Byzantinistik

Byzantinistik, or Byzantine studies, is an interdisciplinary field focused on the Byzantine Empire, generally viewed as the Eastern Roman Empire from the late antique period until the conquest of Constantinople in 1453. The subject encompasses political history, institutions, law, religion, culture, and daily life, as well as the empire's reception in Western Europe and the Orthodox world. Core sources include Greek and Latin literary texts, chronicles, legal codes, liturgical and theological material, as well as architectural remains, manuscripts, seals, and coins.

Scholarly work draws on philology, paleography, codicology, diplomacy, art history, archaeology, and digital humanities. Researchers study not only state-centered chronicles but also social history, economy, and administration, including topics such as imperial ideology, church-state relations, military organization, and cross-cultural contacts with Latin Europe, the Islamic world, and the Slavic world.

The tradition developed in German-speaking and other European academia from the 19th century onward, with major centers in universities and dedicated institutes. Byzantinistik is now a global field, with ongoing projects in Turkey, Greece, the Balkans, Russia, and Western Europe, and increasing use of manuscript digitization and online corpora.

Current research often investigates continuities between antiquity and the medieval world, the empire's regional diversity, gender and social history, and Byzantium's cultural legacy, including art, literature, and liturgy. The field remains inherently collaborative, bridging philology and cultural history, and relating Byzantine studies to neighboring disciplines such as medieval studies, Ottoman studies, and Orthodox studies.