Papers by Evgenios Iverites
Pseudo-Dionysius and Christian Visual Culture, ca. 500–900, 2020
The Corpus Dionysiacum subordinates monks to bishops (and other clergy), while assuming holiness ... more The Corpus Dionysiacum subordinates monks to bishops (and other clergy), while assuming holiness as the norm for the latter, a position in tension with widespread views both before and after Ps.-Dionysius. The present chapter reviews Dionysius’s teaching and examines its reception by three early Byzantine readers of Dionysius: John of Scythopolis, Antiochus of Mar Saba, and Maximus the Confessor. They addressed the tensions between monastic and episcopal authority by formulating ascetic models for clergy and appealing to developing canonical norms for church governance. In this they had both late antique precedents and medieval and modern imitators. The discussion suggests the importance, in this process of reflection, of the use of images, both painted and literary, as symbols that articulate synthesis without obviating tensions.
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The Concept of Beauty in Patristic and Byzantine Theology, 2012
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Journal of Early Christian Studies, Jan 1, 2012
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Doctoral Dissertation by Evgenios Iverites
This is a copy of my complete dissertation, which has been in the public domain for some time now... more This is a copy of my complete dissertation, which has been in the public domain for some time now. You can also download it from ProQuest or DataSpace.
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Conference Presentations by Evgenios Iverites
The paper can be read at: http://ocl.org/piety-of-the-laity-in-byzantium/
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The Pandektes of Antiochos of Mar Saba is one of a large dossier of writings that were provoked b... more The Pandektes of Antiochos of Mar Saba is one of a large dossier of writings that were provoked by the Persian conquest of Jerusalem and surrounding events in the first third of the seventh century. It is often cited by historians for its few but valuable details about contemporary historical events, and occasionally used by patrologists to unearth new patristic citations. But the work’s purpose and its Sitz-im-Leben in a monastic culture of intensive reading and conversation has been largely neglected.
The work consists of a series of ethical discourses, prefaced by a letter to an abbot Eustathios and concluded by a lengthy penitential prayer. Eustathios directed a monastery named Attalinê, in Ankyra of Galatia, where Antiochos had begun his monastic life before moving to Mar Saba. Due to the Persian invasion, the monks of Attalinê had been forced to leave behind their monastery, library included. Eustathios requested of Antiochos a digest of the Scriptures, as an edifying vade mecum for the homeless monks.
Each of the 130 chapters deals with a particular virtue or vice, addressing it primarily through patristic quotations, followed by a collection of supporting scriptural texts. It is not exactly a florilegium, given Antiochos’ active role in paraphrasing and adapting his texts. The patristic sources include both pre-Nicene Fathers—Ignatios of Antioch, Polycarp of Smyrna, Hermas of Rome, Irenaios of Lyons, the pseudo-Clementine Epistles to Virgins—and post-Nicene ascetical authors, including Evagrios of Pontos, Diadochos of Photikê and John of Karpathos. The selection must reflect to some degree the availability of books in the monasteries in the environs of Jerusalem. It thus provides us with evidence for how authors at the end of late antiquity drew on the developing patristic canon and interpreted it for their own didactic purposes.
Antiochos primarily speaks to the monastic readership for which the work was requested, but he also sought to make it useful to a wider audience. At certain points he hints at oral delivery; perhaps Antiochos tried the discourses out on locals before sending off the polished form to the distant Galatians. Furthermore, in the course of the work, Antiochos provides evidence for the ubiquity of interactions between monks and laypeople, including frequent conversations on spiritual topics, and seeks to advise monks on how such visits should be conducted in order to edify laypeople while preserving monastic detachment.
With its traces of both written citations and spoken teachings, the Pandektes offers an important window into both the literate and oral culture of Palestinian monasticism in the early seventh century. It also shows how the two were organically interwoven and mutually influential, and how the fruits of such interaction might be collected in a book that was sent far away, in a monastic and literary network extending to Galatia. As such, it is an important test case for reading circles and cultures in the early Byzantine period.
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Maximus the Confessor wrote frequently to high secular officials of the Byzantine state. Recent r... more Maximus the Confessor wrote frequently to high secular officials of the Byzantine state. Recent research has studied this correspondence as a component of his struggle on behalf of Chalcedonian dyothelete theology against various opposing doctrines. But the element of spiritual guidance in these letters is often overlooked. Maximus in fact stands in a long line of philosophers enagaged in teaching and advising those in power, which was one of the most ubiquitous tasks of philosophy in the Greek and especially the Roman world. He uses certain elements of the Greco-Roman tradition of Seelenleitung—such as Stoic terminology regarding kathêkonta and ta eph’hêmin, as well as mental exercises designed to train onself to remember one’s place in the cosmos—but adapts them and reinteprets them for a Christian context. I will focus my presentation on these elements in Maximus’s Epistles, turning to his Treatise on the Lord’s Prayer and Centuries on Love for the spiritual and psychological theory that underlies his advice. Thus I will show how he develops the role of the ancient teacher of the soul in a Christian mode. As a corollary I will also consider how the sophisticated philosophical pedigree of this form of guidance relates to the Christian practice of spiritual fatherhood that was being developed in monastic contexts.
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Herakleios ist oft als der erste „byzantinische“ Kaiser gennant, weil seine Herrschaft durch betr... more Herakleios ist oft als der erste „byzantinische“ Kaiser gennant, weil seine Herrschaft durch beträchtliche Umsetzungen des oströmischen Reiches sich auszeichnet, sowohl in Kriegsereignissen als in ideologischem Selbstbewusstsein. Seine offizielle Annahme des kurzes Titels von Pistos en Christôi basileus (gläubiger in Christo Kaiser) ist eine wichtige Etappe der Entwicklung des christlichen römischen Kaiseridee. Doch die klarste theologische Aussprache dieses neuen christlichen Begriff ist in der Dichtung des Patriarchatsdiakon Georg von Pisidia zu erfinden. Seine erhebliche Schriften waren nicht bloße Propaganda fürs herakleianische Regime, sondern auch ein aufmerksames und überzeugendes Programm von kaiserlicher Frömmigkeit. Georg hat Einzelteile der langen griechischen-römischen Überlieferung von politischer Philosophie mit der Heiligen Schrift verbunden, wie seine christliche Vorgänger. Seiner sonderliche Beitrag war die Auswertung des aszetisches-mönchisches Ideal in kaiserlichem Rahmen, sodass Herakleios nicht nur als Gesetzgeber und General, sondern auch als Seelsorger und sogar also Mystiker vorgestellt wird. Namentlich hat Georg die Schlüsselbegriffe von merimna/phrontis (Sorge) und eros/epithymia/pothos (Begierde/Sehnsucht) positiv ausgelegt, um ein hoches ethisches Wunschbild der kaiserlichen Frömmigkeit zu schaffen. Zuerst hat dies als Rechtfertigung für den Usurpator Herakleios und als Durchhalteparole im dunkelen Zeitraum der persischen Vormachtstellung gewirkt. Dennoch später hat Georg seinen Gedanke an Herakleios’ spektakülaren Siegen angepasst, als Grundlage zum erwarteten neuen Zeitalter der römischen christlicher Weltbeherrschung. Der militärishe Triumpalismus hat nicht lang gedauert infolge der verheerenden Eingriffen der Muslimen. Georgs ethische Ideen sind indessen bestehen geblieben, sodass sie das byzantinischen Mittelalter beeinflusst haben.
