By the end of the twelfth century, the Byzantine genos was a politically effective social group based upon ties of consanguineous kinship, but, importantly, it was also a cultural construct, an idea ...that held very real power, yet defies easy categorization. This study explores the role and function of the Byzantine aristocratic family group, or genos , as a distinct social entity, particularly its political and cultural role, as it appears in a variety of sources in the tenth through twelfth centuries.
By the end of the twelfth century, the Byzantine genos was a politically effective social group based upon ties of consanguineous kinship, but, importantly, it was also a cultural construct, an idea ...that held very real power, yet defies easy categorization. This study explores the role and function of the Byzantine aristocratic family group, or genos, as a distinct social entity, particularly its political and cultural role, as it appears in a variety of sources in the tenth through twelfth centuries.
This article argues that the Byzantine romance known as Digenes Akrites has more to offer historians than is often recognized. Regardless of the fictional nature of the story or of the exact date of ...its composition, the Digenes tale can serve as an exemplar of the kinds of interactions which regularly took place in the frontier regions between the Byzantine and Muslim worlds and the social values and cultural mores that guided such interactions. If taken as a paradigm of otherwise invisible conditions along the frontier regions of southeastern Anatolia, Digenes can shed new light on an otherwise dark and incomplete picture. It is, in fact, a frontier world in and of itself, in which outside powers, both Muslim and Byzantine, are distant images and only occasional players.
This article argues that the Byzantine romance known as Digenes Akrites has more to offer historians than is often recognized. Regardless of the fictional nature of the story or of the exact date of its composition, the Digenes tale can serve as an exemplar of the kinds of interactions which regularly took place in the frontier regions between the Byzantine and Muslim worlds and the social values and cultural mores that guided such interactions. If taken as a paradigm of otherwise invisible conditions along the frontier regions of southeastern Anatolia, Digenes can shed new light on an otherwise dark and incomplete picture. It is, in fact, a frontier world in and of itself, in which outside powers, both Muslim and Byzantine, are distant images and only occasional players.
This article examines the genealogical claims of Nikephoros III Botaneiates, namely his supposed descent from the Phokades and the ancient Roman Fabii, and aims to situate Botaneiates’ case within a ...broader context of exaggerated and contested claims of kinship in medieval Byzantium. While exploring the uses of fictionalized or exaggerated kinship and their reception in contemporary society, it addresses issues of authenticity, proof, and credibility. It argues that Byzantine authors were widely sceptical of audacious genealogical claims and may have been exposed to false claims of kinship more often than previously acknowledged.
This study explores the development and function of the Byzantine aristocratic family group, or genos, as a distinct social concept, considering particularly its political and cultural role, in the ...tenth through twelfth centuries.
THE BYZANTINE GENOS as kin group, comprising exclusively an individual’s consanguin-eous family, corresponded to what the legal sources refer to as “natural kinship” (physike syggeneia). Impediments ...to marriage based upon consanguinity, which effectively determined the limits of legally recognized “natural kinship,” may thus be understood as equally determining the structural limits of the genos , at least from the perspective of civil and canon law. The civil laws governing inheritance rights, the other major area in which Byzantine law took an interest in the consanguineous family, remained largely stable from the tenth through the twelfth century, setting the outer limit
SOMETIME IN 1056 or 1057, Emperor Michael VI presented his nephew, also named Michael, with the imperial title Doux of Antioch, making him one of the most impor-tant imperial officials in the extreme ...southeast of the empire. In addition to the title, ac -cording to John Skylitzes, the emperor also bestowed upon him “the name of Ouranos on the occasion of his proclamation because his genos supposedly derived from the ancient Ouranos. The emperor honored him with the title magister of Antioch which that other Ouranos Nikephoros had held.”¹
As the passage suggests, the previous Doux of Antioch, Nikephoros Ouranos,
THE LANGUAGE OF KINSHIP Leidholm, Nathan
Elite Byzantine Kinship, Ca. 950-1204,
08/2019
Book Chapter
BY THE MIDDLE of the twelfth century, the genos played a much greater role in Byzantine politics and aristocratic society than it had two centuries earlier. The process by which the concept moved to ...the centre of aristocratic identity is particularly visible in the language of the sources. At the same time, changes associated with the definition and role of the term genos between the early tenth and the late twelfth centuries were accompanied by other, more sweeping changes in the vocabulary of kinship occurring in Byzantine society. The nature of these developments sheds valuable light on the chan-ging social
IN THE PREFACE to the collection Approaches to the Byzantine Family, Leslie Brubaker cites an oft-quoted passage from the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium’s entry on the family.¹ “Although the family ...was the fundamental unit of Byzantine society, there was no specific word for it in Byzantine Greek: the most common term syngeneia designated both the nuclear family and kinship in general.”² The Byzantines, however, lacked a single word to designate “the family” only because they had several.
In addition to syggeneia (συγγένεια), terms designating the household (most commonly referred to as the oikos ) are extremely prevalent throughout Byzantine history.
