Un “Medioevo eretico” alla periferia del Medioevo: il caso bizantino

Medieval studies, Byzantine studies, Historiography, Mediterranean Sea

Abstract

This article aims to investigate the role attributed to the idea of Byzantium in the construction of both the idea of the Middle Ages and Medieval Studies. Despite the increasingly pressing need for historical disciplines to adopt a “Mediterranean” perspective, the Mediterranean Sea (described as “Lago di Tiberiade” by Giorgio La Pira) remains, in many respects, even beyond to the scholarly debate, a wall, rigidly configuring zones of center – that is, continental Europe – and peripheries, including the East. Also – but not only – because of this peculiar position, that of Byzantium has become, according to a definition by Silvia Ronchey, a “heretical Middle Ages”, an object that defines the Middle Ages from the outside, by contrast, though not in a logic of sharp opposition: a
“periphery” that shapes the “center”. It seems nec essary, however, to supersede this approach and reflect on the multiplicity of peripheries (geographic, social, cultural, economic) that constitute the Middle Ages. Scholars are increasingly paying attention to these multiple peripheries, as they are persuaded that not in a homogeneous and linear narrative, but in small splinters juxtaposed to each other, a new contribution can be made to the concept of the Middle Ages.
Using some historiographical works (15th-20th centuries) as sources, this paper will address both the contrived and anhomogeneous construction of the Middle Ages and the posthumous elaboration of the Byzantine experience, which ended in 1453. The analysis of the positions of the international scholarly community in recent years will be followed by some questions about the future status of Byzantine and Medieval Studies, in order to initiate a potential and necessary debate.