Κάθε μέρα ζητώ το χέρι της και πάλι να κρατήσω. Όσοι τη γνώρισαν καλά το ίδιο λένε. Δεν υπάρχουν τέτοιοι άνθρωποι δίπλα μας, και μία μέρα θα τα πούμε περισσότερο γι' αυτήν. Με τα Χριστιανικά δεδομένα, ήταν μία Αγία. Έδωσε τη ζωή της στους μαθητές της, αγάπησε τον άνθρωπο, έδωσε τα πάντα για να κάνει τον κόσμο καλύτερο.
From Times Online
January 9, 2009
Julian Chrysostomides: specialist in Byzantine history
Julian Chrysostomides lectured on Byzantine history and politics for nearly three decades at the Royal Holloway College, in the University of London. Later she became director of the Hellenic Institute and transformed it into a valuable centre for interdisciplinary research. During her decade in charge, the centre secured funding for full-time lectureships, fellowships, post-graduate studentships and bursaries.
Chrysostomides also helped to establish Britain’s first seminar for postgraduate on the editing of Byzantine texts from manuscripts.
A co-founder of Royal Holloway’s MA in Byzantine Studies, she wrote numerous books on the subject. Perhaps the most acclaimed, Monumenta Peloponnesiaca (1995) was recognised as an important contribution to research on the history of the late Byzantine Peloponnese. She was also lauded for her annotated translation of the Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus’ Funeral Oration on his brother Theodore (1985).
The daughter of an entrepreneur from Capadoccia, Julian Chrysostomides was born in Constantinople in 1928, two years before the ancient capital of Byzantium was renamed Istanbul. Following studies at the Greek Lyceum, she arrived in Oxford in 1950, to read Mods and Greats, having found the atmosphere of the Sorbonne uncongenial. Initially, she was rejected from St Hugh’s College, on the grounds that her English was poor, that she had no Latin, and very little classical Greek. She kept the rejection letter among the pages of her Liddell & Scott Greek-English lexicon, so that she would not forget this initial failure.
Her fortunes changed markedly a year later when an interview with Iris Murdoch secured Chrysostomides a place at St Anne’s. She would later recall that “Instead of testing my knowledge of Greek literature and philosophy, Iris asked me to tell her the story of my life.” Chrysostomides related to Murdoch the difficulties endured by a Greek living in Istanbul, hardships she would later describe as would later recallas a “childhood passed in fear; at school, in the street, everywhere was fear, even at home, for during the Second World War we had to listen to the BBC broadcasts to occupied Europe at night in the dark, in case our Turkish neighbours heard us listening. (Turkey, though ostensibly neutral, was pro-Nazi). With Greece under occupation, there was nobody to raise objections to the treatment we received.”
Moved, Murdoch also secured Chrysostomides a modest bursary, and a five-decade friendship subsequently blossomed between them. She graduated in 1955 just as riots during which the property of Greeks was destroyed, broke out in Istanbul. This led her to decide that it was “no good trying to live in a country in which, though ostensibly a citizen, one was hated so much”. She opted to settle in England, securing, with the support of Murdoch, British citizenship.
However, she did not allow the memory of the harsh treatment meted to Istanbul’s Greeks to prevent her from later “adopting” Turkish students who came to Britain to study ancient and medieval Greek history.
After Oxford Chrysostomides went to Royal Holloway College to read for a BLitt on the subject of the Emperor Manuel II Palaelogus (1391-1425) and his policy regarding the Ottomans. She was supervised by the distinguished Byzantinst Joan Mervyn Hussey, who, in the 1950s, had organised the contents of courses in Byzantine Studies for the degree in history offered at the University of London.
Afterthe first stage of her research, Chrysostomides secured a library post in the Society of Antiquaries. In 1963, she won a bursary from the Virginia Gildersleeve Fellowship which allowed her to do further research in the archives in Venice, a rich source of information on Byzantium.
It had been applied for, without Chrysostomides’ knowledge, by the registrar of Royal Holloway, an act which confirmed her heartfelt belief in the generosity of the English.
While in Venice, Chrysostomides met and was profoundly influenced by the eminent Byzantinist Father Raymond-Joseph Loenertz.
“I must confess this was something that I was not very familiar with," she would later recall. “For a better word, this was the brotherhood of scholars. Its message was simple: one should discuss with and communicate all you know on your subject to your fellow scholars; and if you come across a new source you should pass it on to them without reservation.”
This was a philosophy she sought to make real from then on enthusiastically, collaborating where possible with other experts in her field. In 1988, with the Jesuit Dr Joseph Munitiz and Dr Athanasios Angelou, she co-founded the post-graduate working seminar on editing Byzantine texts. And the same year, with Angelou and Professor Jonathan Riley-Smith, then head of Royal Holloway’s Department of History, Chrysostomides co-founded the college’s MA in Byzantine Studies. Later she helped co-establish an MA in Late Antique and Byzantine Studies.
She saw the size of her department expand dramatically, when in 1985, Bedford College merged with Royal Holloway. In her early days there — she became a lecturer in history in 1965 — the department was small, and its atmosphere placid.
In 1983 Chrysostomides was appointed Senior Lecturer in History, and, in 1992, Reader in Byzantine History. She was never made a professr and refused, as a matter of principle, to apply for promotion. On retiring in 1993 Chrysostomides was awarded an emeritus readership in Byzantine History by the University of London. When offered a visiting professorship several years later, she declined it.She continued to lecture and to write in retirement, and her numerous books covered topics ranging from Byzantine history and political theory to Byzantine women, Venetian commercial activities in the Byzantine Empire, Byzantine perceptions of War and Peace, and, more recently, Byzantium and the rise of the Ottomans.
In collobration with others she published The Letter of the Three Patriarchs to Emperor Theophilos (1997), The Greek Islands and the Sea (2004), ‘Sweet Land …’: Lectures on the History and Culture of Cyprus (2006), and a Catalogue of the Greek Manuscripts in Lambeth Palace Library (2006).
In December 1998, she was appointed Director of the Hellenic Institute at Royal Holloway. For the next decade she would work indefatigably (and without remuneration) to reorganise the institute.
In recognition of her long services to Hellenism and her contribution to Byzantine Studies, in 1999 she was granted the title of Ambassador of Hellenism by the Greek State (1999).
She never married, but adopted the younger son of her twin brother Nikos, who survives her.
Julian Chrysostomides, scholar in Byzantine history, was born on April 21, 1928. She died on October 18, 2008, aged 80
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