Herakleios is often called the first “Byzantine” emperor, since his reign marks substantial shifts in the political fortunes and ideological self-consciousness of the east Roman Empire. His official adoption of the simple title “Faithful king in Christ” is heralded as the sign of the full Christianization of the imperial office, which had begun three centuries before with Constantine the Great. Yet the boldest and most theological expression of this new Christian imperial office can be found in the poetry of George of Pisidia, a highly-placed deacon of the Great Church of Constantinople. His writings were not merely propaganda for the Herakleian regime, but also a thoughtful and persuasive program of imperial piety. He combined the terminology of the long Greco-Roman tradition of political panegyric with a Christian content based on the Scriptures and the ascetical-monastic ideal. The resulting synthesis exalted the role of the emperor not only as legislator and general but as pastor and even as mystic. In particular, George interpreted the key themes of merimna/phrontis (care) and eros/pothos (erotic love) to create a high ethical ideal of imperial piety. At first this constituted a justification for the usurpation of Herakleios and an exhortation in the dark hours of Persian victory. But afterward George incorporated his ideas into his poems celebrating the unexpected triumph of the emperor and the expected inauguration of a new age of Roman Christian dominance. The military triumphalism did not long outlast Herakleios, given the catastrophic Arabic invasions, but the ethical ideas continued to be relevant in the Byzantine Middle Ages.
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The Vita of John the Merciful by Leontios of Neapolis has been much mentioned but little studied.... more The Vita of John the Merciful by Leontios of Neapolis has been much mentioned but little studied. Apart from questions concerning the text and its various recensions, there has been some literary and historical analysis of the methods of Leontios and his reliability. In this paper I would like to venture into a study of the authority of the patriarch John vis-à-vis the monks of his city.
John is primarily known for his charitable activities, the exceeding liberality of which lends him the air of a holy fool, like that other subject of Leontios’s pen, Symeon of Emesa. But his epithet of “Merciful” could be equally applied to his gentle use of the wide-ranging authority he exercised as patriarch of the third see of the Roman Empire, Alexandria. In particular, his reticence in judging (seemingly) wayward monks stands out as a consistent tenet of his time in office, and its (seemingly) indiscriminate application marks him out as a holy fool just as much as his alms-giving. This practice must be considered in the context of John’s own bios and politeia: a widower rather than a life-long celibate, but a strict ascetic who relied on monastic advisers such as John Moschos and Sophronios, founded monasteries and virtually turned Alexandria into a vast monastery (according to the pious rhetoric of the hagiographer). His own ascetic self-cultivation and his relationships with the monks mark him out as a model holy bishop in late antiquity. Yet to understand his particular place within this paradigm, it is necessary to consider more closely the older theological sources of his renunciation of judgment and the actual mechanics of his interactions with the monks and other clergy. Such study reveals that he does not completely abandon his role as judge, but rather exercises it in the sometimes theatrical but always discerning exercise of arbitration, mediation, and correction—precisely as did the Desert Fathers whose own radical renunciation of judgment, depicted in texts of the apophthegmatic genre, informed his own practice.
The fact that most of this comes from the pen of Leontios of course complicates and enriches the question. The extent to which he reworked his sources is a serious question, but in this particular study it must be remembered that he too was a bishop who had authority and monks on his mind, and was also working within the same broader literary tradition of theology and ascetic spirituality as his subject John.
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Book Reviews by Evgenios Iverites
The Medieval Review, 2017
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Source: Journal of Religion 96/2 (April 2016): 295–296
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In: The Classical Review 65/1 (April 2015): 189–191
Copyright Cambridge University Press
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Congresses/Seminars by Evgenios Iverites
Florovsky Symposium 2016
Bringing forth treasures new and old:
Themes in Contemporary
Orthodox Th... more Florovsky Symposium 2016
Bringing forth treasures new and old:
Themes in Contemporary
Orthodox Theology
In Memory of Fr Matthew Baker
May 7, 2016
at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, Brookline MA
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PSEUDO-DIONYSIUS AND THE ARTS (TWO SESSIONS)
ORGANISER:
Dr. Francesca Dell’Acqua (University ... more PSEUDO-DIONYSIUS AND THE ARTS (TWO SESSIONS)
ORGANISER:
Dr. Francesca Dell’Acqua (University of Salerno)
International scholars from art history, Byzantine and Latin philology, and the history of philosophy will be invited to participate in two connected interdisciplinary sessions provisionally entitled The Visual Rhetoric of Hierarchy: Pseudo-Dionysius and the Arts. The sessions will focus on various questions that have never been specifically tackled before. The first is whether Dionysius’ hierarchical vision of the celestial and terrestrial realms could be considered a consequence of a wider late antique mentality and not simply a development of the Neoplatonic legacy. In Late Antiquity both political and ecclesiastical life were dominated by a well-organized hierarchical system, and the arts tendentially organized a hierarchical display of elements suggesting an ordered status of the terrestrial and celestial realm, while at the same time subverting the classical, naturalistic reproduction of the visible. In fact, hierarchy and order, light and harmony, equalled beauty. The second question is the demonstration of the fact that Ps.-Dionysian thought is immensely important not only for the history of theology and philosophy, but also for the development of ‘visual thinking’ – a way of memorizing, organizing, and delivering information that affected theological and philosophical writing, preaching, and the production of visual arts. The third question is how Dionysian philosophical system related to the materiality and visualization of the world. The forth question is the developments of Dionysian aesthetic terminology between Neoplatonism and Christianity. The fifth question is how Dionysian concepts were adopted by iconophiles and iconoclasts in the ‘image struggle’, and how they affected the conception of works of art. The two coordinated sessions in Leeds would develop further topics addressed at a workshop entitled The Knowledge of Ps.-Dionysius in the West until the Carolingian Translations, hosted by Prof. Paravicini Bagliani at SISMEL (Società Internazionale per lo Studio del Medioevo Latino, Florence) in Florence on April 9, 2014. Acknowledging the successful collaboration of experts in various humanistic disciplines, Paravicini Bagliani warmly suggested that a second workshop should take further the established interdisciplinary collaboration on Ps.-Dionysius, and that the results of the two meetings in Firenze and Leeds should be published in the journal he directs entitled Micrologus. Nature, Sciences and Medieval Societies.
