To the Source Studies of the Byzantine Accounts of the Spiritual Centers in Palestine

Abstract

The review of the sources includes the characteristics of such literary monuments as the texts of the Holy Scripture of the Septuagint, sermons, spiritual hymns, and hagiography. The main documental evidences are represented by the Notitia episcopatuum, Synodal acts, canons and decisions, Typika of monasteries, account of the churches, abbeys and nunneries in Christian East. In Christian Byzantium, Jerusalem became the main destination of pilgrims. Many monasteries were built by the monks from Georgia who lived in Palestine. In the countries neighbouring to Palestine there was active monastic building in Byzantine Syria, as well as in the area of ancient monastic formations, Egypt. Therefore, there appeared the picture of energetic monastic building in the Holy Land, which is accounted to by documents, such as various Notitia, as well as the statutes and the journals of pilgrims and travellers. Although not all the monasteries existed for long due to devastating raids of Bedouins, Muslims, and crusaders, many of them were renovated from the ashes to continue servicing to these days. From that time on, Byzantine geographical literature went outside purely literary borrowings from the classical heritage and the environment of theoretical-mathematical and astronomical treatises to the practice of actual travels and pilgrimages. Although the latter kept their importance in all the periods of Byzantine literature, from the Christian topography of Kosmas In- dikopleustes to the ethno-geographical excursions in the History of Nikephoros Grigoras.