“My Lord's Native Land”: Mapping the Christian Holy Land

2007 ◽  
Vol 76 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Ann Smith
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Holy Land ◽  
Cultural Meanings ◽  
Native Land ◽  
Holy Places ◽  
Holy Women ◽  
Cultural Features

In the fourth and early fifth centuries Christians laid claim to the land of Palestine. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the investment of the land of Palestine and its places with Christian historical and cultural meanings, and to trace its remapping as the “holy land.” This map was not a figurative representation of geographical and cultural features; as with all maps, it was an idea. The Christian “holy land” is also an idea, one which did not exist at the beginning of the fourth century, but which, by the mid-fifth century, was a place constructed of a rich texture of places, beliefs, actions, and texts, based in the notion that the landscape provided evidence of biblical truths. When Constantine became a Christian, there was no “holy land”; however, over the succeeding one hundred and thirty years Christians marked and identified many of their holy places in Palestine. The map-makers in this transformation were emperors, bishops, monastics, holy women, and pilgrims who claimed the holy places for Christianity, constructing the land as topographically Christian and mediating this view of their world through their pilgrim paths, buildings, liturgies, and texts. The idea of mapping is used here as an aid to understanding the formation of cultural viewpoints and the validation of ideas and actions that informed the construction of the “holy land.”

St Sabas and the Palestinian Monastic Network under Crusader Rule

2012 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 9-19
Author(s):  
Andrew Jotischky
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Holy Land ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Monastic Reform ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Documentary Sources ◽  
Byzantine Period

The monastery founded in the fifth century by St Sabas, in the Kidron Valley a few kilometres south-east of Bethlehem, has been described as ‘the crucible of Byzantine Orthodoxy’. The original cave cell occupied by Sabas himself grew into a monastic community of the laura type, in which monks lived during the week in individual cells practising private prayer and craft work, but met for communal liturgy on Saturdays, Sundays and feast days. The laura, which differed from the coenobium in the greater emphasis placed on individual meditation, prayer and work, was the most distinctive contribution of the Palestinian tradition to early Christian monasticism. The first laura had been founded in the Judean desert in the fourth century by Chariton, and cenobitic monasteries had been in existence in Palestine both in the desert and on the coastal strip since the same period. Nevertheless, partly as a result of an extensive network of contacts with other foundations, both laurae and cenobitic monasteries, partly through Sabas s own fame as an ascetic, and partly through a burgeoning reputation for theological orthodoxy, St Sabas became the representative institution of Palestinian monasticism in the period between the fifth century and the Persian invasion of 614. The monastery’s capacity to withstand the Persian and Arab invasions of the seventh century, and to adapt to the cultural changes brought by Arabicization, ensured not only its survival but also its continued importance as a disseminator of monastic practice throughout the early Middle Ages. In 1099, when the first crusaders conquered the Holy Land, it was almost the sole survivor of the ‘golden age’ of Palestinian desert monasticism of the early Byzantine period. The monastery continued to prosper under crusader rule. It was an important landowner and its abbot was in the twelfth century a confrater of the Knights Hospitaller. Moreover, it is clear both from varied genres of external documentary sources – for example, pilgrimage accounts and hagiographies – and from the surviving manuscripts produced in the monastery between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, that the monastery’s spiritual life also flourished in this period. The role of St Sabas and Palestinian monasticism within the broader scope of Byzantine monastic reform of the eleventh and twelfth centuries suggests that the continuing function of the monastery at the centre of a wider network of practices and ideals across the Orthodox world engendered a revival of early monastic practices in a period more often associated with decline and the struggle to preserve the integrity of monastic life.

scholarly journals Chrześcijańskie itineraria do miejsc świętych od II do VIII wieku

Vox Patrum ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 57 ◽  
pp. 77-91
Author(s):  
Ryszarda Bulas
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Holy Land ◽  
Spiritual Journey ◽  
Holy Places ◽  
The Cross

The article is a summary of Christian itineraria, documents and letters from a trip to the Holy Land; from Meliton of Sardis letter’s in the second cen­tury, to description of the holy places in Greek Epiphanius of Jerusalem in the eighth century. The author touches the theme of evolution in the approach to the pilgrimage over seven centuries. At the beginning the journey to Jerusalem was sightseeing, historical and descriptive. From the fourth century, pilgrim­age becomes the religious and spiritual journey. In the sixth century it is great phenomenon of religion (the cult of the Holy Wood of the Cross, the cult of relics, eulogia) but also political. From the beginning was associated with the ascetic and monastic ideals. Due to the invasion of Islam in the seventh and eighth centuries, itineraria were mostly copies of previous or notation of ex­periences of other people.

Fortuna in Translation, Fortuna as Translation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniele Miano
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Structural Elements ◽  
Magna Graecia ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter considers the relationship between Fortuna and Tyche as one of translatability. The first half of the chapter focuses on Tyche, with the aim of determining semantic and structural elements common with Fortuna. The second part of the chapter looks at instances in which Fortuna is translated in Greek. The appearance of bronze strigils bearing the epithet soteira from Praeneste in the fourth century BC seems to presuppose this translation, and also points to the salvific meanings of Fortuna as a base for the process of translation. This process of translation had probably occurred through early contacts between Latium, Sicily, and Magna Graecia, where Tyche seems to be associated with salvation already from the fifth century BC. Other instances of translations of Fortuna and Tyche are studied across the Aegean.

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