Ruth Macrides


Ruth Iouliani Macrides was a UK-based historian of the Byzantine Empire. At the time of her death, she was Reader in Byzantine Studies at the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Greek Studies at the University of Birmingham. She was an expert in Byzantine history, culture and politics, particularly of the mid-later Byzantine period, and on the reception of Byzantium in Britain and Greece.

Education and career

After graduation from Girls' Latin School in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1967, Macrides received her B.A. in Classics from Columbia University in 1971. She was a Junior Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1975–1976. Macrides was awarded a PhD at King's College, London, in 1978 for a thesis entitled A translation and historical commentary of George Akropolites' History. Akropolites' History was the major Greek source for the Latin occupation of Constantinople in the thirteenth century. Macrides' doctoral supervisor was Donald Nicol. Macrides published her translation in 2007.
After a fellowship at the Institut für Rechtsgeschichte in Frankfurt and a teaching spell at Queen's University Belfast, Macrides was lecturer in Medieval History at the University of St Andrews between 1978 and 1998. She joined the University of Birmingham in 1994, initially sharing a position with her long-time colleague, friend and one-time housemate Leslie Brubaker. She was appointed to a full-time post at Birmingham in 2000. In 2013, she was promoted to Reader in Byzantine Studies at Birmingham.
With Peter Mackridge, Macrides was editor of the prominent journal Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies. Upon her unexpected death, her predecessor as editor, John Haldon, temporarily resumed the editorship. She was convenor of the weekly General Seminar of the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies at Birmingham. At Birmingham, she supervised the doctoral theses of 12 students, of which 10 she had seen to completion.

Awards and honours

Macrides was a Senior Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection. She also held a fellowship at Dumbarton Oaks between January and May 2010, carrying out a project called 'Imperial Ceremonial in Palaiologan Constantinople'. She was a Committee Member for the Society, Arts, and Letters of the British School at Athens. At the time of her death, she was preparing a project on Byzantine co-emperors, to be carried out during a visiting fellowship at the School of Historical Studies at Princeton University in the academic year 2019/20.

Death

Macrides died suddenly in Dundee, Scotland, on 27 April 2019, as a result of a brain hemorrhage. A tribute page was created by the University of Birmingham, with contributions from Macrides' friends, colleagues and students. A Greek Orthodox funeral service for Macrides took place on Tuesday 14 May 2019 at St. Leonard's Chapel, St. Andrews, Scotland.

Books

  • Kinship and Justice in Byzantium, 11th–15th centuries Travel in the Byzantine World: Papers from the Thirty-Fourth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Birmingham, April 2000 George Akropolites: The History History as Literature in Byzantium: Papers from the Fortieth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, University of Birmingham, April 2007
  • ''Pseudo-Kodinos and the Constantinopolitan Court: Offices and Ceremonies''

Selected articles and chapters

  • ‘Saints and sainthood in the early Palaiologan period’, in S. Hackel, ed., The Byzantine Saint, 67–87
  • ‘Poetic justice in the Patriarchate: Murder and cannibalism in the provinces’, in L. Burgmann, M. T. Fögen and A. Schminck, eds., Cupido legum, 137–168
  • ‘The Byzantine godfather’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 11, 139–162
  • ‘Subversion and loyalty in the cult of St Demetrios’, Byzantinoslavica 51, 189–197
  • ‘Dynastic marriages and political kinship’, in J. Shepard and S. Franklin, eds., Byzantine diplomacy, 380–410
  • ‘From the Komnenoi to the Palaiologoi: imperial models in decline and exile’, in P. Magdalino, ed., New Constantines, 269–282
  • ‘“As Byzantine then as it is today”: Pope Joan and Roidis’ Greece’, in D. Ricks and P. Magdalino, eds., Byzantium and the Modern Greek Identity, 73–86
  • ‘The pen and the sword: who wrote the Alexiad?', in Th. Gouma-Peterson, ed., Anna Komnene and her times, 63–81
  • ‘Substitute parents and their children’, in M. Corbier, ed., Adoption et fosterage, 307–319
  • ‘Constantinople: the crusaders' gaze’, in R. Macrides, ed., Travel in the Byzantine World, 193–212
  • ‘George Akropolites' rhetoric’, in E. Jeffreys, ed., Rhetoric in Byzantium, 201–11
  • ‘The thirteenth century in Byzantine historical writing’, in Ch. Dendrinos, J. Harris, E. Harvalia-Crook, J. Herrin, eds., Porphyrogenita: Essays in honour of Julian Chrysostomides, 63–76
  • ‘The ritual of petition’, in P. Roilos and D. Yatromanolakis, eds., Greek Ritual Poetics, 356–70
  • ‘1204: The Greek sources’, in A. Laiou Urbs capta: The fourth Crusade and its consequences; la quatrième croisade et ses conséquences, 143–152
  • ‘The law outside the lawbooks: law and literature’, Fontes Minores XI, 133–145
  • ‘"The reason is not known". Remembering and recording the past. Pseudo-Kodinos as a historian’, in P. Odorico, P.A. Agapitos, M. Hinterberger, L'écriture de la mémoire. La littérarité de l'histographie, 317–330
  • ‘Ceremonies and the city: the court in fourteenth-century Constantinople’, in J. Duindam, T. Artan, M. Kunt, eds., Royal courts in dynastic states and empires: a global perspective, 217–35
  • ‘Trial by ordeal in Byzantium: on whose authority?’, in P. Armstrong, ed., Authority in Byzantium, 31–46
  • ‘The citadel of Byzantine Constantinople’, in S. Redford and N. Ergin, eds., Cities and citadels in Turkey from the Iron Age to the Seljuks, 277–304
  • ‘How the Byzantines wrote history’, in S. Marjanović-Dušanić, ed., Proceedings of the 23rd International Congress of Byzantine Studies : Plenary Papers, 333–339
  • ‘Emperor and church in the last centuries of Byzantium’, Studies in Church History 54, 123–43
  • ‘Women in the late Byzantine court’, in E. Kountoura-Galaki and E. Mitsiou, eds., Women and monasticism in the medieval eastern Mediterranean: decoding a cultural map, 187–206
  • ‘The Logos of Nicholas Mesarites’, in M. Mullett and R. Ousterhout, ed., The Holy Apostles: A lost monument, a forgotten project, and the presentness of the past, 175–191
  • ‘George Akropolites’, in A. Mallett, ed., Franks and crusades in medieval eastern Christian historiography, 125–151