Authors and texts in Byzantium (review)

Reviews 191 Kazhdan, Alexander, Authors and texts in Byzantium (Collected studies series, 400) Aldershot, Variorum, 1993; cloth; pp. xii, 322. R.R.P.£47.50. It is perhaps only a slight exaggeration to say that the most significant event in Byzantine studies in recent years was the arrival in Dumbarton Oaks in 1979 of Alexander Kazhdan from the Institute of History at the Academy of Sciences in Moscow. Some of the drama andtensionsthat lie behind that statement can be gleaned from Anthony Cutter's and Aaron Gurevich's contributions to Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 46 (1992): a Festschrift for Kazhdan's seventieth birthday. Before 1979 Kazhdan's work, published in Russian, had been inadequately known to Byzantinists and medievalists in the West After that came a series of books in English developed from his earlier publications, of which two, People and power in Byzantium (1982) and Change in Byzantine culture (1985), are now compulsory reading for anyone wishing to come to grips with the subject. Kazhdan has brought invigorating common sense to a re-evaluation of automatic assumptions, based on careful and wide reading of the sources and an emphasis on the human and everyday aspects of Byzantine society. The achievement for which he will be remembered longest is surely tbe magisterial three-volume Oxford dictionary of Byzantium, which appeared in 1991 and which, despite the large team of contributors, bears his unmistakable stamp throughout. The present volume is made up of papers published, with one exception, since 1979. Some cover material and approaches found in the larger studies; for example, I (the introduction to the Italian edition of his 1968 Vizantijskaja kul'turd) and II, which is essentially an extended review of Hunger's handbook on Byzantine literature with a plea to do away with rigid classifications. Others (III to VIII) deal with what can be seen now as preliminaries to his current major research activity: the hagiography project under way at Dumbarton Oaks to investigate the daunting array of eastern saints' Lives for information on Byzantine Realien. Still others show Kazhdan cross-examining literary texts. IV is the best appraisal yet of the confusing background to the Greek Barlaam and Ioasaph. X and XI show how litde we know about Byzantine hymnographers, especially Kosmas of Jerusalem, and thetextsattributed to them. XII, on Kaminiatis' Capture of Thessalonika, has raffled many feathers. Kazhdan marshalls disturbing reasons to show why it should not be taken as thetenth-centuryeye-witness 192 Reviews account it purports to be. XIV points out bow inter-related is tbe woik of Niketas Evgenianos, the twelfth-century novelist and encomiast. XIII, on Symeon the N e w Theologian, and XVI, on the History written by the former emperor John Kantakouzenos, show how Kazbdan's meticulous analysis of the vocabulary and concepts employed by each author can construct then intellectual and social backgrounds. The paper on Kantakouzenos is particularly important, given the lack of a modem edition. XV, ostensibly a review of Ihor Sevcenko's 1981 Variorum volume, gives Kazhdan, inter alia, an opportunity to amplify Sevcenko's list of fourteenthcentury literary figures. This is a useful collection that well repays dipping into. XVI, on Kantakouzenos, and the hagiographical notes in III to VIII, which are a mine of unexpected and useful detail, are particularly recommended. Elizabeth Jeffreys Department of Modem Greek University of Sydney Kedar, Benjamin Z., The Franks in the Levant, 11th to 14th centuries, Aldershot, Variorum, 1994; cloth; pp. xii, 322; R.R.P. £49.50. This addition to Variorum's 'Collected studies series' is especiahy welcome. For long, Professor Kedar declined to contribute to this series but he has finally relented and the nineteen papers published here will allow easier access for scholars to the corpus of his work (except for that in Hebrew), which has been published in a wide variety of locations, many of them not very accessible outside the few great libraries of the world. The papers range from the earliest, 'Again: Arabic rizq, medieval Latin risicum' (1969) to the two latest, "The Batde of H4at6t6inrevisited'and 'De iudeis et sarracenis. O n the categorization of Muslims in medieval Canon Law' (both 1992). The papers are in English except for four: 'Mercanti...