Helen of Troy and the Crusaders: classicising visions of Constantinople in 1204

Dr Foteini Spingou is a cultural historian at the University of Edinburgh working on the broad topics of Memory, Collection, Beauty, and Tradition and Empire. Her expertise lies in the relation of art and literature between the eleventh and fourteenth century Byzantium. She has also worked on late antique Egyptian wall-hangings and I’m an expert in manuscripts. My current project focuses on how Byzantine rhetors presented their beautiful selves using classical ēthos. Her research forms part of the ERC-funded project PAIXUE, “Classicising learning in medieval imperial systems: Cross-cultural approaches to Byzantine paideia and Tang/Song xue”, that traces the evolution of classicising learning in Byzantine and Tang/Song literati culture and relates it to the evolution of the Empires.