090073 VO Byzantium and the Caucasus (2023S)

The course will introduce the historical relations between Byzantium and the Armenians through analysis of their mutual cultural and intellectual entanglements. In this respect, the course will expand on the political and social background and circumstances that undergirded the inception of confessional confrontations between the Byzantines and the three main Christian ethnic groups of the south-Caucasian region, and namely the Armenians, the Georgians and the Albanians, on the one hand, and among the south-Caucasian Christian people, on the other hand, in the period between the fifth and the ninth centuries. Attention will be payed to the development of mutual contacts between the Greeks and Armenian culture in varied fields of human knowledge and experience, e.g., sciences, rhetorics, theology, philosophy, and architecture, through the analysis of the main Armenian and Greek sources, as well as of their respective research history. Georgian sources will be also included, especially when introducing the problem of the schism between the Armenian and the Georgian churches. The course aims to provide an overview of the cultural and social intercourses of the Armenians with Byzantium, as well as of the cultural and politico-religious connections among the Christian south-Caucasian people in the second half of the first millennium.