Academic literature on the topic 'Italo-Byzantine'

The employment of castrati in the Byzantine Church can be traced back to the choirmaster Brison in the fourth century. Brison was called upon by John Chrysostom to organize the antiphonal hymn-singing in the patriarchal church. Since eunuchs were generally considered to be remnants of a pagan past, castrati are seldom mentioned in early Byzantine sources, but beginning in the tenth century references to eunuchs or castrati became more and more frequent. By the twelfth century all the professional singers in the Hagia Sophia were castrati. The repertory of the castrati is discussed and the question is raised whether the introduction of castrati to the Sistine Chapel was influenced by the employment of castrati in Italo-Greek cloisters.

Looking at the Byzantine palaces that have survived through centuries until today, such as the Palace of the Porphyrogenitus (Palace of Belisarius) in Istanbul, Aleksandar Deroko has underlined the essential distinction between two fundamental genres of Byzantine houses: monumental palaces made of stone and bricks and everyday houses made with a wooden structure. For centuries, the ordinary Byzantine house was considered as a "Turkish type". Deroko maintained that this classification was erroneous, as the Ottomans actually inherited "the Byzantine house" when they conquered the vast territory of the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantine house was adopted by the Ottomans and the people under their domination, and over the centuries it spread over a broad geographical area - from Anatolia to North Africa and to the Balkans. Unsurprisingly, it did not reflect a single heritage; instead, it mirrored the various cultures that fell under its rule. Based on Deroko's theories, one could consider locations such as Mount Athos, Ioannina, Prizren, Ohrid, Elena and even certain villages of Arbëreshë (Italo-Albanian) communities of South Italy as the "incunabula (the first examples, the origins) of Byzantine housing". Probably, thanks to their morphological characteristics and geographical isolation, some elements of this building type are still visible in these locations, even though they have been integrated into the local housing cultures. These buildings give subtle glimpses of the everyday Byzantine house.

Abstract The presence of a lexical stock of Romance origin in Yiddish has been interpreted differently by various authors. For D. S. Blondheim they represent a direct continuation of Judeo-Latin. For Max Weinreich, those Romance components go back to specifically Jewish languages, which he called southern and western Loez (a variation on the terms “Italkic” and “Zarphatic” once used by Salomon Birnbaum). This study reconsiders the history of those Yiddish words of Romance origin, focusing on the phonetic development they underwent as they integrated into Yiddish. The contribution of Romance historical linguistics confirms the huge importance of the Italo-Romance connection in this lexical stock, which may reflect the phase when Jews from Byzantine Italy began to settle beyond the Alps. A pinpointed examination of the morphophonemic shape of the loanwords may even hint at specific places of origin on the Italo-Romance dialectal maps. In spite of the dominance of Italo-Romance dialects in the Romance-borrowed lexical stock of Yiddish, some terms attested in both Western and Eastern Yiddish obviously have an Old French origin.

The study focuses on the 17th-18th century Basilian missions in Southern Albania, specifically in the region of Himara and the people behind these missions. The article is based on primary, never-before-published archival sources. The study explains that despite the zeal, knowledge, and dedication of the missionaries, the Basilian missions in Southern Albania were sporadic, not organized, and the monks were not particularly trained in missions. This by no means minimizes the contributions of Basilian missionaries Neofito Rodino, Nilo Catalano, and Giuseppe Schirò and their hard labors in Albania. On a positive note, the Basilian missions to convert the Orthodox (as requested by the Orthodox Himarriots) might have raised Rome’s sensitivities to recognize and appreciate Byzantine tradition beginning from its backyard - the Monastery of the Mother of God of Grottaferrata in Rome, and the Italo-Albanians or Italo-Greeks living in Calabria and Sicily. These missions paved the way to the beginning of an ecumenical thinking and changed attitude in the Latin Church regarding Christian East.

