Byzantine castrati

2002 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil Moran
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Professional Singers ◽  
John Chrysostom ◽  
Sistine Chapel ◽  
Hagia Sophia ◽  
Byzantine Church ◽  
Hymn Singing ◽  
Early Byzantine

The employment of castrati in the Byzantine Church can be traced back to the choirmaster Brison in the fourth century. Brison was called upon by John Chrysostom to organize the antiphonal hymn-singing in the patriarchal church. Since eunuchs were generally considered to be remnants of a pagan past, castrati are seldom mentioned in early Byzantine sources, but beginning in the tenth century references to eunuchs or castrati became more and more frequent. By the twelfth century all the professional singers in the Hagia Sophia were castrati. The repertory of the castrati is discussed and the question is raised whether the introduction of castrati to the Sistine Chapel was influenced by the employment of castrati in Italo-Greek cloisters.

Excavations at Winchester, 1970: Ninth Interim Report

1972 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Biddle
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Interim Report ◽  
The North ◽  
Complex Development ◽  
German Origin ◽  
Chronological Sequence ◽  
Burial Practice

SummaryExcavations in 1970 took place on three major and two smaller sites. The early Norman chapel discovered this year within the castle at Castle Yard was described in the previous interim report. At Lankhills sixty-eight fourth-century graves were examined, bringing the total excavated to 219. The graves can now be classified in an approximately chronological sequence according to contents and burial practice. At Lower Brook Street early fifth-century pottery of North German origin suggests the presence of mercenary or federate elements in the final stages of the Roman town. St. Mary's Church appears to have originated in the tenth century by the addition of an apse to an earlier rectangular stone building possibly of domestic character. In Houses IX and XII several phases of twelfth-century timber construction were excavated, but Houses X and XI, adjacent to St. Mary's to north and south, seem to have been open plots at this time. The later phases of St. Pancras' Church were examined and the twelfth-century church uncovered. On the Cathedral Green the excavation of Building E showed that it was the south range of a large courtyard complex, probably to be interpreted as the claustral buildings of New Minster in the period c. 1066–1110. Earlier stages may represent the infirmary of the Anglo-Saxon monastery. At Wolvesey Palace the east hall of c. 1130 was stripped and the later phases of its complex development worked out in detail. A ‘reredorter’ block added to the north end of the west hall about 1135 was cleared of many later phases of reconstruction. The excavation of the central courtyard revealed a twelfth-century well-house. A final season will take place in 1971.

Art, Craft, and Theology in Fourth-Century Christian Authors

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morwenna Ludlow
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Detailed Examination ◽  
Fine Art ◽  
Active Response ◽  
Gregory Of Nyssa ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Shared Practice ◽  
John Chrysostom ◽  
Literary Techniques ◽  
Applied Arts

Ancient authors commonly compared writing with painting. The sculpting of the soul was a common philosophical theme. This book takes its starting-point from such figures to recover a sense of ancient authorship as craft. The ancient concept of craft (ars, technē) spans ‘high’ or ‘fine’ art and practical or applied arts. It unites the beautiful and the useful. It includes both skills or practices (like medicine and music) and productive arts like painting, sculpting, and the composition of texts. By using craft as a guiding concept for understanding fourth-century Christian authorship, this book recovers a sense of them engaged in a shared practice which is both beautiful and theologically useful, which shapes souls but which is also engaged in the production of texts. It focuses on Greek writers, especially the Cappadocians (Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa) and John Chrysostom, all of whom were trained in rhetoric. Through a detailed examination of their use of two particular literary techniques—ekphrasis and prosōpopoeia—it shows how they adapt and experiment with them, in order to make theological arguments and in order to evoke an active response from their readership.

