of urban
space).
101 James Crow–Jonathan Bardill–Richard Bayliss, The Water Supply of Byzantine Constantinople
(Journal of Roman Studies Monograph 11, London 2008); Jim Crow, Ruling the Waters: Managing the Water
Supply of Constantinople, AD 330–1204. Water History 4 (2012) 35–55; Elisabetta Giorgi, Water Technology
at Gortyn in the 4th–7th c. A. D.: Transport, Storage and Distribution, in: Technology in Transition (cit. n. 81)
287–320.
102 James Crow, Fortifications and the Late Roman East: From Urban Walls to Long Walls, in: War and
Warfare in Late Antiquity: Current Perspectives, ed. Alexander Sarantis–Neil Christie (Late Antique Ar-
chaeology 8/1–2, Leiden 2013) 397–432; idem, Sinop, the Citadel Walls, Description and Commentary, in:
Legends of Authority. The 1215 Seljuk Inscriptions of Sinop Citadel, Turkey (Istanbul 2014) 21–60.
60 Paul Magdalino
niki103. Teresa Shawcross has pursued the question of the constitutional reality and the
political thought that were forming in Thessaloniki at precisely this time, and related
it to the phenomenon of Byzantium’s developing links, at both the dynastic and the
commercial level, with the civic world of northern Italy104.
6. Greek scholars working on Greek sites have been particularly active during the last
few years in publishing the urban history of the medieval period: monographs on
Athens105, Byzantine settlements in Macedonia106 and Epiros107, and the Late Byzan
tine city108, a volume on Byzantine towns edited by Tonia Kiousopoulou109, and a
catalogue of an exhibition on Byzantine Greece with a separate volume devoted en-
tirely to towns110. I would single out Kiousopoulou’s edited volume as an exemplary
reflection of current scholarship in the field: interdisciplinary; combining synthetic,
original and revisionist approaches; posing basic conceptual and methodological ques-
tions. The collection is particularly rich on the Later Middle Ages, with contributions
that deal with the aristocracy, the demography, the urban identity, and the popular
revolts of late Byzantine towns. It is interesting that these articles are not concerned to
compare the Byzantine town with its western counterpart, and insofar as they imply a
comparison, they reinforce the notion, going back to Brătianu, that the late Byzantine
town was primarily the militarised residence of a local landowning aristocracy. But
Kiousopoulou takes a different line in her more recent monograph on the „invisible
Byzantine towns“, where she emphasises the indirect evidence for trade and industry,
and identifies the demos as the main defining element in the larger towns, which she
distinguishes qualitatively from the smaller or purely administrative settlements. Thus
Každan’s 1995 comparison between the Italian and the Byzantine town of the Later
Middle Ages may yet prove to point the way forward for the study of this period111,
just as his work of the 1950s and 1960s provided our model for the early medieval
discontinuity of Byzantine urban life.
7. Our picture of this discontinuity is currently being enriched by the investigation of a
site that adds a new twist to the relationship between polis and kastron. Since 2010 the
Norwegian Institute in Athens has been conducting surveys of the abandoned moun-
taintop site at Kastro Apalirou on the island of Naxos112. By 2013 the team had es-
tablished that this heavily fortified settlement had a recognisable street plan, with 112
103
Niels Gaul, Thomas Magistros und die spätbyzantinische Sophistik. Studien zum Humanismus urba-
ner Eliten in der frühen Palaiologenzeit (Mainzer Veröffentlichungen zur Byzantinistik 10, Wiesbaden 2011).
104 Teresa Shawcross, Mediterranean Encounters before the Renaissance: Byzantine and Italian Political
Thought Concerning the Rise of Cities, in: Renaissance Encounters: Greek East and Latin West, ed. Marina S.
Brownlee–Dimitri Gondicas (Medieval and Renaissance Authors and Texts 8, Leiden 2013) 57–93.
105 Bouras, Βυζαντινή Ἀθήνα (cit. n. 79).
106 Phlora G. Karagianne, Οι Βυζαντινοί οικισμοί στη Μακεδονία μέσα από τα αρχαιολογικά
δεδομένα (4ος-15ος αιώνας) [Byzantine Settlements in Macedonia Based on Archaeological Evidence (4th–
15th Centuries)] (Thessaloniki 2010).
107
Veikou, Byzantine Epirus (cit. n. 94).
108 Tonia Kiousopoulou, Οι „αόρατες“ βυζαντινές πόλεις στον ελλαδικό χώρο (13ος–15ος αιώνας)
[The „Invisible“ Byzantine Towns in the Greek Area (13th–15th Centuries)] (Athen 2013).
109 Οι βυζαντινες πόλεις (8ος–15ος αιώνας). Προοπτικρευνας lές της έρευνας και νέες ερμηνευτικές
προσεγγίσεις [Byzantine Towns (8th–15th Centuries). Perspectives of Research and New Explaining Approa-
chees], ed. Tonia Kiousopoulou (Rethymno 2012).
110 Heaven and Earth, ed. Albani–Chalkia (cit. n. 4).
111 Kazhdan, The Italian and Late Byzantine City (cit. n. 61).
112 http://www.hf.uio.no/iakh/english/research/projects/naxos/survey/ [accessed May 2015].

