Restoration and Consolidation of the Byzantine Church of Palaia Episkopi in Tegea, Arcadia

2019 ◽  
pp. 78-87
Author(s):  
Konstantina Siountri
Keyword(s):  
Byzantine Church

Icon(icity) and causality: On the role of indexical semiotic modes in development of Byzantine art

2017 ◽  
pp. 711-726
Author(s):  
Todor Mitrovic
Keyword(s):  
Integrated Approach ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Cultural Patterns ◽  
Byzantine Art ◽  
Semiotic Model ◽  
Iconic Images ◽  
Specific Object ◽  
Byzantine Church ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Indexical Sign

Determined by its biblical origins, the birth of specifically Christian visual culture had to be given through overcoming the inevitable resistance of early church towards images. In order to find its stable place on late antique cultural scene, early byzantine art, thus, had to rely on support of religious and cultural patterns remote of magisterial artistic trends. Among those, contemporary theory recognizes as especially important: 1) cult of relics and 2) sealing practices. Crossing the possibility of theoretical definition of unique semiotic model standing behind those two cultural- religious practices with the fact that after iconoclasm byzantine art will be systematically distanced from both of them, this research attempts to explore the relation between iconophile theory and byzantine artistic production from a yet unexplored interpretative position. Hypothesis that category of indexical sign, as it is proposed by contemporary semiotics (based on Peircean legacy), can be used for extraction of this unique semiotic model is used here as a specific methodological tool for re-approach to both - 1) the pre-iconoclastic need for accentuating the indexical aspects of iconic images and 2) the mystery of post-iconoclastic radical distancing towards such a semiotic need. On the basis of such an integrated approach it is possible not only to search for more precise explanation of co-relations between artistic practices and contemporaneous (iconophile) theory, but to explain curious historical delay in application of this theoretic knowledge in artistic and liturgical realms, together with a late outburst of iconoclastic behaviour provoked by this very delay. Namely, one of the most prominent incarnations of pre-iconoclastic need for ?indexicalisation? of iconic medium, the mysterious Mandylion from Edessa, had very curious role in historical development of post-iconoclastic plastic arts in Byzantium. This specific object was miraculously and undividedly uniting both key indexical aspects of pre-iconoclastic cognitive settings in one icon - causally connected with the archetypehimself. However, exactly this kind of synthetic, relic-seal-image status turned out to be the specific semiotic stumbling stone in the process of application of iconophile theory in liturgical arts. This is why in XI century byzantine church decided to refrain Mandylion from public life for good and lock it in court chapel, under the protection of the emperor himself. As one of the most curious theological decisions of medieval Christianity, this extraordinary semiotic conversion was, actually, the final step in application of the most advanced achievements of the late iconophile theory, which was, at the same time, the first step in development of artistic system relaxed from the pressure of need for legalistic, causal validation of pictorial language.

scholarly journals Eastern Church Fathers on Being Human—Dichotomy in Essence and Wholeness in Deification

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 575
Author(s):  
Olga Chistyakova
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Gregory Of Nyssa ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Anthropology ◽  
Church Father ◽  
Byzantine Church ◽  
God's Image ◽  
Maximus The Confessor

The article traces the formation of Eastern Christian anthropology as a new religious and philosophical tradition within the Early Byzantine culture. The notion “Patristics” is reasoned as a corpus of ideas of the Church Fathers, both Eastern and Western. The term “Eastern Patristics” means the works by Greek-Byzantine Church Fathers, who in the theological disputes with the Western Church Fathers elaborated the Christian creed. Based on an analysis of the texts of Greek-Byzantine Church Fathers, the most important provisions of Eastern Patristics are deduced and discussed, which determined the specificity of Christian anthropology. In this context, different approaches of the Eastern Fathers to the explanation of the Old Testament thesis on the creation of man in God’s image and likeness and the justification of the duality of human essence are shown. Particular attention is paid to considering the idea of deification as overcoming the human dualism and the entire created universe, the doctrine of the Divine Logoi as God’s energies, and the potential elimination of the antinomianism of the earthly and Divine worlds. The article reflects the anthropological ideas of the pre-Nicene Church Father Irenaeus, the non-canonical early Christian work The Shepherd of Hermas, and the teachings on the man of the classical Eastern Patristics period by Athanasius of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa, and Maximus the Confessor.

Byzantine Religious Law in Medieval Italy

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Morton
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Southern Italy ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
Medieval Italy ◽  
Religious Law ◽  
History Of ◽  
Byzantine Church

This book is a historical study of these manuscripts, exploring how and why the Greek Christians of medieval southern Italy persisted in using them so long after the end of Byzantine rule. Southern Italy was conquered by the Norman Hauteville dynasty in the late eleventh century after over 500 years of continuous Byzantine rule. At a stroke, the region’s Greek Christian inhabitants were cut off from their Orthodox compatriots in Byzantium and became subject to the spiritual and legal jurisdiction of the Roman Catholic popes. Nonetheless, they continued to follow the religious laws of the Byzantine church; out of thirty-six surviving manuscripts of Byzantine canon law produced between the tenth and fourteenth centuries, the majority date to the centuries after the Norman conquest. Part I provides an overview of the source material and the history of Italo-Greek Christianity. Part II examines the development of Italo-Greek canon law manuscripts from the last century of Byzantine rule to the late twelfth century, arguing that the Normans’ opposition to papal authority created a laissez faire atmosphere in which Greek Christians could continue to follow Byzantine religious law unchallenged. Finally, Part III analyses the papacy’s successful efforts to assert its jurisdiction over southern Italy in the later Middle Ages. While this brought about the end of Byzantine canon law as an effective legal system in the region, the Italo-Greeks still drew on their legal heritage to explain and justify their distinctive religious rites to their Latin neighbours.

