Byzantinehistoria

Abstract

To explore the Byzantine thinking, recording, and writing of history is thus to explore Byzantine culture itself, which would be an enormous task. The present contribution will rather limit itself to a brief presentation of three aspects of history in Byzantium: (i) notions and practices of historical memory, (ii) the historiographical tradition, and (iii) fragments of personal histories. Yet there are important exceptions: some histories (especially chronicles) were indeed popular. At least one of these deserves special mention here because it shows a certain aspect of the predilections of the Byzantine and much post-Byzantine readership as far as written history is concerned. Let us look at a few manuscripts with historiographical content in order to identify some further trends in the construction of historical memory within the frame of Byzantine book culture. There were, it is clear, books designed as depositories of exclusively historiographical texts.

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