From Worm to Wyvern

2021 ◽  
pp. 84-136
Author(s):  
Daniel Ogden
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Central Body ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
The West ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Culture ◽  
Sea Monster ◽  
Classical Culture ◽  
The Devil

How did the classical dragon, essentially just a massive snake in form, a worm, evolve, in early Christian culture, into the very particular fantasy creature we know as a ‘dragon’ today in the West? It is argued that the dragon acquired its animalian head and more bulbous central body from another well-established creature of classical fantasy, the ancient sea-monster (kētos), this by virtue of the fact that, whilst dragon and sea-monster had remained largely distinct creatures in classical culture, they had been confounded by the Septuagint. Its wings, however, and probably too in effect its two legs (the latter placed in the position of the sea-monster’s front flippers), it derived rather from demons and the Devil, the latter being associated with snakes already in the Old Testament, and then spectacularly so in the New Testament’s Revelation. By the ninth century AD these two developments had crystallized in the wyvern-type dragon.

scholarly journals The Tension between Heroic Masculinity and the Christian Self in the Old English Andreas

2018 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 87-107
Author(s):  
Jacek Olesiejko
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Literature ◽  
The Military ◽  
Military Masculinity ◽  
The Devil

The article’s aim is to elucidate the religious transformations of the secular notions of identity and masculinity in Andreas. Andreas is a religious poem composed in Anglo-Saxon England around the ninth century. It is an adaptation of the Latin recension of the Acts of the Apostle Andrew, but the poet uses heroic diction borrowed from Old English secular poetry to rework the metaphor of miles Christi that is ubiquitous in Christian literature. The poet uses the military metaphor to inculcate the Christian notion of masculinity as the inversion of the secular perception of manliness. He draws upon a paradox, attested in the early Christian writings, that spiritual masculinity is true manliness, superior to military masculinity, and that it is expressed through patient suffering and the acknowledgment of defeat. The poem inverts the notions of war and victory to depict the physical defeat of the martyr as a spiritual victory over sin and the devil.

The Dragon in the West

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Ogden
Keyword(s):  
Ninth Century ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Illustrated Manuscripts ◽  
The West ◽  
Physical Form ◽  
Sea Monster

The book describes the evolution of the modern dragon from its ancient forebears, in terms both of its form and of its narrative contexts. In physical form dragons are broadly serpentine, but have animalian heads, thick central bodies, wings, and clawed legs. In their stories they live in caves, lie on treasure, maraud, and burn; they are extraordinarily powerful, but even so ultimately worsted in their battles with humans. Despite the inestimable success of this physical form and this broad story-type, there is nothing obvious, inevitable, or natural about them. Rather, both are mature, complex, and artificial constructs. The book traces the evolution of the dragon’s form from the purely serpentine drakon of classical antiquity, through its merging with the forms of the ancient sea monster and the winged, humanoid demon, into that of the first recognizably modern dragon, the two-legged wyvern that emerged in the illustrated manuscripts of the ninth century AD, which has previously been described as the ‘Romanesque’ or ‘Gothic’ dragon. It traces the evolution of the dragon’s typical story-type again from classical antiquity, across the vast tradition of medieval hagiography (saints’ lives), and into the Germanic world, where particular attention is given to the wealth of dragons featured in the Norse sagas.

Civilizations of the Supernatural: Witchcraft, Ritual, and Religious Experience in Late Antique, Medieval, and Renaissance Traditions

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Erotic Love ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Culture ◽  
The Relationship

Civilizations of the Supernatural: Witchcraft, Ritual, and Religious Experience in Late Antique, Medieval, and Renaissance Traditions brings together thirteen scholars of late-antique, medieval, and renaissance traditions who discuss magic, religious experience, ritual, and witch-beliefs with the aim of reflecting on the relationship between man and the supernatural. The content of the volume is intriguingly diverse and includes late antique traditions covering erotic love magic, Hellenistic-Egyptian astrology, apotropaic rituals, early Christian amulets, and astrological amulets; medieval traditions focusing on the relationships between magic and disbelief, pagan magic and Christian culture, as well as witchcraft and magic in Britain, Scandinavian sympathetic graphophagy, superstition in sermon literature; and finally Renaissance traditions revolving around Agrippan magic, witchcraft in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and a Biblical toponym related to the Friulan Benandanti’s visionary experiences. These varied topics reflect the multifaceted ways through which men aimed to establish relationships with the supernatural in diverse cultural traditions, and for different purposes, between Late Antiquity and the Renaissance. These ways eventually contributed to shaping the civilizations of the supernatural or those peculiar patterns which helped men look at themselves through the mirror of their own amazement of being in this world.

