Project F01: Fight for survival: The threatening of the Byzantine Empire under Heraclius and the restoring of its political, social, and religious order (ca. 610-630 C.E.)

Abstract

Project F01 has selected what may be described as a re-ordering phase in the Eastern/Early Byzantine Empire – the period in question is 610-630 C.E. The goal is to analyze the (power) political, economic, administrative, cultural, religious, and communicative processes that enabled a hitherto unprecedented mobilization of human and other resources for purposes of restoring an existentially threatened order. Here two issues are of particular interest: a) contemporaneous changes in and to the emperor’s image (the poetry of Georgios Pisides is a chief witness here); and b) the function of the great restitution act passed in 630 C.E.