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This workshop, to be held in three sessions, will explore the reception and reshaping of patristi... more This workshop, to be held in three sessions, will explore the reception and reshaping of patristic themes concerning the Virgin Mary in the Byzantine theological and liturgical tradition between the sixth and tenth centuries. Following official recognition of Mary’s important role as ‘Theotokos’ (‘God-bearer’) at the council of Ephesus (431), liturgical and popular devotion to the Virgin developed rapidly from the late fifth century onward. The first session of the workshop will deal with hymnography between the sixth and ninth centuries, starting with the imaginative contribution and enduring influence of Romanos the Melodist. The second session will examine the homilies associated with the Marian feasts that were being introduced into the liturgical calendar between the sixth and eighth centuries. In the third and final session, our attention will turn to a corpus of largely unstudied hagiographical texts that were composed in honour of the Virgin Mary in the ninth and tenth centuries. The narrative strategies, biblical exegesis, and theological preoccupations of these Lives differ in significant ways from conventional liturgical treatment of the Virgin; however, these texts also reveal influence from earlier apocryphal, patristic, and historical sources to a degree not evident in the liturgical material. The development of doctrine and devotion concerning the Virgin Mary in the Late Antique period has been heavily studied in recent years, sometimes creating the impression that later contributors had little to offer, short of repeating traditional formulas. It is the aim of this workshop to prove that Byzantine writers, working creatively within a variety of literary and liturgical genres, continued from the sixth century onward to develop new theological insights, literary techniques, and spiritual reflection on Mary, the Mother of God.
My paper:
Mary as «scala caelestis» in Eighth and Ninth Century Italy
The ‘crypt’ of the abbot Epiphanius (824-42) in the monastery of San Vincenzo al Volturno (Isernia, central Italy), in the former Langobardia Minor, displays what is usually recognized as the most important painted cycle in the early medieval southern Italy. The present paper concentrates on an image of the Virgin depicted in the vault of the apse. She sits on a throne, holding a book where is written «beatam me dicent,» a quotation from the Magnificat hymn (Luke 1,46-55) – the words with which Mary, after the Annunciation, addressed her cousin Elizabeth. The throne, the crown, and five archangels paraded in the lower section of the vault as celestial guardians, make her appear as the Queen of Heaven ruling with her Son, who is depicted on a throne above her in the vault. The painted cycle of the crypt has been analysed by generations of art historians, among whom Pietro Toesca (1904) was the first to trace a connection between its contents and the writings of the Gaulish author Ambrosius Autpertus († 784), a monk, briefly abbot, and a renowned theologian active at San Vincenzo al Volturno in the second half of the eighth century. Toesca explained the scene of the Virgin in the vault with a passage of Autpertus’ Sermo de adsumptione sanctae Mariae, where Mary, after her transitus is presented as «super angelos elevatam cum Christo regnare», as «reginam caelorum» with Him as «regem … angelorum». Autpertus quotes the Magnificat in the same context, celebrating the humility of Mary that made her the «scala caelestis,» i.e. the ladder to Heaven from which God descended to Earth – thus adopting a new metaphor for describing her role in the history of Salvation. In the West, before Autpertus, the word scala is to be found indeed in a great number of western Church Fathers. But in Ambrose, in his contemporary Zeno of Verona and in Jerome, ladder appears with reference to the Cross; in Jerome and Zeno with reference to the concordance of the two Testaments; in Augustine, Jerome, Cassiodorus, Caesarius of Arles, Isidore and Bede with reference to Jacob’s ladder. As for Bede, in another passage, when recalling the teaching of Benedict of Nursia, he says that the rungs in Jacob’s ladder are made of humility, since humility is the way to spiritual perfection in the monastic mentality. Benedict of Nursia had in fact written in his monastic Rule that the ladder represents our terrestrial life, and only by having a humble heart can the ladder be raised by God to Heaven. It appears then that the early Western monastic interpretation of Jacob’s ladder as a ‘ladder of humility’ that represents the difficult ascent to God, in the doctrinal landscape of Autpertus overlapped with the Byzantine metaphor of Mary as ‘ladder to Heaven,’ a metaphor widespread by the Akathistos and by the early eighth-c. Byzantine homiletic production. But historians of theology has not investigated the origins of Autpertus’ phraseology, notwithstanding the fact his above-mentioned homily is the earliest extant original homily in Latin for the feast of the Dormitio celebrated on the 15th of August.
In the array of epithets and metaphors developed by the eastern tradition on Mary, she is called «joy of all generations» in the famous hymn Akathistos (IX, 17), which was known and sung also in the West by Greek-speaking communities. The main iconophile writers of the early eighth century connected the Magnificat to the moment of the transitus in their homilies on the Dormitio. Among them, Andrew of Crete declared the Magnificat as the most suitable praise for Mary. John of Damascus observed that Mary truly predicted that she would be called blessed by all generations, not from the moment of her death but from the moment of the conception of Christ, and that death has not made her blessed, but she has made death glorious, destroying its horror and showing death to be a joy. Germanos of Constantinople asked the Virgin to guide the steps of his mind with her ready hand on the ladder to Heaven, she who rightly said that all generations of men and women would call her blessed. Although the modalities of transmission of early iconophile homilies to the West have not been investigated, it remains the case that Autpertus adopts the same phrasing, metaphors, epithets to describe Mary, her Assumption into Heaven, her role in the history of Salvation. These homilies need to be seen as the missing link between Eastern Mariology and Autpertus, who is generally acknowledged as the first Western medieval Mariologist. This paper is aimed at illustrating how the literary image of Mary taken up to Heaven developed by early iconophile authors in the East has been received a few decades later in the West by Autpertus, and how this literary image was eventually translated in visual imagery in Autpertus’ monastery in the years 824-42, pre-dating the earliest examples of the image of the Dormitio/Koimesis in which Mary is shown on her death bed surrounded by the Apostles. This will be accomplished not through a mechanical comparison of the painted image to earlier theological writings, but by trying to reconstruct the modalities of circulation of theological concepts between East and West in the period of the ‘image struggle’, their influence on the religious mentality, and their ‘translation’ into visual imagery.
