ABSTRACT
This volume, dedicated to one of the best-known contemporary scholars of Byzantine culture and civilisation, is a fitting reminder also that Byzantine Studies as a disci pline-or rather, as a set of disciplines — has attained a degree of maturity and schol arly interest, indeed popularity, which only a century ago might have appeared to scholars such as Bury or Krumbacher as rather unlikely, even if desirable. The follow ing brief comments reflect a personal commentary on the state of the field, and an effort to contextualise what “Byzantine Studies” means for those involved with it in the last years of the twentieth century.
