The Bronze Horseman of Justinian in Constantinople
The Cross-Cultural Biography of a Mediterranean Monument

Biography of the medieval Mediterranean's most cross-culturally significant sculptural monument, the tallest in the pre-modern world.

Elena N. Boeck (Author)

9781107197275, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 29 April 2021

376 pages
25 x 17.5 x 3 cm, 0.95 kg

'By exploring connections between history writing and imagination, The Bronze Horseman of Justinian in Constantinople takes an innovative look at the cultural biography of objects. In conducting her engaging inquiry, Boeck explores an extraordinary number and diversity of sources, both textual and visual, related to the monument.' Brigitte Pitarakis, YILLIK: Annual of Istanbul Studies

Justinian's triumphal column was the tallest free-standing column of the pre-modern world and was crowned with arguably the largest metal equestrian sculpture created anywhere in the world before 1699. The Byzantine empire's bronze horseman towered over the heart of Constantinople, assumed new identities, spawned conflicting narratives, and acquired widespread international acclaim. Because all traces of Justinian's column were erased from the urban fabric of Istanbul in the sixteenth century, scholars have undervalued its astonishing agency and remarkable longevity. Its impact in visual and verbal culture was arguably among the most extensive of any Mediterranean monument. This book analyzes Byzantine, Islamic, Slavic, Crusader, and Renaissance historical accounts, medieval pilgrimages, geographic, apocalyptic and apocryphal narratives, vernacular poetry, Byzantine, Bulgarian, Italian, French, Latin, and Ottoman illustrated manuscripts, Florentine wedding chests, Venetian paintings, and Russian icons to provide an engrossing and pioneering biography of a contested medieval monument during the millennium of its life.

Introduction
1. Justinian's Entry into Constantinople: He Came, He Saw, He Conquered
2. The Making of Justinian's Forum
3. Defying a Defining Witness: The Bronze Horseman and the Buildings (De Aedificiis) of Prokopios
4. The Horseman of Baghdad Responds to the Horseman of Constantinople
5. Soothing Imperial Anxieties: Theophilos and the Restoration of Justinian's Crown
6. Debating Justinian's Merits in the Tenth Century
7. The Bronze Horseman and a Dark Hour for Humanity
8. The Horseman Becomes Heraclius: Crusading Narratives of the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries
9. From Exile in Nicaea to Restoration of Constantinople
10. A Learned Dialogue Across the Ages: Pachymeres Confronts Prokopios
11. Orb-session: Constantinople's Future in the Bronze Horseman's Hand
12. Justinian's Column and the Antiquarian Gaze: A Centuries-Old 'Secret' Exposed
13. A Timeless Ideal: Constantinople in Slavonic Imagination of the Fourteenth to Fifteenth Centuries
14. The Horseman Meets its End
15. Horse as Historia, Byzantium as Allegory
16. Shadowy Past and Menacing Future
17. After the Fall: The Bronze Horseman and Eternal Tsar'grad
Postscript: The Horseman's Debut in Print.

Subject Areas: European history [HBJD], History of architecture [AMX], History of art: Byzantine & Medieval art c 500 CE to c 1400 [ACK]