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Books by Evgenios Iverites
This book explores how the Virgin Mary's life is told in hymns, sermons, icons, art, and other me... more This book explores how the Virgin Mary's life is told in hymns, sermons, icons, art, and other media in the Byzantine Empire before AD 1204. A group of international specialists examines material and textual evidence from both Byzantine and Muslim-ruled territories that was intended for a variety of settings and audiences and seeks to explain why Byzantine artisans and writers chose to tell stories about Mary, the Mother of God, in such different ways. Sometimes the variation reflected the theological or narrative purposes of story-tellers; sometimes it expressed their personal spiritual preoccupations. Above all, the variety of aspects that this holy figure assumed in Byzantium reveals her paradoxical theological position as meeting-place and mediator between the divine and created realms. Narrative, whether 'historical', theological, or purely literary, thus played a fundamental role in the development of the Marian cult from Late Antiquity onward.
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This is a "teaser" for the published edition of the fragments of the Ecclesiastical History of Ge... more This is a "teaser" for the published edition of the fragments of the Ecclesiastical History of Gelasius of Caesarea, which was published in January 2018. The entire book can be purchased at:
https://www.degruyter.com/view/product/472381
[Summary from above web site and back cover of printed edition:]
Gelasius, the Nicene bishop of Caesarea Maritima for roughly the last third of the fourth century, has been overshadowed by his more famous uncle and patron Cyril of Jerusalem. Gelasius’ works are preserved only fragmentarily in later authors. The most important of his writings was a church history, which supplemented and continued that of his eminent predecessor Eusebius. Later ecclesiastical historians and hagiographers, such as Rufinus of Aquileia, drew on Gelasius’ history extensively, although usually without attribution. It furnished them with a model for Nicene historiography and with material on topics such as the youth of the emperor Constantine, the discovery of the True Cross in Jerusalem, the Council of Nicaea, and the beginnings of Christianity in Ethiopia and Georgia. The fragments of Gelasius’ Ecclesiastical History are presented here systematically for the first time. They are accompanied by the fragments of his doctrinal writings as well as all known testimonia about the bishop’s life and work. The edition is introduced by a thorough discussion of the sources and includes a facing English translation and notes.
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IHT Book Series by Evgenios Iverites
This is a "teaser" for the published edition of the fragments of the Ecclesiastical History of Ge... more This is a "teaser" for the published edition of the fragments of the Ecclesiastical History of Gelasius of Caesarea, which was published in January 2018. The entire book can be purchased at: https://www.degruyter.com/view/product/472381 [Summary from above web site and back cover of printed edition:] Gelasius, the Nicene bishop of Caesarea Maritima for roughly the last third of the fourth century, has been overshadowed by his more famous uncle and patron Cyril of Jerusalem. Gelasius’ works are preserved only fragmentarily in later authors. The most important of his writings was a church history, which supplemented and continued that of his eminent predecessor Eusebius. Later ecclesiastical historians and hagiographers, such as Rufinus of Aquileia, drew on Gelasius’ history extensively, although usually without attribution. It furnished them with a model for Nicene historiography and with material on topics such as the youth of the emperor Constantine, the discovery of the True Cross in Jerusalem, the Council of Nicaea, and the beginnings of Christianity in Ethiopia and Georgia. The fragments of Gelasius’ Ecclesiastical History are presented here systematically for the first time. They are accompanied by the fragments of his doctrinal writings as well as all known testimonia about the bishop’s life and work. The edition is introduced by a thorough discussion of the sources and includes a facing English translation and notes.
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News by Evgenios Iverites
The Reception of the Virgin in Byzantium: Marian Narratives in Texts and Images (ed. Thomas Arentzen & Mary B. Cunningham), 2019
The edited volume The Reception of the Virgin in Byzantium: Marian Narratives in Texts and Images... more The edited volume The Reception of the Virgin in Byzantium: Marian Narratives in Texts and Images (ed. Thomas Arentzen & Mary B. Cunningham) is being published by Cambridge University Press August 15. This new contribution to Marian historiography includes contributions from leading scholars of visual art, hagiography, hymnography and more.
Contributors: Thomas Arentzen, Leslie Brubaker, Maximos Constas, Mary B. Cunningham, Francesca Dell’Acqua, Maria Evangelatou, Georgia Frank, Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Evgenios Iverites, Elizabeth Jeffreys, Derek Krueger, Andrea Olsen Lam, Maria Lidova, Damaskinos Olkinuora, Eirini Panou, and Stephen J. Shoemaker.
The book launch will take place in Rainolds Room at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, on Tuesday 20th August, 6 pm – please note, it is by invitation only.
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Papers by Evgenios Iverites
Doctoral Dissertation by Evgenios Iverites
Conference Presentations by Evgenios Iverites
The work consists of a series of ethical discourses, prefaced by a letter to an abbot Eustathios and concluded by a lengthy penitential prayer. Eustathios directed a monastery named Attalinê, in Ankyra of Galatia, where Antiochos had begun his monastic life before moving to Mar Saba. Due to the Persian invasion, the monks of Attalinê had been forced to leave behind their monastery, library included. Eustathios requested of Antiochos a digest of the Scriptures, as an edifying vade mecum for the homeless monks.
Each of the 130 chapters deals with a particular virtue or vice, addressing it primarily through patristic quotations, followed by a collection of supporting scriptural texts. It is not exactly a florilegium, given Antiochos’ active role in paraphrasing and adapting his texts. The patristic sources include both pre-Nicene Fathers—Ignatios of Antioch, Polycarp of Smyrna, Hermas of Rome, Irenaios of Lyons, the pseudo-Clementine Epistles to Virgins—and post-Nicene ascetical authors, including Evagrios of Pontos, Diadochos of Photikê and John of Karpathos. The selection must reflect to some degree the availability of books in the monasteries in the environs of Jerusalem. It thus provides us with evidence for how authors at the end of late antiquity drew on the developing patristic canon and interpreted it for their own didactic purposes.
