Gesture in Byzantium

Abstract

The royal crown of Hungary ( Fig. 1 ) was sent as a gift from the Byzantine emperor Michael VII Doukas to Geza, king of Hungary in the late eleventh century. 1 Byzantium, which is the modern name for what the Romans and the Byzantines called the East Roman Empire, had by that time been based in Constantinople for over 700 years, and was the centre of Orthodox Christianity; the Hungarians, who are first heard of in the ninth century and were Christianized across the tenth, were still predominantly Orthodox rather than Catholic, and hence aligned with the East Roman Empire. 2 The gift of the crown celebrated the Byzantine-Hungarian alliance but did not suppose that this was an alliance between equals. The front shows Christ flanked by angels; the back shows the emperor Michael (in the pendant position to Christ) flanked by his son and co-ruler Constantine and king...

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