BYZANTINE DIPLOMATICS

Alexander Beihammer

Giving an outline of the present state of Byzantine diplomatics five years ago in London
(Byzantinische Diplomatik: Dead or Alive?, in: Proceedings of the 21st International
Congress of Byzantine Studies, London 2126 August 2006, vol. 1: Plenary Papers, ed. E.
JEFFREYS, Aldershot 2006, 173187), I lamented the deplorable decline at
German-speaking research institutions of long-term programs producing basic manuals
and reliable editions of Byzantine documentary sources, a tendency obviously due to a
general paradigm-shift from traditional auxiliary sciences to more fashionable topics
corresponding to current sociopolitical problems. Over the past five years this trend
certainly gained further momentum, but there also was a creative reaction on the part of
the scientific community, resulting in innovative research proposals that combine
traditional methods with new concepts and hermeneutic approaches. To start with the
bad news, the research unit established in 1904 by the Bavarian Academy of Sciences in
Munich in order to produce a multi-volume Corpus der Griechischen Urkunden des
Mittelalters und der Neueren Zeit, the place where it all began and where Paul Marc and,
from 1920, Franz Dlger laid the foundations for a comprehensive approach to
Byzantine diplomatics (see F. DLGER, Regesten der Kaiserurkunden des ostrmischen
Reiches, 1: Regesten von 5651025, BerlinMunich 1924, introduction, p. v), in 2010
was transformed into a unit of Greek and Byzantine Studies. This is a euphemistic
expression for the inglorious end of programs devoted to Byzantine documentary
sources at German Academies, so that the Corpus, as envisaged in the early twentieth
century, will remain a pious wish forever. What we actually lose can be illustrated by
Hans Eberhard MAYERs outstanding lifes work: Die Urkunden der Lateinischen
Knige von Jerusalem, 4 vols., MGH Diplomata regum Latinorum Hierosolymitanorum,
Hannover 2010. The 830 entries covering the entire spectrum of official acts issued by
the royal chancery of Jerusalem from the time of Godfrey of Bouillon until the conquest
of Acre by Sultan al-Ashraf Khall in 1291, be they transmitted as originals, copies or
secondary records, with exhaustive bibliographical references and thorough analytical
comments, no doubt form a prime example for modern editions following the
chancery principle (Kanzleiprinzip) and for studies on medieval chanceries in East
and West. The four volumes of this work provide the best possible texts according to the
state of transmission of each charter and all known facts concerning the diachronic
development of formulaic patterns, external characteristics and working habits of
scribes employed in Jerusalem and Acre over the two centuries of the kingdoms exi-
stence. With a brief glance in the index, one can easily examine all sorts of phenomena
related to the royal chancery and modes of expression used therein.
In order to do something similar with regard to the Byzantine imperial chancery of
Constantinople, one has to browse various widely dispersed and often barely accessible
nineteenth-century editions, individual studies and the 22 volumes of the Archives de
lAthos series published so far. The handbook of F. DLGER and J. KARAYANNOPULOS,
Byzantinische Urkundenlehre, Erster Abschnitt: Die Kaiserurkunden, Munich 1968, is
still an indispensable guide to basic information concerning the characteristics and
categories of imperial charters, but largely outdated as regards the bibliography, the
presentation of the material and the methodological approach. In particular, the
problem of describing and analyzing Byzantine documents on the basis of rules and
terms adopted from western diplomatics makes itself increasingly felt and calls for a
new conceptual framework based on genuine Byzantine usages (for this discussion, see
O. KRESTEN, . Eine wenig bekannte Formel der groen
kaiserlichen Privilegienurkunde in Byzanz, in: Studi sulle societ e le culture del medio-
evo per Girolamo Arnaldi, ed. L. GATTO P. SUPINO MARTINI, Florence 2002, 277300;
CH. GASTGEBER, Die unpersnliche kaiserliche Selbstbezeichnung: Entwicklung und
Wandlung 8671204, Rmische Historische Mitteilungen 45 [2003] 117148). As for all
other issuing authorities of the Byzantine world, be they secular or ecclesiastical, public
or private, we are still in urgent need of much basic research work, such as reliable cata-
logues of the surviving material, more accurate categorizations and modes of descript-
ion for a sound typology of documents and so on. The collective volume: Sylloge diplo-
matico-palaeographica I: Studien zur byzantinischen Diplomatik und Palographie, ed.
