Former Fellows

This is an interdisciplinary study. By bringing together legal, literary and documentary sources it explores the impact of oaths on Byzantine religious, social, cultural and political history. It compares the views of Byzantine patristic authors and canonists about oath to the ideas of Western European theologians. It investigates the treatment of oath in Byzantine civil law and explores the information court decisions and oath rituals provide about social relations in Byzantium and issues such as the status of women. It discusses the use of oaths as means to promote imperial policies and how oath ceremonies reflect intercultural exchanges between Byzantium and its neighbors. A significant part of my research deals with the analysis of Byzantine concepts about conspiracies and perjury. Although the oath is a central institution for the establishment of a community and played a fundamental role in Byzantine state organization and social structures, it has not attracted sufficient attention by modern scholarship. A small number of studies in the form of articles have shed light into the use of oaths as means to stabilize imperial authority. My aim is to complete this study as a monograph by early 2022.