Antiochos primarily speaks to the monastic readership for which the work was requested, but he also sought to make it useful to a wider audience. At certain points he hints at oral delivery; perhaps Antiochos tried the discourses out on locals before sending off the polished form to the distant Galatians. Furthermore, in the course of the work, Antiochos provides evidence for the ubiquity of interactions between monks and laypeople, including frequent conversations on spiritual topics, and seeks to advise monks on how such visits should be conducted in order to edify laypeople while preserving monastic detachment.
With its traces of both written citations and spoken teachings, the Pandektes offers an important window into both the literate and oral culture of Palestinian monasticism in the early seventh century. It also shows how the two were organically interwoven and mutually influential, and how the fruits of such interaction might be collected in a book that was sent far away, in a monastic and literary network extending to Galatia. As such, it is an important test case for reading circles and cultures in the early Byzantine period.
Herakleios is often called the first “Byzantine” emperor, since his reign marks substantial shifts in the political fortunes and ideological self-consciousness of the east Roman Empire. His official adoption of the simple title “Faithful king in Christ” is heralded as the sign of the full Christianization of the imperial office, which had begun three centuries before with Constantine the Great. Yet the boldest and most theological expression of this new Christian imperial office can be found in the poetry of George of Pisidia, a highly-placed deacon of the Great Church of Constantinople. His writings were not merely propaganda for the Herakleian regime, but also a thoughtful and persuasive program of imperial piety. He combined the terminology of the long Greco-Roman tradition of political panegyric with a Christian content based on the Scriptures and the ascetical-monastic ideal. The resulting synthesis exalted the role of the emperor not only as legislator and general but as pastor and even as mystic. In particular, George interpreted the key themes of merimna/phrontis (care) and eros/pothos (erotic love) to create a high ethical ideal of imperial piety. At first this constituted a justification for the usurpation of Herakleios and an exhortation in the dark hours of Persian victory. But afterward George incorporated his ideas into his poems celebrating the unexpected triumph of the emperor and the expected inauguration of a new age of Roman Christian dominance. The military triumphalism did not long outlast Herakleios, given the catastrophic Arabic invasions, but the ethical ideas continued to be relevant in the Byzantine Middle Ages.
John is primarily known for his charitable activities, the exceeding liberality of which lends him the air of a holy fool, like that other subject of Leontios’s pen, Symeon of Emesa. But his epithet of “Merciful” could be equally applied to his gentle use of the wide-ranging authority he exercised as patriarch of the third see of the Roman Empire, Alexandria. In particular, his reticence in judging (seemingly) wayward monks stands out as a consistent tenet of his time in office, and its (seemingly) indiscriminate application marks him out as a holy fool just as much as his alms-giving. This practice must be considered in the context of John’s own bios and politeia: a widower rather than a life-long celibate, but a strict ascetic who relied on monastic advisers such as John Moschos and Sophronios, founded monasteries and virtually turned Alexandria into a vast monastery (according to the pious rhetoric of the hagiographer). His own ascetic self-cultivation and his relationships with the monks mark him out as a model holy bishop in late antiquity. Yet to understand his particular place within this paradigm, it is necessary to consider more closely the older theological sources of his renunciation of judgment and the actual mechanics of his interactions with the monks and other clergy. Such study reveals that he does not completely abandon his role as judge, but rather exercises it in the sometimes theatrical but always discerning exercise of arbitration, mediation, and correction—precisely as did the Desert Fathers whose own radical renunciation of judgment, depicted in texts of the apophthegmatic genre, informed his own practice.
The fact that most of this comes from the pen of Leontios of course complicates and enriches the question. The extent to which he reworked his sources is a serious question, but in this particular study it must be remembered that he too was a bishop who had authority and monks on his mind, and was also working within the same broader literary tradition of theology and ascetic spirituality as his subject John.
Book Reviews by Evgenios Iverites
Congresses/Seminars by Evgenios Iverites
Bringing forth treasures new and old:
Themes in Contemporary
Orthodox Theology
In Memory of Fr Matthew Baker
May 7, 2016
at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, Brookline MA
ORGANISER:
Dr. Francesca Dell’Acqua (University of Salerno)
International scholars from art history, Byzantine and Latin philology, and the history of philosophy will be invited to participate in two connected interdisciplinary sessions provisionally entitled The Visual Rhetoric of Hierarchy: Pseudo-Dionysius and the Arts. The sessions will focus on various questions that have never been specifically tackled before. The first is whether Dionysius’ hierarchical vision of the celestial and terrestrial realms could be considered a consequence of a wider late antique mentality and not simply a development of the Neoplatonic legacy. In Late Antiquity both political and ecclesiastical life were dominated by a well-organized hierarchical system, and the arts tendentially organized a hierarchical display of elements suggesting an ordered status of the terrestrial and celestial realm, while at the same time subverting the classical, naturalistic reproduction of the visible. In fact, hierarchy and order, light and harmony, equalled beauty. The second question is the demonstration of the fact that Ps.-Dionysian thought is immensely important not only for the history of theology and philosophy, but also for the development of ‘visual thinking’ – a way of memorizing, organizing, and delivering information that affected theological and philosophical writing, preaching, and the production of visual arts. The third question is how Dionysian philosophical system related to the materiality and visualization of the world. The forth question is the developments of Dionysian aesthetic terminology between Neoplatonism and Christianity. The fifth question is how Dionysian concepts were adopted by iconophiles and iconoclasts in the ‘image struggle’, and how they affected the conception of works of art. The two coordinated sessions in Leeds would develop further topics addressed at a workshop entitled The Knowledge of Ps.-Dionysius in the West until the Carolingian Translations, hosted by Prof. Paravicini Bagliani at SISMEL (Società Internazionale per lo Studio del Medioevo Latino, Florence) in Florence on April 9, 2014. Acknowledging the successful collaboration of experts in various humanistic disciplines, Paravicini Bagliani warmly suggested that a second workshop should take further the established interdisciplinary collaboration on Ps.-Dionysius, and that the results of the two meetings in Firenze and Leeds should be published in the journal he directs entitled Micrologus. Nature, Sciences and Medieval Societies.