Статья посвящена византийскому обряду как одному из ключевых маркеров определения идентичности арбрешской диаспоральной группы, проживающей на территории Сицилии. В условиях быстрого развития коммуникации, растущей мобильности людей наблюдается ослабление социальных связей, размывание этнических границ и снижение ценностных ориентиров. Проблема сохранения самобытности арбрешей и укрепления чувства их этнической принадлежности породила насыщенную культурную жизнь. Итало-албанские приходы в течение долгих лет накапливали информацию об истории, традициях и обычаях своей общины, укрепляли внешние и внутренние связи, благодаря чему между представителями арбрешской диаспоры возникло чувство внутренней сплоченности. Византийский обряд по-прежнему остаётся наиболее устойчивым к трансформации, поскольку местное духовенство отвечает за сохранность религиозной культуры, тесно связанной с социальной средой в целом, а также направляет свою деятельность на культивирование и сохранение арбрешской идентичности. Итало-албанская церковь представляет значительный институт, который движется к новым формам организации или изменяет роль существующих, чтобы реагировать на вызовы современного общества. Итало-албанская церковь высоко ценится своими прихожанами, и все больше воспринимается как религиозный, социальный и культурный институт, ответственный за сохранение ценностей религиозной культуры, тесно связанной с социальной средой в целом. The article is devoted to the Byzantine rite as one of the key markers for the development of the Arbresh diaspora identity in Sicily. Rapid development of communications and increasing mobility of population lead to a weakening of social ties, blurring of ethnic borders and a decrease in values. The fear of losing the identity has given rise to a rich cultural life of the Arbresh. Over the years, parishes of the Italo-Albanian Church have been accumulating information about the history, traditions and customs of their community, strengthening external and internal ties, which inspired a feeling of internal cohesion inside the Arbresh diaspora. The Byzantine rite stays most resistant to transformation, since the local clergy are responsible for the preservation of the religious culture, which is closely related to the social environment as a whole, and directs its activities towards the cultivation and preservation of the Arbresh identity. The Italo-Albanian Church represents a significant institution that moves towards new forms of organization or changes the role of existing ones in order to respond to the challenges of modern society. The Italo-Albanian Church is highly valued by its parishioners and is increasingly perceived as a religious, social and cultural institution responsible for preserving the values ​​of the religious culture, which is closely related to the social environment as a whole.

In the first half of the 19th century in literature on art the term ‘Old Masters’ was disseminated (Alte Meister, maître ancienns, etc.), this in relation to the concept of New Masters. However, contrary to the widespread view, it did not result from the name institutionalization of public museums (in Munich the name Alte Pinakothek was given in 1853, while in Dresden the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister was given its name only after 1956). Both names, however, feature in collection catalogues, books, articles, press reports, as well as tourist guides. The term ‘Old Masters’ with reference to the artists of the modern era appeared in the late 17th century among the circles of English connoisseurs, amateur experts in art (John Evelyn, 1696). Meanwhile, the Great Tradition: from Filippo Villani and Alberti to Bellori, Baldinucci, and even Winckelmann, implied the use of the category of ‘Old Masters’ (antico, vecchio) in reference to ancient: Greek-Roman artists. There existed this general conceptual opposition: old (identified with ancient) v. new (the modern era). An attempt is made to answer when this tradition was broken with, when and from what sources the concept (and subsequently the term) ‘Old Masters’ to define artists later than ancient was formed; namely the artists who are today referred to as mediaeval and modern (13th–18th c.). It was not a single moment in history, but a long intermittent process, leading to 18th- century connoisseurs and scholars who formalized early-modern collecting, antiquarian market, and museology. The discerning and naming of the category in-between ancient masters (those referred to appropriately as ‘old’) and contemporary or recent (‘new’) artists resulted from the attempts made to systemize and categorize the chronology of art history for the needs of new collector- and connoisseurship in the second half of the 16th and in the 17th century. The old continuum of history of art was disrupted by Giorgio Vasari (Vite, 1550, 1568) who created the category of ‘non-ancient old’, ‘our old masters’, or ‘old-new’ masters (vecchi e non antichi, vecchi maestri nostri, i nostri vecchi, i vecchi moderni). The intuition of this ‘in-between’ the vecchi moderni and maestri moderni can be found in some writers-connoisseurs in the early 17th (e.g. Giulio Mancini). The Vasarian category of the ‘old modern’ is most fully reflected in the compartmentalizing of history conducted by Carel van Mander (Het Schilder-Boeck, 1604), who divided painters into: 1) oude (oude antijcke), ancient, antique, 2) oude modern, namely old modern; 3) modern; very modern, living currently. The oude modern constitute a sequence of artists beginning with the Van Eyck brothers to Marten de Vosa, preceding the era of ‘the famous living Netherlandish painters’. The in-between status of ‘old modern’ was the topic of discourse among the academic circles, formulated by Jean de La Bruyère (1688; the principle of moving the caesura between antiquité and modernité), Charles Perrault (1687–1697: category of le notre siècle preceded by le siècle passé, namely the grand masters of the Renaissance), and Pellegrino Antonio Orlandi writing from the position of an academic studioso for connoisseurs and collectors (Abecedario pittorico, 1704, 1719, 1733, 1753; the antichimoderni category as distinct from the i viventi). Together with Christian von Mechel (1781, 1783) the new understanding of ‘old modernity’ enters the scholarly domain of museology and the devising of displays in royal and ducal galleries opened to the public, undergoing the division into national categories (schools) and chronological ones in history of art becoming more a science (hence the alte niederländische/deutsche Meister or Schule). While planning and describing painterly schools at the Vienna Belvedere Gallery, the learned historian and expert creates a tripartite division of history, already without any reference to antiquity, and with a meaningful shift in eras: Alte, Neuere, and lebende Meister, namely ‘Old Masters’ (14th–16th/17th c.), ‘New Masters’ (Late 17th c. and the first half of the 18th c.), and contemporary ‘living artists’. The Alte Meister ceases to define ancient artists, while at the same time the unequivocally intensifying hegemony of antique attitudes in collecting and museology leads almost to an ardent defence of the right to collect only ‘new’ masters, namely those active recently or contemporarily. It is undertaken with fervour by Ludwig Christian von Hagedorn in his correspondence with his brother (1748), reflecting the Enlightenment cult of modernité, crucial for the mental culture of pre-Revolution France, and also having impact on the German region. As much as the new terminology became well rooted in the German-speaking regions (also in terminology applied in auction catalogues in 1719–1800, and obviously in the 19th century for good) and English-speaking ones (where the term ‘Old Masters’ was also used in press in reference to the collections of the National Gallery formed in 1824), in the French circles of the 18th century the traditional division into the ‘old’, namely ancient, and ‘new’, namely modern, was maintained (e.g. Recueil d’Estampes by Pierre Crozat), and in the early 19th century, adopted were the terms used in writings in relation to the Academy Salon (from 1791 located at Louvre’s Salon Carré) which was the venue for alternating displays of old and contemporary art, this justified in view of political and nationalistic legitimization of the oeuvre of the French through the connection with the tradition of the great masters of the past (Charles-Paul Landon, Pierre-Marie Gault de Saint-Germain). As for the German-speaking regions, what played a particular role in consolidating the term: alte Meister, was the increasing Enlightenment – Romantic Medievalism as well as the cult of the Germanic past, and with it a revaluation of old-German painting: altdeutsch. The revision of old-German art in Weimar and Dresden, particularly within the Kunstfreunde circles, took place: from the category of barbarism and Gothic ineptitude, to the apology of the Teutonic spirit and true religiousness of the German Middle Ages (partic. Johann Gottlob von Quandt, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe). In this respect what actually had an impact was the traditional terminology backup formed in the Renaissance Humanist Germanics (ethnogenetic studies in ancient Germanic peoples, their customs, and language), which introduced the understanding of ancient times different from classical-ancient or Biblical-Christian into German historiography, and prepared grounds for the altdeutsche Geschichte and altdeutsche Kunst/Meister concepts. A different source area must have been provided by the Reformation and its iconoclasm, as well as the reaction to it, both on the Catholic, post-Tridentine side, and moderate Lutheran: in the form of paintings, often regarded by the people as ‘holy’ and ‘miraculous’; these were frequently ancient presentations, either Italo-Byzantine icons or works respected for their old age. Their ‘antiquity’ value raised by their defenders as symbols of the precedence of Christian cult at a given place contributed to the development of the concept of ‘ancient’ and ‘old’ painters in the 17th–18th century.