Paschal Politics: Deploying the Temple's Destruction against Fourth-Century Judaizers

2008 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 233-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Shepardson
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Jerusalem Temple ◽  
John Chrysostom ◽  
Political Boundaries ◽  
The Temple

AbstractThe fourth-century Syriac writings of Aphrahat and Ephrem, and Greek homilies by the Syrian John Chrysostom, warn Christian congregants against joining Jewish festival celebrations such as Passover. In light of the respected age of Judaism's scriptures and traditions, not all of these authors' church attendees were easily convinced by supersessionist claims about Judaism's invalidity. These authors surpass earlier Christian claims that the Temple's destruction revealed God's rejection of the Jews, by arguing that Jewish scripture requires ritual sacrifices that were confined to the Jerusalem Temple. us without the Temple sacrifices, fourth-century Jewish festivals, these authors claimed, defied God's biblical commands, a declaration with sharp implications for Judaizing Christians. Demonstrating the nuances of this argument, which crossed eastern linguistic and political boundaries, contributes to complex discussions regarding these texts' audiences, highlights distinctive elements that their contexts shared, and reveals an unrecognized role that the Temple's destruction played in fourth-century anti-Judaizing discourse.

“Missa Grecorum” “Missa Sancti Iohannis Crisostomi”: The Oldest Latin Version Known of the Byzantine Liturgies of St. Basil and St. John Chrysostom

Traditio ◽  
1943 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 79-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dom Anselm Strittmatter
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Special Significance ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
John Chrysostom ◽  
Ancient Manuscripts ◽  
Latin Version

The following Latin version, hitherto unpublished, of the Byzantine Liturgies of St. Basil and St. John Chrysostom was generously placed at my disposal by my confrère, the late lamented Dom André Wilmart, O.S.B., who about seventeen years ago discovered and transcribed it from a manuscript purchased at London in 1899 by the Bibliothèque Nationale:Nouv. Acq. lat. 1791Since the manuscript was written in the second half of the twelfth century, this translation is—to put it roughly—at least as old as that of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (= X) made at Constantinople about 1180 by the Pisan interpreter, Leo Tuscus, or that of the Liturgy of St. Basil (= B) made shortly afterward by Nicholas of Otranto. But it is important to note at the outset that the present translation represents a considerably earlier redaction of the Liturgies than do the two aforesaid versions, for we have here, as in the earliest of our manuscripts, theBarberinum S. Marci(=BSM), and several others, the prayers of the celebrant only and a corresponding minimum of rubrics. Of special significance, moreover, are the two following facts: first, the precedence given to B, an arrangement found in comparatively few manuscripts, among them the oldest which we know; and secondly, the occurrence in this same Liturgy of ancient rubrics and of the ancient form of at least one exclamation of the deacon, which point to a very early recension as the original from which the translator worked. On the other hand, over against this ancient form stands a relatively modern text, for not only are certain prayers which appear in the most ancient manuscripts only, missing from this translation, but in those few prayers also in the tradition of which it is possible to distinguish an older from a more recent set of readings, it is the latter which are almost invariably found. Similarly, the indication of certain acclamations by the initial words only (an ancient trait) and the writing out of the ἐκΦωνήσ∊ις in full (a very late practice) constitute another combination of ancient and recent features. But to attempt on the basis of these characteristics to fix the date of either the original or the translation, is to face possibilities only, concerning which it would be useless to speculate.

Rhetors at the wedding

1979 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 104-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. A. Russell
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Second Sophistic ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
High Class ◽  
Main Motive ◽  
Greek Rhetoric ◽  
Early Byzantine

In Lucian's Symposium, one of the wedding guests is a philosopher and another is a grammatikos. The grammatikos provides a bad elegiac epithalamium; the philosopher, who is called Ion, improves the occasion with a speech in which he declares that pederasty offers the best way of life, and the system of communal wives, as recommended in Plato's Republic, is the next best thing.This fantasy, of course, tells us nothing about what went on at weddings. Lucian's main motive is literary parody, of Plutarch's Erotikos or something of the kind. But it may serve to recall something of which we have evidence enough in Greek rhetoric, namely the practice of delivering speeches of some literary pretention at high-class weddings. The educated classes of the cities of the eastern provinces evidently cherished this habit: a display of culture, as well as of wealth, was admired, and elaborate orations took their place, alongside abundance of food and wine, music and song, elaborately decorated bridal chambers and beds, as concomitants of a wedding that was to do both families credit. This is true of the period of the ‘Second Sophistic’, and of its fourth-century and early Byzantine continuations. How far the practice was common before, say, the Antonine age is much less clear.

