ERC Grant for Prof. Dr. Zachary Chitwood

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Professor of Byzantine Studies at LMU, Zachary Chitwood was previously the recipient of an ERC Starting Grant for his project MAMEMS about the monastic republic of Mount Athos in medieval Greece.

The half-millennium between the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632 and the First Crusade in 1096 was a crucial period shaping the beginning of Christian-Muslim relations. Until now, research has tended to overlook how the principal Eastern Christian legal regimes – including those of East Rome (Byzantium), the Islamicate world, and the space in between – grappled with the rise of Islam.

In his new project NOMOS (“The Challenge of Islam and the Transformation of Eastern Christian Normative Regimes, ca. 630-1100”), Zachary Chitwood plans to examine how the normative experts of that time interpreted, circumscribed, and defined the new religion. Moreover, he will investigate how the encounter with Islam itself shaped long-term developments within Eastern Christian legal regimes.