differentiated buildings, including at least two churches, more than one type of house,
and forty-eight cisterns fed with run-off rainwater by an elaborate system of channels.
An olive press and vestiges of agricultural terracing on the hillside confirmed that the
settlement was designed for permanent occupation. The site was clearly abandoned after
the Latin conquest in 1207; the terminus post quem for its development was provided by
finds of seventh-century coins and pottery. This was evidently a kastron that was more
than a simple fortress, created by the imperial government as a secure alternative to the
ancient coastal settlements in the face of the Arab naval threat to the Aegean113.
8. The Byzantine city is now acquiring a profile as a source and inspiration of literature,
and not merely as an object that has to be documented by literary sources for want of
hard documentary evidence. Scholars are increasingly sensitive to the urban context of
reading and writing in Byzantium114, and to the civic overtones of Byzantine imitation
of the rhetoric of the Second Sophistic. Twenty years ago, Helen Saradi showed how
the praises and descriptions of cities were an important part of the urban culture and
the urban image of Late Antiquity115, and her analysis of the disjunction between the
rhetorical celebration of civic beauty (kallos) and the degradation of civic space in the
sixth century remains an original and irrefutable component of her thesis of urban
decline116. The theme of the encomiastic description (ekphrasis) of the city has been
taken up for later periods and by other scholars, most notably in a colloquium dedi-
cated to the subject (Prague, November 2011)117. Here and elsewhere, the sources for
the literary image of Constantinople received renewed attention118, both the Laudes
Constantinopolitanae that Erwin Fenster had studied in the 1960s119, and the patrio-
graphic literature of urban legends that had been put on the map by three important
publications of the 1980s120. Finally, it is worth noting that the special relationship be-
113 David Hill–Håkon Roland–Knut Ødegård, Kastro Apalirou, Naxos, a 7th-Century Urban Found-
ation, in: New Cities in Late Antiquity (cit. n. 88).

114 See e. g. Claudia Rapp, Literary Culture under Justinian, in: The Cambridge Companion (cit. n. 91)
376–395, and the recent studies of 11th-c. poetry by Paul Magdalino, Cultural Change? The Context of
Byzantine Poetry from Geometres to Prodromos, in: Poetry and its Contexts in Eleventh-Century Byzantium,
ed. Floris Bernard–Kristoffel Demoen (Farnham 2012) 19–36; Floris Bernard, Writing and Reading Byzan-
tine Secular Poetry, 1025–1081 (Oxford Studies in Byzantium, Oxford 2014).
115 Helen Saradi, The Kallos of the Byzantine City: The Development of a Rhetorical Topos and Historical
Reality. Gesta 34 (1995) 37–56.