CH. GASTGEBER O. KRESTEN, Vienna 2010, gathers a number of representative studies
opening new paths for future research. Recent handbooks on aspects of western medi-
eval diplomatics, such as R. HRTEL, Notarielle und kirchliche Urkunden im frhen und
hohen Mittelalter, Wien Mnchen 2011, clearly show the wide gap specialists in
Byzantine diplomatics still have to cover.
In 2009 A. E. MLLER in collaboration with J. PREISER-KAPELLER and A. RIEHLE
published the last of the revised volumes of F. DLGERs Regesten der Kaiserurkunden
des ostrmischen Reiches, which covers the years 565867 and thus, along with part 1/2
published in 2003, closes the gap of revised editions of summaries of imperial charters
for the middle Byzantine period from 565 to 1204. Both volumes certainly constitute a
remarkable step forward in comparison to the first edition of 1924, but admittedly are
still a far cry from the standards set by BHMERs Regesta Imperii for the Western
Empire. In part this is due to differing concepts, for Dlgers summaries from the outset
have been strictly limited to official acts issued by the imperial chancery, i. e., letters,
treaties, other documents related to diplomatic contacts, various types of solemn
charters, administrative orders, decrees and laws. BHMERs work and its subsequent
revised editions at least as far as the volumes covering the period from the
Carolingians to the Staufer emperors are concerned also include types of imperial
actions not necessarily connected with the production of an official act, all chronological
data and the itinerary of German emperors. More serious is the fact that MLLERs
revised edition, because of strict time limits and insufficient resources, was not able to
re-examine the available primary sources and secondary bibliography to the extent it
would have been desirable from a scholarly point of view. In many cases Dlgers text is
repeated unaltered, without any essential additions reflecting the progress in the
scholarly discourse of the past 85 years. A major challenge certainly constitutes the
broad linguistic diversification of the source material in conjunction with the manifold
literary genres yielding evidence for the existence of imperial documents. In order to
tackle the numerous thorny questions and technical details related to these texts in any
satisfactory way, one needs a broad range of collaborators specialized in many
languages, literary traditions, and cultural environments of the Mediterranean and the
Near East from Late Antiquity to the ninth century. In this respect, it is remarkable that
important progress could be achieved with respect to the evidence transmitted in
Armenian and Syriac sources. The material known from Muslim and Christian Arabic
sources is included as far as it has been made accessible in A. BEIHAMMER, Nachrichten
zum byzantinischen Urkundenwesen in arabischen Quellen (565811), Bonn 2000,
unfortunately without bibliographical updating for the last decade, in which various
important contributions concerning the transition from the late antique to the early
Islamic Near East appeared in print. A matter of (lacking) scholarly fairness is the fact
that, although Beihammers summaries and results in most cases are included unaltered,
the author did not deem it worthwhile to express his thanks for having been granted free
access to this material. All in all, more generous time-frames and a closer coordination
with specialists in various thematic and linguistic fields certainly would have brought
much better results.
A number of special studies on Byzantine imperial documents concern legal aspects
(A. SCHMINCK, Zur Einzelgesetzgebung der makedonischen Kaiser, Fontes Minores 11
[2005] 269323, who tries to identify the privilege of 992 for Venice as forgery datable to
about 1204; K. SMYRLIS, Private property and state finances: the emperors right to
donate his subjects land in the Comnenian period, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies
33 [2009] 115132, which, while attempting to re-interpret the clauses of confiscations
contained in the twelfth-century treaties with the Italian naval powers, unfortunately
ignores the basic terminological differentiation between ownership and possession
clearly expressed in these documents), letters to foreign rulers (C. Sode, Der Brief der
Kaiser Michael II. und Theophilos an Kaiser Ludwig den Frommen, in: Zwischen Polis,
Provinz und Peripherie: Beitrge zur byzantinischen Geschichte und Kultur, ed. L.
HOFFMANN, Wiesbaden 2005, 141158; A. BEIHAMMER, Diplomatische Bemerkungen
zum Briefverkehr zwischen Kaiser Isaak II. Angelos und Sultan Saladin von gypten, in:
Byzantina Mediterranea: Festschrift fr Johannes Koder zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. K.
BELKE et al., Wien 2007, 1328) and the transmission of imperial documents in
non-Byzantine narrative sources (A. MLLER, Die bei Wilhelm von Tyrus berlieferten
Nachrichten zu Auslandsschreiben byzantinischer Kaiser, Rmische Historische
Mitteilungen 50 [2008] 161178).
