The Language of Buildings was a three-year joint project sponsored by the DFG which had been running from November 2018 to April 2022, led by Prof. Dr. Gunnar Brands (Halle-Wittenberg) and Prof. Dr. Marietta Horster (Mainz).
Our main cooperation partners were Prof. G. Greatrex (Ottawa), Prof. Dr. M. Meier (Tübingen), Prof. Dr. H. Leppin (Frankfurt), Dr. F. Montinaro (Tübingen), Prof. Dr. R. Pfeilschifter (Würzburg), and Prof. Dr. G. Makris (Münster). We also cooperated institutionally with the Leibniz-ScienceCampus Mainz/Frankfurt Byzantium between Orient and Occident, the Malalas project in Tübingen, and the Anecdota project in Würzburg.
Aims
The Buildings (De Aedificiis) features in its six books no fewer than 1128 buildings, which the author Procopius ascribes to the East Roman Emperor Justinian (527-565). The eulogistic descriptions are arranged in a geographical sweep from Constantinople to North Africa. The capital city is both the starting point and the touchstone for the building works in Justinian’s empire. Elaborate descriptions that delight literary scholars and archaeologist alike are offset by frequent dry enumerations and plain lists. The result is that the individual books have often received unbalanced regard from modern readers. Indeed, construction works in some cities (e.g., Dara, Jerusalem, Justiniana Prima, Leptis Magna) are described in great detail whereas some regions are only marginally covered (e.g., Alexandria). Individual building projects such as Hagia Sophia are portrayed at length. Digressions on geography or on political history extend the main theme, which is the description of the imperial commitment to building, which Procopius strives to suggest was programmatic and thus an important part of imperial politics.
The Buildings is transmitted in two recensions, a long one (edited by Jakob Haury), and a short version about two-thirds the length of the long recension. Both are attested in the manuscript transmission by the 13th century. How the two recensions relate to one another is still the subject of debate. Both versions were thus included in the project database, accompanied by a revised English translation prepared by members of the project team, based off of Henry Dewing’s translation of 1940.
Many intriguing issues surround the text: Procopius’s decisions in including certain buildings and excluding others, and how he presents them raise questions for the study of imperial politics, cultural history, and archaeology. The project discussed and weighed the literary qualities and composition of the text, the literary tradition it draws on, and its aims. It also considered the historical and cultural context by referencing contemporary texts (e.g., Malalas, Agathias, Paul the Silentiary) in order to generate a new understanding of the text as a whole and interpret it in detail.
In light of the ongoing archaeological research in the regions covered by the Buildings, there is a need to bring together text and material culture critically. As valuable as the Buildings might be to archaeologists, it is as interesting and important to address the omissions and errors found in the text, in light of a constant supply of new data.
The project results will hopefully have widespread impact on scholarly trends for philologists, archaeologists and historians alike, in particular regarding the credibility of the Buildings as a historical and archaeological source, and the commentary aims at a sound re-evaluation of the text as a literary composition. While we created a digital commentary that functioned as a searchable database, it never went online due to copyright concerns regarding the Greek text. It was based on TEI-XML using the GIS reference system as well as bibliographical entries supported by Zotero. It is structured using the Greek text of the long recension, but the short recension appears alongside it for facilitating comparison between the two texts.
The main outcome is a volume containing an in-depth interdisciplinary commentary of Book 1 of the Buildings, accompanied by new English translation and emendations to the Greek text:
M. Ritter, E. Turquois and M. Whiting, Fashioning Sixth-Century Constantinople: Text, Translation and Commentary of Book I of the Buildings by Prokopios of Kaisareia. London (Routledge, 2026).
The project hosted the international conference “Imagery and Aesthetics of Cityscapes in Late Antiquity” in February 2020. We published some of the conference papers as a thematic and structured volume:
M. Ritter, E. Turquois (eds), Imagery and Aesthetics of Late Antique Cities. Bibliothèque de l’Antiquité Tardive 44. Turnhout (Brepols, 2025).
https://www.brepols.net/products/IS-9782503611914-1
Further publications, in chronological sequence:
2025
M. Ritter, The City Foundations of Justinian between Imagery and Reality through the Lenses of Justiniana Prima and Caput Vada, in: M. Ritter, E. Turquois (eds), Imagery and Aesthetics of Late Antique Cities, 145–165. Turnhout: Brepols, 2025.
2024
M. Ritter, The Date of Procopius’ Buildings and the Collapse of the First Dome of Hagia Sophia: A Reassessment. Byzantion 94 (2024) 103–138.
M. Whiting, E. Turquois, Sacred Architecture in Sixth-Century Constantinople: The View from Procopius’ Buildings, in B. Hamarneh, D. Bianchi (eds), Architecture as a Sacred Space: Shaping the Holy in Late Antiquity and Byzantium, 63–81. Vienna: Phoibos Verlag, 2024.
2023
M. Ritter, The Michaelion of Anaplous, Torn asunder: In an attempt to reassemble. Antiquité Tardive 31 (2023) 305–323.
E. Turquois, A Tale of Two Drums: Procopius of Caesarea’s Account of Hagia Sophia and the Holy Apostles. Travaux et mémoires 27 (2023) 221–231.
2022
M. Ritter, Justinianus Eponymus: Überlegungen zur letzten Glanzzeit kaiserlicher Namensverleihungen an Städte. Byzantinische Zeitschrift 115 (2022) 287–340. https://doi.org/10.1515/bz-2022-0011
M. Ritter, Procopius’ Buildings and the Collapse of the First Dome of Hagia Sophia: A Reassessment, in: Z. Kurşun, A. İ. Aydın (eds), 2nd Intern. Hagia Sophia Symposium, 27–29 May 2022. Istanbul 2023, 385–406.
O. Gengler, E. Turquois, A narratological reading of Procopius, in M. Meier, F. Montinaro (eds) A Companion to Procopius of Caesarea. Brill’s Companions to the Byzantine World 11. Leiden 2023, 374–416.
2021
M. Ritter, The Byzantine Afterlife of Procopius’ Buildings. Dumbarton Oaks Papers 75 (2021) 143–169. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27107154
Prof. Gunnar Brands
Christian archaeology and history of arts
Prof. Marietta Horster
Greek sanctuaries, cult organisation and economy of cult, Roman administration and organisation of the Empire, Roman provinces: processes of transformation and social interaction, Greek and Latin literary education and the diffusion and tradition of knowledge
Dr. Max Ritter
Economic history, Byzantine pilgrimage, Byzantine historiography, Roman and Byzantine Paphlagonia, Medieval Cyprus
Dr. Elodie Turquois
Late Antique and Byzantine literature, literary criticism and literary theory, Ekphrasis and the representation of material culture in literature, technological treatises and their literary status, aesthetics and art criticism in Antiquity
Dr. Marlena Whiting
Archaeology of the Late Antique and Byzantine Near East, Byzantine pilgrimage, travel and travel infrastructure in Late Antiquity, gender in Late Antiquity
Clemens von Cramon-Taubadel, student assistant
History and linguistics (B.A.)
former team members:
Julia Krüger-Pfannebecker, student assistant
Digital Methodology in the Humanities and Cultural Sciences (M.A.)
