Tag: Constantinople

Free Download Emmanuel S. Moutafov, "The Chora Monastery of Constantinople "
English | ISBN: 1108931138 | 2024 | 75 pages | PDF | 8 MB
The Chora is one of the most celebrated churches built in Constantinople during the Byzantine era (330-1453). It is particularly famous for its glorious mosaics and frescoes, mostly dating to the fourteenth century, which are a particularly fine example of Late Byzantine art. After the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453 the church was repurposed as a mosque, known as the Kariye Camii. Between 1945 and 2020 it had another incarnation, as the Kariye Museum, but then in 2020, in line with changing Turkish governmental policies, it again became a mosque. This Element sets out the history of the building, presents its artwork, and considers how best to interpret its construction, significance, and meaning. Above all, it offers an insight into images and words that are currently inaccessible to the general public.

Free Download Mark Roosien, "Ritual and Earthquakes in Constantinople: Liturgy, Ecology, and Empire"
English | ISBN: 1009427288 | 2024 | 218 pages | PDF | 2 MB
Located on the North Anatolian Fault, Constantinople was frequently shaken by earthquakes over the course of its history. This book discusses religious responses to these events between the fourth and the tenth century AD. The church in Constantinople commemorated several earthquakes that struck the city, prescribing an elaborate liturgical rite celebrated annually for each occasion. These rituals were means by which city-dwellers created meaning from disaster and renegotiated their relationships to God and the land around them in the face of its most destabilizing ecological characteristic: seismicity. Mark Roosien argues that ritual and theological responses to earthquakes shaped Byzantine conceptions of God and the environment and transformed Constantinople’s self-understanding as the capital of the oikoumene and center of divine action in history. The book enhances our understanding of Byzantine Christian religion and culture, and provides a new, interdisciplinary framework for understanding Byzantine views of the natural world.

Free Download Paul Magdalino, "Roman Constantinople in Byzantine Perspective: The Memorial and Aesthetic Rediscovery of Constantine’s Beautiful City, f"
English | ISBN: 9004698892 | 2024 | 184 pages | PDF | 1378 KB
This book studies the research perspective in which the literary inhabitants of Late Antique and medieval Constantinople remembered its past and conceptualised its existence as a Greek city that was the political capital of a Christian Roman state.

Free Download Dragos Andrei Giulea, "Antioch, Nicaea, and the Synthesis of Constantinople: Revisiting Trajectories in the Fourth-Century Christological Debat"
English | ISBN: 9004683224 | 2024 | 309 pages | PDF | 32 MB
Drago? Andrei Giulea delineates a new map of Arian debate’s theoretical trajectories, envisioning Constantinople 381 as a synthesis of two theological paradigms generated at the councils of Antioch 268 and Nicaea 325.

Free Download Fabian Stroth, "The Church of St. Polyeuktos at Constantinople "
English | ISBN: 1009101323 | 2024 | 90 pages | PDF | 9 MB
The Church of St. Polyeuktos is one of the most magnificent, but also most peculiar architectural achievements in Byzantine Constantinople. The accidental rediscovery of the building during construction work in Istanbul in the 1960s is legendary and considered one of the most sensational finds in Byzantine archaeology. Built by the aristocrat Lady Anicia Juliana, the reconstruction of the structure and the interpretation of its strange forms continue to challenge scholars today. The building gave rise to a whole series of archaeo-historical narratives, in which the City’s byzantine protagonists and major monuments were woven into a coherent Description. This Element on the archaeology of St. Polyeuktos takes a closer look at these narratives and subject them to critical examination. In the end, the study of St. Polyeuktos will tell us as much about Byzantine architectural history in the second half of the twentieth century as about early Byzantine architecture itself.

Free Download Geoffroy de Villehardouin, John Franklyn-Robbins, "The Conquest of Constantinople"
English | ASIN: B00005479O, ISBN: 9781440797774 | 2008 | M4B@64 kbps | ~04:13:00 | 124 MB
This first-hand account of the noble, barbaric Fourth Crusade was written by Geoffroy de Villehardouin, a French nobleman who played a leading role in the war. The First, Second, and Third Crusades were an effort by Christians to free the Holy Land from the Turks, but the Fourth Crusade degenerated into a war of conquest amongst fellow Christians. Villehardouin’s account provides important insights into the motivations of the crusaders in this most famous of campaigns, launched at the dawn of the 13th century.

(more…)

Free Download Following Caesar: From Rome to Constantinople, the Pathways That Planted the Seeds of Empire (Audiobook)
English | ASIN: B0CP6DR8QP | 2023 | 7 hours and 7 minutes | M4B@128 kbps | 398 MB
Author: John Keahey
Narrator: Tom Perkins
In 66 BC, young, ambitious Julius Caesar, seeking recognition and authority, became the curator of the Via Appia. He borrowed significant sums to restore the ancient highway. It was a way to curry favor from Roman citizens in villages along the route, built from Rome to Brindisi between 312-191 BC. After achieving greatness in Rome and the far reaches of Gaul, he led armies along this road to battle enemies in Roman civil wars. And then, across the Adriatic Sea, he joined Via Appia’s sister road, the Via Egnatia that began in today’s Albania. Other armies followed these two roads that eventually connected Rome to Byzantium, today’s Istanbul.

Free Download Following Caesar: From Rome to Constantinople, the Pathways That Planted the Seeds of Empire (Audiobook)
English | ASIN: B0CP6DR8QP | 2023 | 7 hours and 7 minutes | M4B@128 kbps | 398 MB
Author: John Keahey
Narrator: Tom Perkins
In 66 BC, young, ambitious Julius Caesar, seeking recognition and authority, became the curator of the Via Appia. He borrowed significant sums to restore the ancient highway. It was a way to curry favor from Roman citizens in villages along the route, built from Rome to Brindisi between 312-191 BC. After achieving greatness in Rome and the far reaches of Gaul, he led armies along this road to battle enemies in Roman civil wars. And then, across the Adriatic Sea, he joined Via Appia’s sister road, the Via Egnatia that began in today’s Albania. Other armies followed these two roads that eventually connected Rome to Byzantium, today’s Istanbul.

Free Download Following Caesar
by John Keahey
English | 2023 | ISBN: 1250792401 | 256 pages | True EPUB | 24.97 MB