The Byzantine city and its historiography

Abstract

This chapter offers an overview of the most important historiographic contributions on the Byzantine city as they encompass a wide methodological and disciplinary array of scholarly expertise: from history to archeology, from literature to hagiography, from material culture to legal studies. Lopez Quiroga stresses the importance of Christianization in molding the post-Roman urban socio-economic and structural landscape.48 He also compares specifically regional outcomes of urbanism in the West and East to conclude that the archeological record does not allow to talk of any break or abandonment but rather of an adaptation transforming classical urban areas in “Byzantine cities.” Zanini also questions the terminological and semantic aspect of the word city in defining a new conceptual model of post-sixth-century Byzantine city. This allows him to describe both the new characteristics and old features of Byzantine urbanism: small, fortified, Christian, and imperial centers.