Beauty and the Male Body in Byzantium looks into a subject previously ignored in discussions of the Byzantine world: it explores physical beauty as an attribute of the human and, in particular, of the male body through the evidence of imagery and writing from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries. A close look into the workings of beauty in Byzantium reveals it to be attributed equally to the bodies of heroes and villains, saints and sinners, emperors and executioners, angels and eunuchs, manly soldiers and effeminate youths. Praised, admired, but also feared and envied, beauty's power appears to be matched only by the reverence bestowed upon it by Byzantine authors and artists alike. This study of Byzantine perceptions and representations of beauty tilts the balance in our understanding of Byzantium between spirituality and physicality, soul and body. It not only restores beauty to its proper place, but also refines our perception of the Byzantine world.

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Illustration Sources
Introduction
The Byzantine Ideal of Beauty: Definitions and Perceptions
Only Skin Deep: Beauty and Ugliness between Good and Evil
Beauty and Power and Beauty as Power
The Beauty of Broken Bodies: Pain, Eloquence and Emotion
Angels and Eunuchs; the Beauty of Liminal Masculinity
The Fragile Beauty of Soldiers
Conclusion
Endnotes
Bibliography
Index

MYRTO HATZAKI was born in Athens in 1977. She studied History of Art at Warwick University, UK and at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London where she obtained her MA and then her PhD in 2004. She is currently working as a curator at the Ilias Lalaounis Jewelry Museum and the A.G. Leventis Foundation.