Purity, Community, and Ritual in Early Christian Literature

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moshe Blidstein
Keyword(s):  
Third Century ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Christian Identity ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Christian Culture ◽  
Christian Literature ◽  
Christian Practices ◽  
Dietary Laws ◽  
New Religion

This book examines the meanings of purification practices and purity concepts in early Christian culture, as articulated and formed by Greek Christian authors of the first three centuries, from Paul to Origen. Concepts of purity and defilement were pivotal for understanding human nature, sin, history, and ritual in early Christianity. In parallel, major Christian practices, such as baptism, abstinence from food or sexual activity, were all understood, felt, and shaped as instances of purification. Two broad motivations, at some tension with each other, formed the basis of Christian purity discourse. The first was substantive: the creation and maintenance of anthropologies and ritual theories coherent with the theological principles of the new religion. The second was polemic: construction of Christian identity by laying claim to true purity while marking purity practices and beliefs of others (Jews, pagans, or “heretics”) as false. The book traces the interplay of these factors through a close reading of second- and third-century Christian Greek authors discussing dietary laws, death defilement, sexuality, and baptism, on the background of Greco-Roman and Jewish purity discourses. There are three central arguments. First, purity and defilement were central concepts for understanding Christian cultures of the second and third centuries. Second, Christianities developed their own conceptions and practices of purity and purification, distinct from those of contemporary and earlier Jewish and pagan cultures, though decisively influenced by them. Third, concepts and practices of purity and defilement were shifting and contentious, an arena for boundary-marking between Christians and others and between different Christian groups.

Evil Lords and the Devil

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sumi Shimahara
Keyword(s):  
Ninth Century ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Biblical Commentaries ◽  
Political Principles ◽  
The Devil

Perceptions of tyranny are also the subject of this chapter, which discusses the ways in which terms deriving from the root ‘tyran-’ were employed in biblical commentaries and other sources of the Carolingian era. The chapter shows that eighth- and ninth-century authors developed a distinct discourse on tyranny by blending pagan and patristic views with their own ethical-political principles. Carolingian conceptions of tyranny were grounded in considerations pertaining both to legality and to morality, with vice, eschatological concerns, and the association with the devil playing as important a role as issues of illegitimacy, usurpation, or malfeasance. These conceptions were moreover fairly elastic, as related terms not only had a wide connotative range but were also used to describe a variety of abusive behaviors of a royal, secular, or ecclesiastical origin.

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.

Das frühe Christentum und die Bildung

2015 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Udo Schnelle
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Literary Production ◽  
Roman Religion ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Urban Congregations ◽  
Intellectual Level

Early Christianity is often regarded as an entirely lower-class phenomenon, and thus characterised by a low educational and cultural level. This view is false for several reasons. (1) When dealing with the ancient world, inferences cannot be made from the social class to which one belongs to one's educational and cultural level. (2) We may confidently state that in the early Christian urban congregations more than 50 per cent of the members could read and write at an acceptable level. (3) Socialisation within the early congregations occurred mainly through education and literature. No religious figure before (or after) Jesus Christ became so quickly and comprehensively the subject of written texts! (4) The early Christians emerged as a creative and thoughtful literary movement. They read the Old Testament in a new context, they created new literary genres (gospels) and reformed existing genres (the Pauline letters, miracle stories, parables). (5) From the very beginning, the amazing literary production of early Christianity was based on a historic strategy that both made history and wrote history. (6) Moreover, early Christians were largely bilingual, and able to accept sophisticated texts, read them with understanding, and pass them along to others. (7) Even in its early stages, those who joined the new Christian movement entered an educated world of language and thought. (8) We should thus presuppose a relatively high intellectual level in the early Christian congregations, for a comparison with Greco-Roman religion, local cults, the mystery religions, and the Caesar cult indicates that early Christianity was a religion with a very high literary production that included critical reflection and refraction.

Assyrian sacred trees in the Brooklyn Museum

Iraq ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 123-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pauline Albenda
Keyword(s):  
Present Author ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Palm Tree ◽  
The West ◽  
Individual Tree ◽  
Sacred Tree ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Individual Trees ◽  
Brooklyn Museum ◽  
Tree Type

The Brooklyn Museum houses twelve stone slabs with carved decoration from the Northwest Palace of Ashurnasirpal II. The motif of a stylized tree — the so-called Sacred Tree (see Figs. 1, 4, 6) — appears on seven of those slabs which come from rooms F, I, L, S, T of the ninth century palace at Nimrud. These tree renderings are representative of the sacred tree-type found in ten rooms of the royal residence and the west wing. Approximately 96 sacred trees, in two-register arrangement, appeared on the pictorial decorations in room I; the same motif occurred about 75 times in one-register arrangement on the reliefs of the other rooms. The abundance of the sacred tree motif on the wall decorations of the Northwest Palace attests to the significance of this plant. Its design deserves investigation; in Layard's words, “the tree, evidently a sacred symbol, is elaborately and tastefully formed.”In his study of the Ashurnasirpal II reliefs in American collections, Stearns did not attempt to list the sacred trees, because “variations in the sacred tree occur only in minor details,” and “the tree in itself is rarely useful in identifying the location of the reliefs.” These statements make clear Stearns' belief that the sacred trees were nearly alike. Other scholars, notably Weidner and Reade, have pointed out that on a number of slabs now in American and European museums are carvings of matching half trees, therefore indicating that when paired, these trees belonged to adjoining slabs originally. In trying to match half trees, one finds that individual sacred trees do differ in the rendering of specific details. Bleibtreu, in her analysis of the sacred tree-type, lists three variants of the flower found on the palmette-garland framing the individual tree on three sides. The present author, after examining the sacred trees carved on the slabs in The Brooklyn Museum, concludes that the design of the tree-type is more varied than heretofore presumed, and that its construction is more complex than indicated in previous descriptions of the subjects. An analysis of the Assyrian sacred tree-type may lead to possible conclusions regarding its intended image: a stylized palm tree, a cult object, an emblem of vegetation or “tree of life”, an imperial symbol, or a combination of those forms. In addition, one may consider to what extent the rendering of individual trees was the consequence of artistic inventiveness.

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