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.

VIII.—The Palace of Westminster in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries

Archaeologia ◽  
1906 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. R. Lethaby
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Positive Evidence ◽  
Parallel Case ◽  
Edward The Confessor ◽  
The Church

We do not know when the English kings took up their residence at Westminster. Some slight indications suggest that Canute may have first established himself here. It is clear from the name Westminster that the Abbey was first in place, and this is confirmed by the position of the Palace, built along a narrow marshy strip between the better ground of the Abbey precinct and the river. Holyrood seems to be a parallel case of a famous religious house drawing the king's palace to its side. There is no certain evidence for the existence of the Abbey itself until the opening of the last third of the tenth century. The points in favour of Canute's residence at Westminster are as follows. His son Harold was buried in the Abbey, and according to the traditions of the house he was a great benefactor to it, presenting it with many relics, and being much attached to the Abbot Wulnoth. Gaimar, a twelfth-century writer, says that the dispute as to the tide happened at Westminster. “He was in London on the Thames, the tide was flowing near the church called Westminster, and the king stood at the strand on the sand.” The first positive evidence as to the Saxon palace is contained in William of Malmesbury's Chronicle, which tells how King Edward the Confessor was wearing his crown at Westminster, and while sitting at table one Easter Day, surrounded by nobles, he saw a vision.

The Monk as Christian Saint and Exemplar in St John Chrysostom’s Writings

2011 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. 19-28
Author(s):  
Pak-Wah Lai
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Significant Influence ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Common Features ◽  
John Chrysostom ◽  
Christian Literature ◽  
The Church ◽  
Dominant Paradigm

By the time Augustine read the Life of Antony in 386, the biography had already become an international best seller in the Roman Empire. Translated twice into Latin and read in places as far off as Milan and Syrian Antioch, the Egyptian Life also proved to be a significant influence upon hagiographical writing in the late fourth century, the most notable example being the Lives of St Jerome. Consequently, scholars have often taken it to represent the dominant paradigm for sainthood in fourth-century Christianity and the centuries that followed. But is this assumption tenable? The Life of Antony would in all likelihood be read only by the educated elite or by ascetic circles in the Church, and was hardly accessible to the ordinary Christian. More importantly, hagiographical discourse in the fourth century was not restricted to biographies, but pervaded all sorts of Christian literature. This is certainly the case with the writings of St John Chrysostom (c. 349—407), who often presents the Christian monk as a saintly figure in his monastic treatises and his voluminous homilies. Indeed, what emerges from his writings is a paradigmatic saint who is significantly different from that portrayed in the biographies, and yet equally influential among his lay and ascetic audiences. To be sure, Chrysostom’s monastic portraits share some common features with that provided by Athanasius’s Life. Nevertheless, there are also stark differences between the two, and these are the focus of this paper.

Jewelry and Enamels

2021 ◽  
pp. 574-592
Author(s):  
Antje Bosselmann-Ruickbie
Keyword(s):  
Tenth Century ◽  
The West ◽  
Gold Jewelry ◽  
Byzantine Period ◽  
Early Byzantine

This chapter surveys jewelry and enamels. Byzantine jewelry has survived in small numbers. Early Byzantine rings, bracelets, necklaces, and earrings were made with gold, gemstones, and pearls, often in the opus interrasile openwork technique. From the tenth century, enamels could also adorn (imperial) gold jewelry. Inscribed and engraved rings were common in the Middle and Late Byzantine period. Bronze pieces attest to everyday jewelry. Increased exchange with other areas, especially the West, is noticeable in post-Crusader times.

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