This paper focuses on the development of the cult of the late 17th century icon of the Virgin with the Child, known as Joyful Lady of Bač, from its origins to the present day. Painted in the manner of late Byzantine art, and preserved in the Franciscan monastery of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin in Bač, this Italo-Cretan icon was and still is highly venerated by local Slavic population of both Catholic and Orthodox denominations. At one point this icon also started to be venerated as the icon of Our Lady of Gradovrh, miraculous icon from the Franciscan monastery in Gradovrh near Tuzla in Bosnia. Through this case study, the paper aims at highlighting the fact that in the areas, where during many centuries population of both Catholic and Orthodox denominations lived together, the ways of veneration of holy images differed little among them in both form and essence.

This book is a historical study of these manuscripts, exploring how and why the Greek Christians of medieval southern Italy persisted in using them so long after the end of Byzantine rule. Southern Italy was conquered by the Norman Hauteville dynasty in the late eleventh century after over 500 years of continuous Byzantine rule. At a stroke, the region’s Greek Christian inhabitants were cut off from their Orthodox compatriots in Byzantium and became subject to the spiritual and legal jurisdiction of the Roman Catholic popes. Nonetheless, they continued to follow the religious laws of the Byzantine church; out of thirty-six surviving manuscripts of Byzantine canon law produced between the tenth and fourteenth centuries, the majority date to the centuries after the Norman conquest. Part I provides an overview of the source material and the history of Italo-Greek Christianity. Part II examines the development of Italo-Greek canon law manuscripts from the last century of Byzantine rule to the late twelfth century, arguing that the Normans’ opposition to papal authority created a laissez faire atmosphere in which Greek Christians could continue to follow Byzantine religious law unchallenged. Finally, Part III analyses the papacy’s successful efforts to assert its jurisdiction over southern Italy in the later Middle Ages. While this brought about the end of Byzantine canon law as an effective legal system in the region, the Italo-Greeks still drew on their legal heritage to explain and justify their distinctive religious rites to their Latin neighbours.