This volume brings together a group of scholars to consider the rituals of eating together in the Byzantine world, the material culture of Byzantine food and wine consumption, and the transport and exchange of agricultural products. The contributors present food in nearly every conceivable guise, ranging from its rhetorical uses - food as a metaphor for redemption; food as politics; eating as a vice, abstinence as a virtue - to more practical applications such as the preparation of food, processing it, preserving it, and selling it abroad. We learn how the Byzantines viewed their diet, and how others - including, surprisingly, the Chinese - viewed it. Some consider the protocols of eating in a monastery, of dining in the palace, or of roughing it on a picnic or military campaign; others examine what serving dishes and utensils were in use in the dining room and how this changed over time. Throughout, the terminology of eating - and especially some of the more problematic terms - is explored. The chapters expand on papers presented at the 37th Annual Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, held at the University of Birmingham under the auspices of the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies, in honour of Professor A.A.M. Bryer, a fitting tribute for the man who first told the world about Byzantine agricultural implements.
Contents: Preface; Bibliography of publications by A.A.M. Bryer; Section
I A Tribute to A.A.M. Bryer: A tribute to Professor Bryer, J.A. Minitz; Polla
ta ete (repeat 3 times) to Bryer, J.Herrin; Bryer the anthropologist, R.
Morris; Bryer the enthusiast, J.Haldon; Not the champagne bus, M. Mullett;
Bryer and I - and the class of 1980-1985, C. Galatariotou. Section II
Practicalities: Between the field and the plate: how agricultural products
were processed into food, D. Stathakopoulos; Store in a cool and dry place:
perishable goods and their preservation in Byzantium, M. GrĆ¼nbart; Some
Byzantine aromatics, A. Dalby; Stew and salted meat - opulent normality in
the diet of everyday?, J. Koder. Section III Dining and its Accoutrements:
Dazzling dining: banquets as an expression of imperial legitimacy, S.
Malmberg; A sultan in Constantinople: the feasts of Ghiyath al-Din
Kay-Khusraw I, D. Korobeinikov; Mealtime in monasteries: the culture of the
Byzantine refectory, A.-M. Talbot; From 'glittering sideboard' to table:
silver in the well-appointed triclinium, M. Mundell Mango. Section IV
Ideology and Representation: What was kosher in Byzantium?, B. Crostini; Eat,
drink...and pay the price, A. Eastmond and L. James; The changing dining
habits at Christ's table, J. Vroom; 'Fish on a dish' and its table companions
in 14th-century wall paintings on Venetian-dominated Crete, A.Lymberopoulou.
Section V Food and the Sacred: Divine banquet: the Theotokos as a source of
spiritual nourishment, M.B. Cunningham; Being a potential saint, P.
Karlin-Hayter. Section VI Outside the Empire: More Malmsey, Your Grace? The
export of Greek wine to England in the later Middle Ages, J. Harris; Record
of Byzantine food in Chinese texts, C. Zhiqiang; Index.
Leslie Brubaker is Professor of Byzantine Art History and Director of the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, and Associate Director of the Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity at the University of Birmingham, UK. Kallirroe Linardou is Lecturer in Byzantine Art at the University of Ioannina, Greece.
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