A Short History of Byzantine Epigraphy

Abstract

This article offers an overview of the history of the discipline of Byzantine epigraphy from the 19 th century until today. It ranges from the description of the first attempts to create corpora of Greek Christian inscriptions at the time of the foundation of modern Byzantine Studies (especially within the French school) to the listing of online editions and other electronic tools. The history of the discipline of Byzantine Epigraphy is also a history of failures: many corpus projects started with very ambitious aims but very often did not manage to publish more than one or two volumes. Today the approach to Byzantine inscriptions is more realistic: already Paul Lemerle and his team decided to focus on a selection of inscriptions. New attempts adopt this idea by initiating coherent volumes based on commonly agreed editorial guidelines.