116
Further developed in Saradi, The Byzantine City (cit. n. 1).
117
Villes de toute beauté. L’ekphrasis des cités dans les littératures byzantine et byzantino-slave. Actes du
colloque international, Prague, 25–26 novembre 2011, ed. Paolo Odorico–Charalambos Messis (Dossiers
byzantins 12, Paris 2012); see also Aslıhan Akişık, Praising a City: Nicaea, Trebizond, and Thesalonike, in: In
Memoriam Angeliki E. Laiou, ed. Cemal Kafadar–Nevra Necipoğlu (Journal of Turkish Studies 36, Cam-
bridge, MA 2011) 1–25.
118
Articles by Paul Magdalino, Andreas Rhoby, Helen Saradi, Ruth Webb, in: Villes de toute beauté
(cit. n. 117); Paul Magdalino, Generic Subversion? The Political Ideology of Urban Myth and Apocalyp-
tic Prophecy, in: Power and Subversion in Byzantium, ed. Dimiter Angelov–Michael Saxby (Society for the
Promotion of Byzantine Studies Publications 17, Farnham 2013) 207–219; English translation of the 10th-c.
Patria by Albrecht Berger, Accounts of Medieval Constantinople. The Patria (Dumbarton Oaks Medieval
Library 24, Cambridge, MA 2013).
119
Erwin Fenster, Laudes Constantinopolitanae (Miscellanea Byzantina Monacensia 9, München 1968).
120
Averil Cameron–Judith Herrin et al., Constantinople in the Early Eighth Century. The Parastaseis
Syntomoi Chronikai (Columbia studies in the classical tradition 10, Leiden 1984); Gilbert Dagron, Con
stantinople imaginaire. Études sur le recueil des Patria (Bibliothèque byzantine. Études 8, Paris 1984); Albrecht
Berger, Untersuchungen zu den Patria Konstantinupoleos (Poikila byzantina 8, Bonn 1988).
62 Paul Magdalino
tween saints and the city in Byzantine hagiography, which has exercised Byzantinists
for almost a century121, has recently received the dedicated treatment it deserves122.
Appendix: Some useful websites of excavated urban sites
Amorion: http://www.amoriumexcavations.org/
Aphrodisias: http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/fineart/academics/aphrodisias/aphrodisias.
htm
Butrint: http://www.butrint.org/
Caesarea Maritima: http://www.caesarea.landscape.cornell.edu/
Caričin Grad : http://archimede.unistra.fr/chantiers-et-missions-archeologiques/caricin-
grad-serbie/
Corinth: http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/index.php/excavationcorinth/about-the-corinth-exca-
vations
Ephesos: http://www.oeai.at/index.php/excavation-history.html
Gortyn: http://www.gortinabizantina.it/
Hierapolis: www.hierapolis.unisalento.it/84
Miletus: http://www.arch.ox.ac.uk/LABM.html
Patara: http://www.lycianturkey.com/lycian_sites/patara.htm
Sagalassos: http://www.sagalassos.be/
Sardis: http://www.harvardartmuseums.org/study-research/research-centers/sardis
Stobi: http://www.stobi.mk/Default.aspx?page=1
Thisvi: http://www.doaks.org/research/byzantine/project-grants/2012-13/dunn
Multiple sites: http://sitemaker.umich.edu/late-antiquity/archaeological_sites
121
Saints’ lives and miracle stories are relatively rich in details of urban life, and thus, given the dearth of
other documentation, they have held a privileged place in the source material for Byzantine urban history. As
we have seen, this began with A. P. Rudakov and his study of Byzantine culture based on hagiographical texts
(above n. 11). In the 1960s, a student of Paul Alexander wrote a doctoral thesis – never published, but much
cited at the time – on exactly this subject: Dorothy de F. Abrahamse, Hagiographic Sources for Byzantine Ci-
ties, 500–900 A.D. (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1967). Ten years later, Julia Seiber, a student of Peter
Brown, published her Master’s thesis on: The Urban Saint in Early Byzantine Social History (BAR Supplemen-
tary Series, Oxford 1977). Lennart Rydén, a leading 20th-c. authority on Byzantine hagiography, devoted one
of his last articles to the urban realia in three 6th–7th-c. texts: idem, Gaza, Emesa and Constantinople: Late
Antique Cities in the Light of Hagiography, in: Aspects of Late Antiquity and Early Byzantium, ed. Lennart Ry-
dén–Jan Olof Rosenqvist (Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul. Transactions 4, Stockholm 1993) 133–144.
122 Helen Saradi, The City in Byzantine Hagiography, in: The Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine
Hagiography 2, ed. Stephanos Efthymiadis (Farnham 2013) 419–452.

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Städte im lateinischen Westen und

im griechischen Osten zwischen

Böhlau Verlag Wien

Sixty Years of Research on the Byzantine City

vation-istanbul-turkey; http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/31/the-big-dig [accessed September

Sixty Years of Research on the Byzantine City 47

(1959) 45–66, cit. 48.

14 Ibid. 17.

15 Ibid. 103s.

16 Ibid. 104.

Sixty Years of Research on the Byzantine City 49

V/3, München 1958).

Baltimore 1986) 712–766.

Sixty Years of Research on the Byzantine City 51

31 Antoine Bon, Le Péloponnèse byzantin jusqu’en 1204 (Paris 1951).

byzantinistische Arbeiten 56, Berlin 1989).

d’une ville paléochrétienne (Paris 1984).

Sixty Years of Research on the Byzantine City 53

Harvey, Economic Expansion in the Byzantine Empire, 900–1200 (Cambridge 1989).

λογία [Byzantine Thessaloniki. Space and Ideology] (Ioannina 1996).

Sixty Years of Research on the Byzantine City 55

nal Perspectives. BMGS 18 (1994) 60–80.

Brogiolo–Bryan Ward-Perkins (The Transformation of the Roman World 4, Leiden–Boston–Köln 1999);

74 Saradi, Byzantine City (cit. n. 1).

Sixty Years of Research on the Byzantine City 57

Ephesos82, Germia83, Miletos84, Thessaloniki85), major monographs on the city in general, or

Zerfall des anatoloischen Städtewesens. AA 2013/2 165–234.

Sixty Years of Research on the Byzantine City 59

112 http://www.hf.uio.no/iakh/english/research/projects/naxos/survey/ [accessed May 2015].

Sixty Years of Research on the Byzantine City 61

ation, in: New Cities in Late Antiquity (cit. n. 88).

Reality. Gesta 34 (1995) 37–56.

Appendix: Some useful websites of excavated urban sites

Multiple sites: http://sitemaker.umich.edu/late-antiquity/archaeological_sites

Hagiography 2, ed. Stephanos Efthymiadis (Farnham 2013) 419–452.

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