A hitherto neglected aspect of Byzantine secular chanceries forms the topic of a new
research project that concerns documentary sources of Mainland Greece in the
thirteenth century and is carried out by Rudolf STEFEC under the direction of Otto
Kresten at the Institute of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies in Vienna. Apart from a
chapter in F. DLGERs Schatzkammern des heiligen Berges, in 1940, modern scholar-
ship, while primarily focusing on the Empire of Nicaea and the Lascarid dynasty, has
largely neglected the official acts issued by the despots of Epirus, Thessaly and Thessa-
lonica. The expected results of this program will be a presentation of newly discovered
material transmitted as copies in insufficiently known manuscripts, a new edition of al-
ready known copies and original documents and a comprehensive catalogue of summa-
ries concerning all secondary records on official acts of Byzantine despots. In addition, a
new analysis and edition of the cartulary of the monasteries Macrinitissa and Nea Petra
in the vicinity of Volos is planned. For an example of a recently published despotic
document, namely a charter of donation issued in 1386 by the despoina Maria Angelina
of Ioannina, see D. Z. SOPHIANOS, ,
, in: Realia Byzantina, ed. S. KOTZA-
BASSI G. MAVROMATIS, Byzantinisches Archiv 22, Berlin New York 2009, 267282.
Equally encouraging are current research activities regarding the supreme eccle-
siastical authority in Byzantium, the Patriarchate of Constantinople, where after years of
stagnation some significant progress can be observed. The Institute of Byzantine Studies
at the National Hellenic Research Foundation in Athens announced an edition project
concerning the patriarchal documents preserved in the Monastery of St. John the Theo-
logian in Patmos, an especially important collection including the oldest surviving ori-
ginal charters from the eleventh century. This program is set in the context of a broader
scientific interest in the archive of Patmos and its rich collections of Greek, Latin and
Ottoman official acts.
A number of recent publications in the French periodical Turcica have brought to
light many new facets of the monasterys life in the post-Byzantine period, primarily on
the basis of Ottoman sources, and demonstrate many ways of fruitful cooperation
between specialists of Byzantine ecclesiastical institutions and those of Ottoman provin-
cial administration in the Aegean (N. VATIN, Note prliminaire au catalogue du fonds
ottoman des archives du monastre de Saint-Jean Patmos, Turcica 33 [2001] 333338;
N. VATIN G. VEINSTEIN, Une bont unique au monde: Patmos et son monastre,
havre des musulmans en pril (premire moiti du XVIIe sicle), Turcica 35 [2003]
979; N. VATIN, Les Patmiotes, contribuables ottomans (XVeXVIIe sicles), Turcica 38
[2006] 123153; N. VATIN G. VEINSTEIN E. ZACHARIADOU, Catalogue du Fonds
Ottoman des Archives du Monastre de Saint-Jean Patmos. Les vingt-deux premiers
dossiers, Athens 2011).
Important progress can also be noted in projects of the Centre of Modern Greek
Studies in Athens on post-Byzantine patriarchal documents. In 2008 and 2010 Dimitris
APOSTOLOPOULOS published a thorough analysis and transcription of the so-called
Nomimon of the Great Church, a collection of legal material composed between 1564
and 1593, which comprises a broad range of legal documents from the Byzantine period
and the first 150 years of Ottoman rule ( 1564ci.
1593, 1: , , 2: , -
, Athens 20082010). In 2008 Dimitris APOSTOLOPOULOS and Machi PAIZI-APOSTO-
LOPOULOU published the volume: : -
14541498, containing the 41 oldest surviving post-By-
zantine charters issued in the period between the first appointment of an ecumenical
patriarch by Sultan Mehmet II and the end of the second term of office of Niphon II.
These works in connection with Marie-Helne BLANCHETs seminal work: Georges-
Gennadios Scholarios (vers 1400vers 1472): Un intellectual orthodoxe face la dispari-
tion de lempire byzantin, Paris 2008, considerably deepen our understanding of the
period of transition from late Byzantine to early Ottoman rule and the respective insti-
tutional transformation of the patriarchate of Constantinople in the middle of the fif-
teenth century.
