La British School at Rome offre un ciclo di seminari di ricerca dedicati alle testimonianze culturali e storico-artistiche dell’eredità bizantina in Italia. Le conferenze sono rivolte a un pubblico con competenze anche non specialistiche. L’iniziativa è coordinata da Daniele Bianconi (Sapienza Università di Roma), Edoardo Crisci (Università degli studi di Cassino e del Lazio Meridionale), Paola Degni (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia), Marilena Maniaci (Università degli studi di Cassino e del Lazio Meridionale), Raphaële Mouren (The British School at Rome).
Reconquered in 535 by Belisarius as part of Justinian’s policy of reasserting Roman authority in the West, Sicily quickly established itself as one of the pillars of the Eastern Empire. Its enduring prosperity was one of the keys to the empire’s survival during the deep crisis that affected Byzantium in the 7th century, while, following territorial losses in Africa and Italy, the island, buttressed upon Calabria, asserted itself as the bastion of imperial domination over the central Mediterranean basin. The island thus came to occupy a special place in the imperial ideology of Byzantium and its great rival, the Caliphate. The conference will seek to highlight the specific features of the administrative policies put in place by the empire to ensure the solidity of the links uniting this province, which was as central politically and economically as it was peripheral geographically, to Constantinople, and to emphasise the great adaptability of the imperial administration, in contrast to the reputation for conservatism, even immobilism, still too often attached to the image of Byzantium.
Vivien Prigent is a former fellow of the Ecole française de Rome and Newton International fellow of the British Academy. A former head of classics and Mediaeval studies at the Maison française d’Oxford, he is currently Director for Mediaeval Studies at the Ecole française de Rome and Research Professor at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) based in Paris at the Centre d’histoire et de civilisation de Byzance – Collège de France. Vivien Prigent is a specialist of the Western Byzantine provinces of Italy, Sicily and Africa. His work, mainly based on sigillographic and numismatic sources, focuses on the administrative, fiscal and monetary history of the Byzantine empire from the 7th to the 11th century.
The event will be held in English. It will be accessible both in person and online, by registering at the link at the top of this page.
To see the entire programme, click here.
