Constantine Porphyrogennetos: The Book of Ceremonies

Translated by Ann Moffatt and Maxeme Tall

With, on the same page, the corresponding Greek text of the Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae (Bonn 1829)

Byzantina Australiensia vol. 18 (Canberra 2012)

ISBN: 978-1-876503-42-0; ISSN: 0725-3079

2 vols., xxxviii, 870 pages including 2 maps

Ordering details

This is the first modern language translation of the entire text of the tenth-century Greek Book of Ceremonies (De ceremoniis), a work compiled and edited by the Byzantine emperor Constantine VII (905-959). It preserves material from the fifth century through to the 960s. Chapters deal with diverse subjects of concern to the emperor including the role of the court, secular and ecclesiastical ceremonies, processions within the Palace and through Constantinople to its churches, the imperial tombs, embassies, banquets and dress, the role of the demes, hippodrome festivals with chariot races, imperial appointments, the hierarchy of the Byzantine administration, the equipping of expeditions, including to recover Crete from the Arabs, and the lists of ecclesiastical provinces and bishoprics.

CONTENTS

Volume 1: Introduction, Glossary, The Book of Ceremonies Book I and the Appendix to Book I (Three military treatises)

Volume 2: The Book of Ceremonies Book II, including Philotheos’ Lists of Precedence (Kletorologion) and Pseudo-Epiphanios’ The Summoning of Patriarchs and Metropolitans, Addenda to Books I and II, Glossary, Bibliography and Index