No abstract

This social history of Byzantine law offers an introduction to one of the world's richest yet hitherto understudied legal traditions. In the first study of its kind, Chitwood explores and reinterprets the seminal legal-historical events of the Byzantine Empire under the Macedonian dynasty, including the re-appropriation and refashioning of the Justinianic legal corpus and the founding of a law school in Constantinople. During this last phase of Byzantine secular law, momentous changes in law and legal culture were underway: the patronage of the elite was reflected in the legal system, theological terms from Orthodox Christianity entered the vocabulary of Byzantine jurisprudence, and private legal collections of uncertain origins began to circulate in manuscripts alongside official redactions of Justinianic law. By using the heuristic device of exploring legal culture, this book examines the interplay in law between the Roman political heritage, Orthodox Christianity and Hellenic culture.

No abstract

This article serves as an introduction to the new journalEndowment Studies(ends). Besides laying out the scope and goals of the periodical, it also charts the broader arc of historical scholarship on endowments. More specifically, the development of the research on foundations is summarized in four fields, namely Medieval Studies, Byzantine Studies, Islamic Studies and Indology. Furthermore, a general vocabulary for the core features of foundations is also proposed.

The best-attested and most important endowments of Orthodox Christians in the medieval world were created by means of foundation charters (ktetorika typika). Via atypikon, a founder orktetorwas able to regulate the present and future functioning of his (invariably monastic) endowment, often in minute and voluminous detail. Of particular interest for the topic of this special issue ofENDSare some post-Byzantine monastic foundation charters, which hitherto have received almost no scholarly scrutiny. Among these charters is the testament of the patriarch Jeremiahifor the Stauroniketa Monastery on Mount Athos. His monastic charter demonstrates the continuity of Byzantine endowment practices in the first centuries of Ottoman rule, yet also underlines new difficulties for monastic founders attempting to adapt the quintessentially medieval Christian practice of composingtypikato the strictures of an Islamic legal regime.