Dumbarton Oaks Studies

The Kariye Camii remains one of the most important and best-known monuments of the Byzantine world. Rebuilt and decorated in the early 14th century by statesman-scholar Theodore Metochites, the monument played a key role in the development of Late Byzantine art. Ousterhout presents a structural history and architectural analysis of this building.

This is the first monographic study of the Glajor Gospel, a 14th-century illuminated Armenian manuscript. In addition to critical studies of the iconography of the illuminations, the authors provide the history of the manuscript and the political and cultural setting in which it was produced, and the history of the monastery and school of Glajor.

Sirarpie Der Nersessian’s scholarship has influenced the understanding of Armenian art and its Byzantine context. These two volumes are the culmination of six decades devoted to the exploration of Armenian art, and reflect a deep knowledge of the manuscripts and their creators.

The “Parangelmata Poliorcetica“ and the “Geodesia,“ two Greek treatises on the construction of devices for siege warfare, are products of 10th-century Byzantium. The texts are presented here in critical editions based, for the first time, on the archetype manuscript “Vaticanus graecus 1605“ and accompanied by an English translation and commentary.

In this work, David and June Winfield discuss the language of Byzantine church decoration, methods of plastering, proportional rules, system of coloring, and the working methods of the Byzantine painter.

Replete with mosaics and revetment, the basilica was the center of the ecclesiastical administration until its destruction in the late seventh century. In this long-awaited report, Megaw and colleagues present in full the results of excavations from the 1930s, 1950s, and 1970s.

Until the 1980s, the Roman frontier in modern Jordan was among the least studied of the empire’s far-flung border regions. From 1980 until 1989, excavation focused on the late Roman legionary fortress of el-Lejjun as well as four smaller but contemporaneous forts. This report presents detailed results from the excavated forts, a broad range of material evidence from animal bones to bedouin burials, and provides a synthesis of the history of this frontier, which witnessed the first confrontation between the Byzantine Empire and the forces of Islam.

Leo’s firsthand experience of the campaigns and courts of two Byzantine emperors provides vivid descriptions of sieges, pitched battles, and ambushes. His account of the conspiracy against Nikephoros II Phokas, murdered as he slept on the floor in front of his icons, is one of the most dramatic in Byzantine narrative histories.

Following its initial publication in 2005, A Byzantine Settlement in Cappadocia has become a seminal work in interpreting the rich material remains of Byzantine Cappadocia. This revised edition builds upon its predecessor with an updated preface, a new bibliography, and a new master map of the Çanlı Kilise site.

Built around 1100, the church of Asinou in Cyprus is decorated with accretions of images, from the fresco cycle executed shortly after construction to those made in the seventeenth century. This volume sets Asinou’s art and architecture in the context of the surrounding area’s changing fortunes under Byzantine, Lusignan, Venetian, and Ottoman rule.

John Haldon’s critical commentary on Byzantine emperor Leo VI’s Taktika, the first to appear in any language, addresses in detail the varied subjects touched on in the treatise. Three introductory chapters examine the context, sources, language, structure and content of the text and the military administration of the empire in Leo’s time.

One of the most important middle Byzantine saints’ lives, The Life of Saint Basil the Younger presents the life of a holy man who lived in Constantinople in the first part of the tenth century. The first critical edition in any language, this volume provides the Greek text facing the annotated English translation, as well as an introduction.

Cappadocia is unrivaled in its preservation of the physical remains of the Byzantine Empire: churches, towns and villages, agricultural installations, storage facilities, and other examples of non-ecclesiastical architecture. Visualizing Community offers a critical reassessment of the historiography of Byzantine Cappadocia.

Hagia Sophia is the architectural jewel of Constantinople. The edifice is intact, yet only some of its original mosaics survive. Natalia Teteriatnikov analyzes the materials, the architectural and theological aesthetics, and the social conditions that led to the distinctive mosaics, alongside watercolors of lost mosaics by Gaspare Fossati.

Bouttios and Late Antique Antioch assembles back together from clues and pieces a book that had disappeared from our library of Greek and Roman works. It shows how people in the distant past thought about their own history and how they discussed political and social issues across a seemingly insurmountable divide in a period of existential crisis.