As for the latest news concerning the Viennese edition project of the Register of the
Patriarchate of Constantinople, after a gap of a whole decade since the publication of
volume 3, two volumes covering the years 13641390 are announced to be published in
2012, and the work on volume 6 is well under way. Apart from the editorial work, which
by and large follows the principles established by Herbert HUNGER and Otto KRESTEN in
the 1980s, the research team at the Austrian Academy of Sciences consisting of Christi-
an GASTGEBER, Johannes PREISER-KAPELLER and Ekaterini MITSIOU also developed inno-
vative methodological approaches regarding adequate ways of analyzing and interpret-
ing this extremely rich collection of documents. A conference held in 2009 under the
title Das Patriarchatsregister von Konstantinopel: Eine zentrale Quelle zur Geschichte und
Kirche im spten Byzanz discussed various aspects of the Registers significance as a cru-
cial source for late Byzantine ecclesiastical, legal and social history. In this framework,
the team made successful attempts to apply the method of network analysis to the
synodos endemousa as a central body of ecclesiastical administration and law court in
fourteenth-century Constantinople. In this way tools of interpretation are developed,
which visualize, for example, the densities of interaction between metropolitans, bishops
and other hierarchs in the synod of Constantinople, the quality of intra-personal relati-
onships and processes of decision-making. These innovative steps clearly exemplify the
fruitful results of combining traditional text editions with new interpretative approaches
(E. MITSIOU J. PREISER-KAPELLER, bertritte zur byzantinisch-orthodoxen Kirche in
den Urkunden des Patriarchatsregisters von Konstantinopel, in: Sylloge
diplomatico-palaeographica, ed. GASTGEBERKRESTEN, 233288; for further details
concerning the PRK project, see the 2007 issue of the Austrian periodical Historicum).
The original charters surviving from the chancery of the Patriarchate of Con-
stantinople in the Nicaean and Palaeologan periods all in all 56 pieces issued between
1237 and 1452 form the object of a study currently prepared by Luca PIERALLI under
the title I documenti originali della cancelleria patriarcale costantinopolitana in et pa-
leologa. As this work includes the re-examination of all available data and, wherever
possible, the autopsy of the documents in the archives preserving them, it certainly will
bring an important advance in comparison to the only hitherto available manual, the
Rgestes of Laurent and Darrouzs, which are exclusively based on the evidence known
through the secondary literature. In this way, the author attempts to reconstruct the
historical developments of the characteristics of patriarchal documents during the
period in question, as far as the scarcity of surviving material and the vast lacunae in the
documentation allow.
The project Byzantine documentary sources of the Nicaean Empire (12041261),
which is being carried out at the University of Cyprus under the direction of Alexander
BEIHAMMER, is dedicated, on the one hand, to the most important collection of imperial,
administrative and private documents of the period in question, the cartulary of the
monastery of Lemviotissa (NB, hist. gr. 125), which chronologically goes beyond the
year 1261 well into the 1280s, and, on the other, to the surviving documents of the
patriarchate of Constantinople in exile from Michael Autorianos to the second
patriarchate of Arsenios (12611264). This material 81 pieces of varying length, two of
which are known in a Church Slavonic and a Latin translation respectively, while two
others are fragmentary is for the greatest part preserved as copies in about 100 theo-
logical and juridical MSS widely dispersed in manuscript collections in Europe and the
Near East. This program, therefore, aims at a systematic investigation of the quite com-
plicated manuscript tradition of the documents in question as well as at a modern
edition gathering material, which for the time being can be studied only with the aid of
various outdated prints, hardly accessible special studies and LAURENTs Rgestes. As a
whole, it becomes increasingly apparent that in a few years time the history of the
chancery of the late Byzantine Patriarchate from the watershed of 1204 until the trans-
formative period in the fifteenth century will be much better known than ever before
regarding the internal institutional developments, the working habits and modes of
expressions of the scribes and the evidence provided by these texts for the ecclesiastical,
legal, social and economic aspects of late Byzantine society. This may also be an incen-
tive for the composition of a reliable manual of ecclesiastical documents, which is no
doubt one of the most significant desiderata in Byzantine diplomatics.