My paper:
Mary as «scala caelestis» in Eighth and Ninth Century Italy
The ‘crypt’ of the abbot Epiphanius (824-42) in the monastery of San Vincenzo al Volturno (Isernia, central Italy), in the former Langobardia Minor, displays what is usually recognized as the most important painted cycle in the early medieval southern Italy. The present paper concentrates on an image of the Virgin depicted in the vault of the apse. She sits on a throne, holding a book where is written «beatam me dicent,» a quotation from the Magnificat hymn (Luke 1,46-55) – the words with which Mary, after the Annunciation, addressed her cousin Elizabeth. The throne, the crown, and five archangels paraded in the lower section of the vault as celestial guardians, make her appear as the Queen of Heaven ruling with her Son, who is depicted on a throne above her in the vault. The painted cycle of the crypt has been analysed by generations of art historians, among whom Pietro Toesca (1904) was the first to trace a connection between its contents and the writings of the Gaulish author Ambrosius Autpertus († 784), a monk, briefly abbot, and a renowned theologian active at San Vincenzo al Volturno in the second half of the eighth century. Toesca explained the scene of the Virgin in the vault with a passage of Autpertus’ Sermo de adsumptione sanctae Mariae, where Mary, after her transitus is presented as «super angelos elevatam cum Christo regnare», as «reginam caelorum» with Him as «regem … angelorum». Autpertus quotes the Magnificat in the same context, celebrating the humility of Mary that made her the «scala caelestis,» i.e. the ladder to Heaven from which God descended to Earth – thus adopting a new metaphor for describing her role in the history of Salvation. In the West, before Autpertus, the word scala is to be found indeed in a great number of western Church Fathers. But in Ambrose, in his contemporary Zeno of Verona and in Jerome, ladder appears with reference to the Cross; in Jerome and Zeno with reference to the concordance of the two Testaments; in Augustine, Jerome, Cassiodorus, Caesarius of Arles, Isidore and Bede with reference to Jacob’s ladder. As for Bede, in another passage, when recalling the teaching of Benedict of Nursia, he says that the rungs in Jacob’s ladder are made of humility, since humility is the way to spiritual perfection in the monastic mentality. Benedict of Nursia had in fact written in his monastic Rule that the ladder represents our terrestrial life, and only by having a humble heart can the ladder be raised by God to Heaven. It appears then that the early Western monastic interpretation of Jacob’s ladder as a ‘ladder of humility’ that represents the difficult ascent to God, in the doctrinal landscape of Autpertus overlapped with the Byzantine metaphor of Mary as ‘ladder to Heaven,’ a metaphor widespread by the Akathistos and by the early eighth-c. Byzantine homiletic production. But historians of theology has not investigated the origins of Autpertus’ phraseology, notwithstanding the fact his above-mentioned homily is the earliest extant original homily in Latin for the feast of the Dormitio celebrated on the 15th of August.
In the array of epithets and metaphors developed by the eastern tradition on Mary, she is called «joy of all generations» in the famous hymn Akathistos (IX, 17), which was known and sung also in the West by Greek-speaking communities. The main iconophile writers of the early eighth century connected the Magnificat to the moment of the transitus in their homilies on the Dormitio. Among them, Andrew of Crete declared the Magnificat as the most suitable praise for Mary. John of Damascus observed that Mary truly predicted that she would be called blessed by all generations, not from the moment of her death but from the moment of the conception of Christ, and that death has not made her blessed, but she has made death glorious, destroying its horror and showing death to be a joy. Germanos of Constantinople asked the Virgin to guide the steps of his mind with her ready hand on the ladder to Heaven, she who rightly said that all generations of men and women would call her blessed. Although the modalities of transmission of early iconophile homilies to the West have not been investigated, it remains the case that Autpertus adopts the same phrasing, metaphors, epithets to describe Mary, her Assumption into Heaven, her role in the history of Salvation. These homilies need to be seen as the missing link between Eastern Mariology and Autpertus, who is generally acknowledged as the first Western medieval Mariologist. This paper is aimed at illustrating how the literary image of Mary taken up to Heaven developed by early iconophile authors in the East has been received a few decades later in the West by Autpertus, and how this literary image was eventually translated in visual imagery in Autpertus’ monastery in the years 824-42, pre-dating the earliest examples of the image of the Dormitio/Koimesis in which Mary is shown on her death bed surrounded by the Apostles. This will be accomplished not through a mechanical comparison of the painted image to earlier theological writings, but by trying to reconstruct the modalities of circulation of theological concepts between East and West in the period of the ‘image struggle’, their influence on the religious mentality, and their ‘translation’ into visual imagery.
Books by Evgenios Iverites
https://www.degruyter.com/view/product/472381
[Summary from above web site and back cover of printed edition:]
Gelasius, the Nicene bishop of Caesarea Maritima for roughly the last third of the fourth century, has been overshadowed by his more famous uncle and patron Cyril of Jerusalem. Gelasius’ works are preserved only fragmentarily in later authors. The most important of his writings was a church history, which supplemented and continued that of his eminent predecessor Eusebius. Later ecclesiastical historians and hagiographers, such as Rufinus of Aquileia, drew on Gelasius’ history extensively, although usually without attribution. It furnished them with a model for Nicene historiography and with material on topics such as the youth of the emperor Constantine, the discovery of the True Cross in Jerusalem, the Council of Nicaea, and the beginnings of Christianity in Ethiopia and Georgia. The fragments of Gelasius’ Ecclesiastical History are presented here systematically for the first time. They are accompanied by the fragments of his doctrinal writings as well as all known testimonia about the bishop’s life and work. The edition is introduced by a thorough discussion of the sources and includes a facing English translation and notes.
IHT Book Series by Evgenios Iverites
News by Evgenios Iverites
Contributors: Thomas Arentzen, Leslie Brubaker, Maximos Constas, Mary B. Cunningham, Francesca Dell’Acqua, Maria Evangelatou, Georgia Frank, Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Evgenios Iverites, Elizabeth Jeffreys, Derek Krueger, Andrea Olsen Lam, Maria Lidova, Damaskinos Olkinuora, Eirini Panou, and Stephen J. Shoemaker.
The book launch will take place in Rainolds Room at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, on Tuesday 20th August, 6 pm – please note, it is by invitation only.
The work consists of a series of ethical discourses, prefaced by a letter to an abbot Eustathios and concluded by a lengthy penitential prayer. Eustathios directed a monastery named Attalinê, in Ankyra of Galatia, where Antiochos had begun his monastic life before moving to Mar Saba. Due to the Persian invasion, the monks of Attalinê had been forced to leave behind their monastery, library included. Eustathios requested of Antiochos a digest of the Scriptures, as an edifying vade mecum for the homeless monks.
