Einführung in die Byzantinistik

In 1898, the academic discipline Byzantine Studies was founded by Karl Krumbacher at the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich, Germany. Since then, Byzantine Studies have been thriving there for more than one hundred years. PD Dr. Sergei Mariev (Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Germany) taught Byzantine Studies at the University of Munich between 2008 and 2018. The material for this book was written during his tenure in Munich and has been designed with teaching purposes in mind. The book consists of 15 units corresponding to 15 weeks of a winter semester in Germany. It surveys the history of the Byzantine state and Orthodox church, provides an introduction to the auxiliary disciplines of Byzantine Philology, Textual Criticism, Paleography and Prosopography and closes with an overview of Byzantine Cultural History, placing a particular emphasis on the history of Byzantine Literature and Philosophy. The book establishes Byzantine Studies as a preeminently historical discipline and prepares the ground for students’ understanding of Byzantine culture.