This book represents the first attempt to analyze historical and cultural developments in late medieval and early modern southeastern Europe as a set of mutually intertwined regional histories, burdened by the strong dichotomy between the almighty center-Constantinople-and the periphery that is rarely visible in both contemporary sources and modern scholarship. This mosaic of original studies is devoted to various regions of the Byzantine Balkans and their historical, artistic, and ideological idiosyncrasies, mirroring the complex character and composite and fragmented structure of this vast region. The focal points of the book are the two captures of Constantinople in 1204 and 1453, and the contributors analyze the significance of these catastrophic events on the political destiny of medieval Balkan societies, the mechanisms of adapting to the new political order, and the ever-present interconnectedness of a lower, regional elite across southeastern Europe that had remained strong even after the Ottoman conquest.
Introduction: In the Balkans "Without" Constantinople: Questions of Center and Periphery, Vlada Stankovic Part I: In a World Without a Center: Remaining Byzantine Chapter 1: Byzantium's Retreating Balkan Frontiers during the Reign of the Angeloi (1185-1203): A Reconsideration, Alicia Simpson Chapter 2: Discontinuity and Continuity of Byzantine Literary Tradition After the Crusaders' Capture of Constantinople: The Case of "Original" Byzantine Novels, Dusan Popovic Chapter 3: The Divided Empire: Byzantium on the Eve of 1204, Radivoj Radic Chapter 4: The Fate of the Palaiologan Aristocracy of Thessalonike after 1423, Nicholas Melvani Chapter 5: Paintings of Donor Portraits in the State of Epirus: Aesthetics, Fashion and Trends in the Late Byzantine period, Katerina Kontopanagou Chapter 6: Monastic Foundation Legends in Epirus, Christos Stavrakos Part II: The Peripheries: In the Shadow of Constantinople and Its Influence Chapter 7: Studenica and the Life Giving Tree, Jelena Erdeljan Chapter 8: Rethinking the Position of Serbia within the Byzantine Oikoumene in the Thirteenth Century, Vlada Stankovic Chapter 9: The Synodicon of Orthodoxy in Manuscript BAR Sl. 307 and the Hagioriticon Gramma of the Year 1344, Ivan Biliarsky Chapter 10: Mount Athos and the Byzantine-Slavic Tradition in Wallachia and Moldavia after the Fall of Constantinople, Radu Paun Chapter 11: The Center of the Periphery: The Land of Bosnia in the Heart of Bosnia, Jelena Mrgic Part III: Aftermath: Between Two Empires, Between Two Eras Chapter 12: Before and After the Fall of the Serbian Despotate: The Differences in the Timar Organization in the Serbian Lands in the mid-15th Century, Ema Miljkovic Chapter 13: Memories of Home in the Accounts of the Balkan Refugees from the Ottomans to the Apennine peninsula (15th-16th centuries), Nada Zecevic