Each of the 130 chapters deals with a particular virtue or vice, addressing it primarily through patristic quotations, followed by a collection of supporting scriptural texts. It is not exactly a florilegium, given Antiochos’ active role in paraphrasing and adapting his texts. The patristic sources include both pre-Nicene Fathers—Ignatios of Antioch, Polycarp of Smyrna, Hermas of Rome, Irenaios of Lyons, the pseudo-Clementine Epistles to Virgins—and post-Nicene ascetical authors, including Evagrios of Pontos, Diadochos of Photikê and John of Karpathos. The selection must reflect to some degree the availability of books in the monasteries in the environs of Jerusalem. It thus provides us with evidence for how authors at the end of late antiquity drew on the developing patristic canon and interpreted it for their own didactic purposes.
Antiochos primarily speaks to the monastic readership for which the work was requested, but he also sought to make it useful to a wider audience. At certain points he hints at oral delivery; perhaps Antiochos tried the discourses out on locals before sending off the polished form to the distant Galatians. Furthermore, in the course of the work, Antiochos provides evidence for the ubiquity of interactions between monks and laypeople, including frequent conversations on spiritual topics, and seeks to advise monks on how such visits should be conducted in order to edify laypeople while preserving monastic detachment.
With its traces of both written citations and spoken teachings, the Pandektes offers an important window into both the literate and oral culture of Palestinian monasticism in the early seventh century. It also shows how the two were organically interwoven and mutually influential, and how the fruits of such interaction might be collected in a book that was sent far away, in a monastic and literary network extending to Galatia. As such, it is an important test case for reading circles and cultures in the early Byzantine period.
Herakleios is often called the first “Byzantine” emperor, since his reign marks substantial shifts in the political fortunes and ideological self-consciousness of the east Roman Empire. His official adoption of the simple title “Faithful king in Christ” is heralded as the sign of the full Christianization of the imperial office, which had begun three centuries before with Constantine the Great. Yet the boldest and most theological expression of this new Christian imperial office can be found in the poetry of George of Pisidia, a highly-placed deacon of the Great Church of Constantinople. His writings were not merely propaganda for the Herakleian regime, but also a thoughtful and persuasive program of imperial piety. He combined the terminology of the long Greco-Roman tradition of political panegyric with a Christian content based on the Scriptures and the ascetical-monastic ideal. The resulting synthesis exalted the role of the emperor not only as legislator and general but as pastor and even as mystic. In particular, George interpreted the key themes of merimna/phrontis (care) and eros/pothos (erotic love) to create a high ethical ideal of imperial piety. At first this constituted a justification for the usurpation of Herakleios and an exhortation in the dark hours of Persian victory. But afterward George incorporated his ideas into his poems celebrating the unexpected triumph of the emperor and the expected inauguration of a new age of Roman Christian dominance. The military triumphalism did not long outlast Herakleios, given the catastrophic Arabic invasions, but the ethical ideas continued to be relevant in the Byzantine Middle Ages.
John is primarily known for his charitable activities, the exceeding liberality of which lends him the air of a holy fool, like that other subject of Leontios’s pen, Symeon of Emesa. But his epithet of “Merciful” could be equally applied to his gentle use of the wide-ranging authority he exercised as patriarch of the third see of the Roman Empire, Alexandria. In particular, his reticence in judging (seemingly) wayward monks stands out as a consistent tenet of his time in office, and its (seemingly) indiscriminate application marks him out as a holy fool just as much as his alms-giving. This practice must be considered in the context of John’s own bios and politeia: a widower rather than a life-long celibate, but a strict ascetic who relied on monastic advisers such as John Moschos and Sophronios, founded monasteries and virtually turned Alexandria into a vast monastery (according to the pious rhetoric of the hagiographer). His own ascetic self-cultivation and his relationships with the monks mark him out as a model holy bishop in late antiquity. Yet to understand his particular place within this paradigm, it is necessary to consider more closely the older theological sources of his renunciation of judgment and the actual mechanics of his interactions with the monks and other clergy. Such study reveals that he does not completely abandon his role as judge, but rather exercises it in the sometimes theatrical but always discerning exercise of arbitration, mediation, and correction—precisely as did the Desert Fathers whose own radical renunciation of judgment, depicted in texts of the apophthegmatic genre, informed his own practice.
The fact that most of this comes from the pen of Leontios of course complicates and enriches the question. The extent to which he reworked his sources is a serious question, but in this particular study it must be remembered that he too was a bishop who had authority and monks on his mind, and was also working within the same broader literary tradition of theology and ascetic spirituality as his subject John.
Bringing forth treasures new and old:
Themes in Contemporary
Orthodox Theology
In Memory of Fr Matthew Baker
May 7, 2016
at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, Brookline MA
ORGANISER:
Dr. Francesca Dell’Acqua (University of Salerno)
International scholars from art history, Byzantine and Latin philology, and the history of philosophy will be invited to participate in two connected interdisciplinary sessions provisionally entitled The Visual Rhetoric of Hierarchy: Pseudo-Dionysius and the Arts. The sessions will focus on various questions that have never been specifically tackled before. The first is whether Dionysius’ hierarchical vision of the celestial and terrestrial realms could be considered a consequence of a wider late antique mentality and not simply a development of the Neoplatonic legacy. In Late Antiquity both political and ecclesiastical life were dominated by a well-organized hierarchical system, and the arts tendentially organized a hierarchical display of elements suggesting an ordered status of the terrestrial and celestial realm, while at the same time subverting the classical, naturalistic reproduction of the visible. In fact, hierarchy and order, light and harmony, equalled beauty. The second question is the demonstration of the fact that Ps.-Dionysian thought is immensely important not only for the history of theology and philosophy, but also for the development of ‘visual thinking’ – a way of memorizing, organizing, and delivering information that affected theological and philosophical writing, preaching, and the production of visual arts. The third question is how Dionysian philosophical system related to the materiality and visualization of the world. The forth question is the developments of Dionysian aesthetic terminology between Neoplatonism and Christianity. The fifth question is how Dionysian concepts were adopted by iconophiles and iconoclasts in the ‘image struggle’, and how they affected the conception of works of art. The two coordinated sessions in Leeds would develop further topics addressed at a workshop entitled The Knowledge of Ps.-Dionysius in the West until the Carolingian Translations, hosted by Prof. Paravicini Bagliani at SISMEL (Società Internazionale per lo Studio del Medioevo Latino, Florence) in Florence on April 9, 2014. Acknowledging the successful collaboration of experts in various humanistic disciplines, Paravicini Bagliani warmly suggested that a second workshop should take further the established interdisciplinary collaboration on Ps.-Dionysius, and that the results of the two meetings in Firenze and Leeds should be published in the journal he directs entitled Micrologus. Nature, Sciences and Medieval Societies.