Christian mission in Northern Black Sea region and its geopolitical significance

2020 ◽  
pp. 30-34
Author(s):  
P. Kusenkov
Keyword(s):  
Black Sea ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Black Sea Region ◽  
Christian Mission ◽  
The North ◽  
Trading Posts ◽  
Pax Romana ◽  
Byzantine Church ◽  
Greek Colonization ◽  
Cultural Expansion

The spread of Christianity in the Northern Black Sea Region was a continuation of the vector of cultural expansion into this region, outlined in Antiquity and opposing the region’s stable geopolitical ties in the latitudinal direction, with the steppe world of the nomads of Eurasia. The stages of this process were: the Great Greek colonization on Pontus Euxinus; the spread of Pax Romana to the territory of Crimea; the Christianization of the region and the strengthening of Byzantium in the Northern Black Sea Region through an alliance with the Khazaria and the creation of the Klimata-Cherson thema; finally, the emergence of Italian trading posts and the emergence of Genoese Gazaria. The success of the Christian mission of Byzantium would not have been possible without the oncoming movement from the north, which determined the reception of the Byzantine civilization by Rus’-Russia and predefined the geopolitical contours of the modern world. In the opposite direction there was an advance to the south of Rus’ and the formation of the path “from the Varangians to the Greeks”, sea voyages of the Rus’ princes to Constantinople, the capture of Korsun’Cherson by Vladimir the Saint and the baptism of Rus’, the inclusion of Russia in the system of the Byzantine church administration. At the new historical stage, after the fall of Byzantium, the role of the Christian Orthodox empire passed to Russia, and the processes of intercivilizational interaction in the region changed their vector. But even in the new conditions, the meridional dimension remains incomparably more important than the latitudinal dimension: a fact that determines the future geopolitical perspective.

Bodily Adornment and Modification in Byzantium

2021 ◽  
pp. 98-116
Author(s):  
Alicia Walker
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Church And State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Material Sources ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Byzantine Church ◽  
The One ◽  
And Control

Focusing on Early and Middle Byzantine (fourth-to-twelfth-century) objects, images, and texts, this essay explores the tension between, on the one hand, efforts of the Byzantine church and state to discourage and control bodily adornment and modification and, on the other hand, the extensive evidence of widespread and immoderate engagement with these practices. The enhancement and manipulation of Byzantine bodies is considered as both a real and a metaphoric phenomenon. Evidence culled from secular and sacred, written and material sources demonstrates the importance of bodily adornment and modification to our understanding of Byzantine material and visual culture.

The official attitude of Basil of Caesarea as a Christian bishop towards Greek philosophy and science

1976 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 25-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emmanuel Amand De Mendieta
Keyword(s):  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Byzantine Church ◽  
Western Civilisation

In this paper I wish to deal with a rather specialised topic. But this specialised topic may partly explain what was in fact the official attitude of the Byzantine Church, of its patriarchs, bishops and monks, over the centuries, towards Greek philosophy and science. May I suggest that Greek philosophy and science were, and still are indeed, one of the component factors and inspirations of our renaissance and post-renaissance western civilisation?In order to avoid misunderstanding, I must explain the title of this paper, so that the limitations or strict boundaries of this paper, and also its precise contents, its scope or design may be fully realised.

scholarly journals Modern Icon. Invention of Tradition

2020 ◽  
pp. 155-173
Author(s):  
Виталий Анатольевич Борисов
Keyword(s):  
Silver Age ◽  
Old Russian ◽  
Byzantine Church ◽  
Church Art ◽  
Church Tradition

В статье говорится о том, что современная иконопись - это радикально новое явление культуры, порождённое эпохой модерна. Хотя современные иконоведы настаивают на существовании преемственности между современной иконой и древнерусским и византийским церковным искусством, на самом деле современная иконопись является «изобретением традиции». Её идеология вырастает не из церковного Предания, а из философии «Серебряного века». The article says that modern iconography is a radically new phenomenon of culture, generated by the era of modernity. Although modern iconologists insist on the existence of continuity between the modern icon and the old Russian and Byzantine Church art, in fact, modern iconography is the «invention of tradition». Its ideology grows not from Church Tradition, but from the philosophy of the «silver age».

Excavations at Sparta, 1927: § 3.—The Acropolis, 1926–27

1927 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 37-48
Author(s):  
A. M. Woodward
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Byzantine Church

The principal results of the work of the first two seasons on the Acropolis were described in the Annual two years ago (xxvi. pp. 240–76), and it remains to complete the account for the two following years (1926–27). The task is fairly simple, since the main features of the stratification of the area which yielded finds of predominantly Hellenic date have been already described, and the results obtained from the other parts of the Acropolis which we explored are of much less interest and importance, and can be dismissed briefly. The Byzantine church on the eastern spur of the main summit must be reserved for a separate report.

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