Prosopa: Persons Real or Imagined, Kings College London, November 21, 2015

A workshop to launch the latest edition of The Prosopography of the Byzantine World edited by Michael Jeffreys

In 2001 the British Academy Byzantine Prosopography project produced its first publication, The Prosopography of the Byzantine Empire I (641-867), edited by John Martindale with Dion Smythe, and published by Ashgate on a CD-Rom. The database had been designed by John Bradley and Harold Short. In 2015 John Bradley adapted the material for republication, with no alterations to the data, online: it now freely available.

In 2000 the next phase of the project began, drawing on sources from 1025-1204; this was renamed, rather than PBE III, the Prosopography of the Byzantine World. That, and other changes, reflect the contribution of Michael Jeffreys, editor from 2000 to 2015; over the period he, with several subeditors, has been responsible for 3 editions of PBW, in 2006, 2011 and 2015. The 2015 edition will be launched at this event, which is also intended to explore the intellectual implications of these undertakings.

Just as PBE 1 was shaped by the experience of John Martindale, previously editor of the Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire (1971-1992), so PBW was shaped by Michael Jeffreys’ insights as a leading scholar of Byzantine and Modern Greek literature; his focus on ‘textiness’ worked well with John Bradley’s understanding of prosopography as a collection of assertions.

Building a prosopography imposes the need to decide which prosopa qualify for inclusion, and therefore requires some kind of distinction of what is ‘true’ or ‘false’. The papers at this seminar will explore the frontier between history and fiction, between ‘real’ and ‘imagined’ people. Speakers will include John Bradley, Averil Cameron, Michael Jeffreys, Marc Lauxtermann, Tassos Papacostas and Judith Ryder.