Revisiting the Byzantine Commonwealth: Nodes, Networks, and Spheres

Pinning down Byzantium (or East Rome) is as difficult today as it was for contemporaries during its 1,000-year-long existence. Dimitri Obolensky sought to characterize its impact on Eastern Europe in his classic The Byzantine Commonwealth, focusing on the elements of religious doctrine, rites, and law which ruling elites there took from the emperor acting in tandem with the Constantinopolitan patriarchate. Chapters in this volume, Revisiting the Byzantine Commonwealth, address such basic qu...