Other types of Byzantine official acts, such as administrative documents issued by
subordinate authorities and the great number of private charters, are usually treated in
the framework of research endeavors focusing on monastic archives and cartularies. The
research team of the French Archives de lAthos series, having published Vatopedi II in
2006, is currently preparing Vatopedi III (forthcoming in 2012) and Chilandariou II, the
publication of which is to be expected in the near future. Otto KRESTEN and Christian
GASTGEBER in Vienna are finishing their new edition of the cartulary of Mount Latros,
while an important volume providing a survey of the monasterys history and detailed
historical comments to each surviving document has been published by Ephi RAGIA,
, , -
, Athens 2008. As
mentioned above, the Cypriot project on the documents of Nicaea is currently prepar-
ing a new edition of the Lemviotissa cartulary, which intends to replace the old nine-
teenth-century edition in volume 4 of the Acta and diplomata graeca by F. MIKLOSICH
and J. MLLER. As for the Pontus region, we now have a reprint of the 1927 edition by F.
I. USPENSKIJ and V. N. BENEEVI of the cartulary of the monastery of Vazelonos near
Trebizond, including a detailed introduction to the history of the monastery, its manu-
scripts, the relevant work of the two famous Russian scholars and extensive comments
on the documents ( Acta . -
13

15

., ed. K.
PAPOULIDES H. PETROPOULOS, Thessalonica 2007; see also G. MAUROMATES A. ALE-
XAKES, Acta . .
, in: Realia Byzantina 151166).
Since all these programs are primarily focusing on collections of individual recipients
(monastic cartularies) and archives rather than specific types of documents, the research
topics and questions arising from this material unavoidably focus on matters related to
the institutional, social and economic environment of certain monastic centers no
Byzantine archive or cartulary of a secular authority or landholder has come down to us
as well as on the geographical conditions of the areas in which these centers and their
estates are located. Systematic examinations of aspects of diplomatics in the strict sense
cannot be done on the sole basis of individual collections, but have to take into account
the overall state of transmission of certain types and categories of documents within the
broadest possible framework and including all particularities emanating from local
traditions, chancery practices and working assumptions of scribes. An indispensible
prerequisite for coming to reliable conclusions in these matters is the existence of com-
prehensive surveys of the surviving material between Italy and the eastern and northern
fringes of the Byzantine world. At least one advantage of the tremendous losses of
Byzantine archives and documents from the Middle Ages to our days is the fact that,
apart from individual copies transmitted in dispersed and frequently insufficiently
investigated manuscripts, we have a relatively clear idea of what we have and where the
material is preserved. At the moment the Institute of Byzantine Research in Vienna is
preparing a database for Byzantine private charters which is hoped to be accessible via
the homepage of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in the near future (for the project,
see M. Schaller, : Beobachtungen zu einer
byzantinischen Gerichtsurkunde, in: Junge Rmer Neue Griechen, ed. M. POPOVI J.
PREISER-KAPELLER, Vienna 2008, 211221; O. KRESTEN M. SCHALLER, Diplomatische,
chronologische und textkritische Beobachtungen zu Urkunden des Chartulars B des Io-
annes Prodromos-Klosters bei Serrhai, in: Sylloge diplomatico-palaeographica, ed.
GASTGEBERKRESTEN, 179232).
Last but not least, a word on the so-called marginal areas of the Byzantine cultural
zone, which did not produce Byzantine documents in the strict sense, but because of a
strong Byzantine substrate were based on Greek chancery traditions and administrative
practices and thus exhibited all kinds of cross-cultural influences and hybrid forms (see,
for example, A. BEIHAMMER, Griechische Briefe und Urkunden aus dem Zypern der
Kreuzfahrerzeit: Die Formularsammlung eines kniglichen Sekretrs im Vaticanus
Palatinus graecus 367, Nicosia 2007, which provides an edition and analysis of the most
important collection of Greek documents preserved from the royal and ecclesiastical
chanceries in Frankish Cyprus; for a broader geographical framework, see the studies
collected in: Diplomatics in the Eastern Mediterranean 10001500: Aspects of
Cross-Cultural Communication, ed. A. BEIHAMMER M. PARANI CH. SCHABEL, The
Medieval Mediterranean 74, Leiden 2008). In addition, papal letters and other docu-
ments emanating from the ecclesiastical institutions of the Latin Church in former
Byzantine and overwhelmingly Orthodox regions, deeds written by western notaries
