Excerpta Constantiniana and the Byzantine Appropriation of the Past

The Excerpta project instigated by the Byzantine emperor Constantine VII turned the enormously rich experience offered by Greek historiography into a body of excerpts distributed across fifty-three distinct thematic collections. In this, the first sustained analysis, András Németh moves from viewing the Excerpta only as a collection of textual fragments to focusing on its dependence from and impact on the surrounding Byzantine culture in the tenth century. He introduces the concept of appropriation and also uses it to study some other key texts created under the Excerpta's influence (De thematibus, De administrando imperio and De ceremoniis). Unlike world chronicles, the Excerpta ignored the chronological dimension of history and fostered the biographical turn in Byzantine historiography. By exploring theoretical questions such as classification and retrieval of historical information and the relationship between knowledge and political power, this book provides powerful new ways for exploring the Excerpta in Byzantine studies and beyond.

'During a period of external threats and internal disunity, Constantine VII (913–59), the dilettante emperor of the Byzantine empire, supervised the compilation of the multivolume Excerpta. The volumes were chiefly unaltered texts from pre-Christian era authors. The emperor and his staff organized the material in a set of 53 topics. … Németh argues that instructive examples, many of which were biographical, were aimed at stimulating creative and critical thinking, improving the morality of Constantine’s circle, and providing pragmatic answers to contemporary problems. But there is no concrete proof that the Excerpta produced any military successes or enlightened legislation, or led to fruitful diplomatic maneuverings. The Excerpta may have had more aesthetic than practical value. This immense work of scholarship is strictly for the pinpoint specialist. Recommended.' A. J. Papalas, Choice

András Németh is one of the two curators of Greek manuscripts at the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. Previously, he was a research scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin and a research librarian at the National Széchényi Library, Budapest. He coordinates various activities concerning palimpsests at the Vatican Library and is preparing the catalogue of a select group of Greek manuscripts of this library. He studies the cultural history of the Middle Byzantine period and the reception of Greek manuscripts in Renaissance libraries in Europe and is preparing a monograph on the Greek manuscripts of the Bibliotheca Corviniana.