My paper:
Mary as «scala caelestis» in Eighth and Ninth Century Italy
The ‘crypt’ of the abbot Epiphanius (824-42) in the monastery of San Vincenzo al Volturno (Isernia, central Italy), in the former Langobardia Minor, displays what is usually recognized as the most important painted cycle in the early medieval southern Italy. The present paper concentrates on an image of the Virgin depicted in the vault of the apse. She sits on a throne, holding a book where is written «beatam me dicent,» a quotation from the Magnificat hymn (Luke 1,46-55) – the words with which Mary, after the Annunciation, addressed her cousin Elizabeth. The throne, the crown, and five archangels paraded in the lower section of the vault as celestial guardians, make her appear as the Queen of Heaven ruling with her Son, who is depicted on a throne above her in the vault. The painted cycle of the crypt has been analysed by generations of art historians, among whom Pietro Toesca (1904) was the first to trace a connection between its contents and the writings of the Gaulish author Ambrosius Autpertus († 784), a monk, briefly abbot, and a renowned theologian active at San Vincenzo al Volturno in the second half of the eighth century. Toesca explained the scene of the Virgin in the vault with a passage of Autpertus’ Sermo de adsumptione sanctae Mariae, where Mary, after her transitus is presented as «super angelos elevatam cum Christo regnare», as «reginam caelorum» with Him as «regem … angelorum». Autpertus quotes the Magnificat in the same context, celebrating the humility of Mary that made her the «scala caelestis,» i.e. the ladder to Heaven from which God descended to Earth – thus adopting a new metaphor for describing her role in the history of Salvation. In the West, before Autpertus, the word scala is to be found indeed in a great number of western Church Fathers. But in Ambrose, in his contemporary Zeno of Verona and in Jerome, ladder appears with reference to the Cross; in Jerome and Zeno with reference to the concordance of the two Testaments; in Augustine, Jerome, Cassiodorus, Caesarius of Arles, Isidore and Bede with reference to Jacob’s ladder. As for Bede, in another passage, when recalling the teaching of Benedict of Nursia, he says that the rungs in Jacob’s ladder are made of humility, since humility is the way to spiritual perfection in the monastic mentality. Benedict of Nursia had in fact written in his monastic Rule that the ladder represents our terrestrial life, and only by having a humble heart can the ladder be raised by God to Heaven. It appears then that the early Western monastic interpretation of Jacob’s ladder as a ‘ladder of humility’ that represents the difficult ascent to God, in the doctrinal landscape of Autpertus overlapped with the Byzantine metaphor of Mary as ‘ladder to Heaven,’ a metaphor widespread by the Akathistos and by the early eighth-c. Byzantine homiletic production. But historians of theology has not investigated the origins of Autpertus’ phraseology, notwithstanding the fact his above-mentioned homily is the earliest extant original homily in Latin for the feast of the Dormitio celebrated on the 15th of August.
In the array of epithets and metaphors developed by the eastern tradition on Mary, she is called «joy of all generations» in the famous hymn Akathistos (IX, 17), which was known and sung also in the West by Greek-speaking communities. The main iconophile writers of the early eighth century connected the Magnificat to the moment of the transitus in their homilies on the Dormitio. Among them, Andrew of Crete declared the Magnificat as the most suitable praise for Mary. John of Damascus observed that Mary truly predicted that she would be called blessed by all generations, not from the moment of her death but from the moment of the conception of Christ, and that death has not made her blessed, but she has made death glorious, destroying its horror and showing death to be a joy. Germanos of Constantinople asked the Virgin to guide the steps of his mind with her ready hand on the ladder to Heaven, she who rightly said that all generations of men and women would call her blessed. Although the modalities of transmission of early iconophile homilies to the West have not been investigated, it remains the case that Autpertus adopts the same phrasing, metaphors, epithets to describe Mary, her Assumption into Heaven, her role in the history of Salvation. These homilies need to be seen as the missing link between Eastern Mariology and Autpertus, who is generally acknowledged as the first Western medieval Mariologist. This paper is aimed at illustrating how the literary image of Mary taken up to Heaven developed by early iconophile authors in the East has been received a few decades later in the West by Autpertus, and how this literary image was eventually translated in visual imagery in Autpertus’ monastery in the years 824-42, pre-dating the earliest examples of the image of the Dormitio/Koimesis in which Mary is shown on her death bed surrounded by the Apostles. This will be accomplished not through a mechanical comparison of the painted image to earlier theological writings, but by trying to reconstruct the modalities of circulation of theological concepts between East and West in the period of the ‘image struggle’, their influence on the religious mentality, and their ‘translation’ into visual imagery.
https://www.degruyter.com/view/product/472381
[Summary from above web site and back cover of printed edition:]
Gelasius, the Nicene bishop of Caesarea Maritima for roughly the last third of the fourth century, has been overshadowed by his more famous uncle and patron Cyril of Jerusalem. Gelasius’ works are preserved only fragmentarily in later authors. The most important of his writings was a church history, which supplemented and continued that of his eminent predecessor Eusebius. Later ecclesiastical historians and hagiographers, such as Rufinus of Aquileia, drew on Gelasius’ history extensively, although usually without attribution. It furnished them with a model for Nicene historiography and with material on topics such as the youth of the emperor Constantine, the discovery of the True Cross in Jerusalem, the Council of Nicaea, and the beginnings of Christianity in Ethiopia and Georgia. The fragments of Gelasius’ Ecclesiastical History are presented here systematically for the first time. They are accompanied by the fragments of his doctrinal writings as well as all known testimonia about the bishop’s life and work. The edition is introduced by a thorough discussion of the sources and includes a facing English translation and notes.
Contributors: Thomas Arentzen, Leslie Brubaker, Maximos Constas, Mary B. Cunningham, Francesca Dell’Acqua, Maria Evangelatou, Georgia Frank, Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Evgenios Iverites, Elizabeth Jeffreys, Derek Krueger, Andrea Olsen Lam, Maria Lidova, Damaskinos Olkinuora, Eirini Panou, and Stephen J. Shoemaker.
The book launch will take place in Rainolds Room at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, on Tuesday 20th August, 6 pm – please note, it is by invitation only.