working in the Latin East and Latin or vernacular documents issued by chanceries of
Frankish feudal lords and Italian colonial regimes frequently tell us a great deal about
the indigenous Greek population and their living conditions under foreign regimes. It is
one of the paradoxes in Byzantine history that this material, thanks to the unbroken
continuity of Italian archives and the papal chancery, has come down to us in much
greater numbers than any of the proper Byzantine archival sources. At a whole, there is
an undiminished scholarly output concerning the Greek documents of Norman Italy
and Sicily preserved in local ecclesiastical archives or, even more important, in the
extraordinarily rich collection of the Fondo Messina in the Archivo Ducal Medinaceli,
as is reflected in studies on types of charters and formulaic patterns and in new editions
of unpublished or insufficiently known material (Les actes grecs des fonds Aldobrandini
et Miraglia [XI
e
XIII
e
s.], ed. A. GUILLOU, Corpus des Actes Grecs dItalie du Sud et de
Sicile 6, Vatican 2009 [the volume contains a collection of Greek documents gathered
from various monasteries in Calabria by the two seventeenth-century apostolic nuncios
to the Kingdom of Naples, Giacomo and Alessandro Aldobrandini, as well as docu-
ments from the private collection Miraglia]; A. DI LORENZO, Tra retorica e formularit:
Le arenghe degli atti di donazione italo-greci et normanna nel Mezzogiorno continen-
tale, Medioevo greco 9 [2009] 107177; M. RE C. ROGNONI, Gestione della terra ed eser-
cizio del potere in Valle Tuccio [fine secolo XII]: due casi esemplari. Edizione,
comment, dati prosopografici e analisi paleografica di ADM 1324, 1368 e 1333, Jahrbuch
der sterreichischen Byzantinistik 58 [2008] 131146; V. VON FALKENHAUSEN, Roger II.
in der , in: Vaticana et medievalia. Etudes en lhonneur de Louis
Duval-Arnould, ed. J.-M. MARTIN et al., Florence 2008, 117128; V. VON FALKENHAU-
SEN, Documenti greci nellArchivio Storico Diocesano di Palermo, in: Storia e arte nella
scrittura: Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi [Palermo, Palazzo Arcivescovile,
910 novembre 2007], Santa Flavia 2008, 427453; H. ENZENSBERGER, Zu den Titulatu-
ren in den sditalienischen Privaturkunden unter Normannen und Staufern,
4 [2007] 239265; E. CUOZZO, Le platee calabresi di et normanno-sveva e la platea di
Luca Campano, arcivescovo di Cosenza [12031227], 4 [2007] 321330 C.
ROGNONI, Messina 1208: un contratto matrimoniale Greco [ADM 1302], 4
[2007] 331342 V. VON FALKENHAUSEN S. LUCA, Due documenti greci inediti prove-
nienti dallarchivio del Patir, Archivio storico per la Calabria e la Lucania 73 [2006]
7193). Just to single out one of the ongoing projects, it is worth mentioning Alex MET-
CALFEs project on the Arabic documents of Norman Sicily and in particular on the bi-
lingual Greek-Arabic Monreale Census Lists, which contain a great wealth of infor-
mation concerning exact descriptions of estates boundaries and detailed surveys of the
rural population. The edition is expected to bring many new insights in the composition
and further use of these highly complicated and linguistically fascinating texts. Besides,
there is an incessant flow of publications of notarial deeds, administrative acts and
ecclesiastical documents produced in cities and islands under Frankish rule (see, for
example, A. NANETTI, Documenta veneta Corono et Methoni rogata. Euristica e critica
documentaria per gli oculi capitales Communis Veneciarum [secoli XIV e XV], Athens
2007). An important contribution is Chris SCHABEL, Bullarium Cyprium: Papal Letters
Concerning Cyprus, 1: 11961261, 2: 12611314, Nicosia 2010, an edition with exten-
sive summaries of about 500 papal letters concerning the Lusignan kingdom and the
Latin Church of Cyprus. A third volume with summaries covering 13161378 by Jean
Richard with the collaboration of Chris SCHABEL will appear in 2012. The same author
in collaboration with William Bubba Dill DUBA also prepares a volume of papal letters
concerning Frankish Greece (Bullarium Hellenicum), and so in due time apart from
Cyprus we will have at our disposal a comprehensive collection of papal letters covering
the Latin Empire of Constantinople, the Kingdom of Thessalonica and the Principality
of Morea.
In summary, despite some setbacks and reorientations in the realm of research
policies we may say that every ending also contains a beginning, and thus the past five
years brought about a number of remarkable results or ambitious initiatives for new
projects. In the investigation of Byzantine imperial charters we certainly will never reach
the level of Mayers recent edition of the kingdom of Jerusalem, but we are on the verge
of making good progress with respect to the Patriarchate of Constantinople and
Byzantine private acts.