Mary as Intercessor in Byzantine Theology

2019 ◽  
pp. 139-153
Author(s):  
Bronwen Neil
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
Natural Object ◽  
Popular Belief ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Byzantine Church ◽  
Cult Of Mary ◽  
Early Byzantine

Mary’s intercessory role appeared in the early Byzantine church in the sixth century, if not earlier, and popular belief in her power to aid sinners, even after death, only increased in the Middle Byzantine centuries, following broader trends in the literature and art of that period. These texts and images from the Eastern churches of Constantinople, Asia Minor, Egypt, Georgia, and Syria reveal a growth in affective piety, which highlighted Mary’s motherhood and compassion, making her a natural object for personal devotion. Mary, the human mother of God, was an accessible figure whose very accessibility made her uniquely placed to intercede between sinful believers and God and his son, Jesus Christ. The evidence presented here for the development of affective piety in the Byzantine cult of Mary as intercessor reveals that Byzantine beliefs and practices prefigured the same trend in the medieval West by several centuries.

Secular Architecture: Domestic

2021 ◽  
pp. 350-362
Author(s):  
Carolyn S. Snively
Keyword(s):  
Urban Form ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Urban Setting ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
Industrial Products ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Byzantine Period ◽  
Early Byzantine ◽  
Courtyard House

Byzantine domestic housing of the fourth–fifteenth centuries is preserved predominantly in the Balkans and Asia Minor. Peristyle houses dominate in the Early Byzantine period and continue later: their construction and decoration, subdivision, and disappearance in the sixth century have been studied. The Middle Byzantine courtyard house was a typically urban form, centrally located in towns with Classical predecessors; it provided privacy for the residents who may have been merchants dealing in agricultural or industrial products. Most people in the Byzantine period, however, probably lived in variations of the “longhouse,” in agriculturally based small towns and villages, where they shared living quarters with livestock. Houses in Late Byzantine/Frankish centers such as Mystras were large and elaborate longhouses in an urban setting.

Masao Abe and Comparative Theology

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leo D. Lefebure
Keyword(s):  
Graduate Students ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Western Philosophy ◽  
Comparative Theology ◽  
Graduate Course ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Faith Tradition ◽  
Mahayana Buddhist

A leading form of comparative theology entails commitment to one religious tradition but ventures out to encounter another tradition, with the goal of generating fresh insights into familiar beliefs and practices reliant upon both the tradition of origin and the newly encountered faith tradition. This chapter, based on a graduate course at Georgetown University, examines how Zen Buddhist thinker Masao Abe engages in a dialogue with Western philosophy and Christian theology. Abe interpreted the meaning of the kenosis (emptying) of God in Jesus Christ in Christian theology in light of Mahayana Buddhist perspectives on Sunyata (emptying) and the logic of negation. The chapter includes responses to Abe from various Christian theologians, including Georgetown graduate students.

Transformation of legal language – Early Byzantine legal discourse

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaakko Husa
Keyword(s):  
Legal Discourse ◽  
Legal Culture ◽  
Linguistic Analysis ◽  
Cultural Transformation ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Legal Language ◽  
Linguistic Change ◽  
Early Byzantine

AbstractThis article examines the complicated legal-cultural process in which Roman law became Byzantine law and Roman legal discourse altered into Byzantine legal discourse. Roman law’s transformation into Early Byzantine law is analysed from the point of view of legal language which mutated from Latin to Greek. The approach is legal cultural and legal linguistic and focuses on the overall shape and general patterns. The goal is to highlight how legal-cultural transformation was incremental, language-bound and that there was no radical or sudden culmination point. Moreover, the analysis answers generally to the question of why sixth-century Byzantine legislative Greek contained frequent Latin loans, expressions, phrases and distortions. The discussion concentrates on the Novellae as an integral part of the process of legal cultural and linguistic change from Roman to Byzantine. Instead of going into detailed linguistic analysis, this article underlines generally the contextuality of law and the importance of legal culture

scholarly journals Marble vessels from Jiyeh (Porphyreon)

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariusz Gwiazda
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
Geographical Factors ◽  
Byzantine Period ◽  
A Site ◽  
Early Byzantine

Imported marble vessels from Jiyeh (Porphyreon), a site on the Phoenician coast, could not be easily identified in terms of function and dating for lack of sound stratigraphic evidence. An examination of parallels from other sites in the Eastern Mediterranean was needed in order to determine the chronology and uses of these objects. Virtually all of the Jiyeh vessels were thus dated to the early Byzantine period. Forms included utilitarian mortars and plates, as well as tentative liturgical tabletops. The repertoire represents standard exports of vessels of these shapes to Syro-Palestine from Greece and Asia Minor. Their distribution in Syro-Palestine was conditioned by geographical factors, as well as the affluence of settlements that imported such objects.

Guiding Grief: Liturgical Poetry and Ritual Lamentation in Early Byzantium

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Ashbrook Harvey
Keyword(s):  
Church Leaders ◽  
Social Significance ◽  
Classical Drama ◽  
Dramatic Narrative ◽  
Byzantine Church ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Early Byzantine

Early Byzantine church leaders regularly admonished against grief as a Christian response to death. Yet, mourning practices continued unabated, and church leaders also participated in the lavish mourning that attended the funerals of beloved church figures, whether bishops or holy men or women. Amidst such contradictory discourses, liturgical piety appears to have provided a constructive manner of engaging grief and negotiating such tensions. Early Byzantine liturgies in both Greek and Syriac abound in hymns and homilies that retold biblical stories in dramatic fashion. Often, these included searing depictions of anguish, grief, and lamentation over loss or death for biblical characters. The accounts show strong similarities with traditions from classical drama, with imagined speeches as well as dramatic narrative that linger closely on postures, gestures, and lyrical expressions of sorrow. This chapter argues that these presentations took on particular social significance in the context of liturgical setting and performance. Embedded within liturgy itself as an overarching narrative, such stories took on resolution within a higher process of grief turned to restoration. Biblical tragedy, articulated in homilies and hymns, offered congregations typological expressions of their own sorrows, even as people were ritually guided from bereavement to consolation.

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