Byzantine Christianity Research Articles

A health assessment of high status Christian burials recovered from the Roman–Byzantine archeological site of Elaiussa Sebaste, Turkey

The purpose of this study is to assess the state of health of 116 individuals whose remains were excavated from Byzantine period burials underneath the floor of an important Christian basilica from the site of Elaiussa Sebaste, Turkey. Elaiussa Sebaste was a Mediterranean coastal community, which began as a Roman town and continued as an early Christian Byzantine community until the end of the 7th century AD. The burials date from the middle of the 6th through the middle of the 7th centuries AD. We attempt to determine how high social status has influenced the type and frequency of skeletal lesions exhibited in this sample. All strata of this population show a number of chronic and acute health problems as indicated by skeletal lesions. Yet, only the frequency of degenerative joint disease (DJD) differs by sex, with males exhibiting a higher rate of DJD than females, p=0.09. There is no difference in the frequency of trauma among adult males and females. Non-specific skeletal lesions (cribra orbitalia, porotic hyperostosis, and periostitis) often associated with dietary and general stressors, but also with specific systemic diseases, are common in both sexes. The sub-adults primarily exhibit periostitis of the long bones and do not show skeletal lesions specific to malaria. It seems that high social ranking did not prevent serious ailments from affecting the health of individuals living in the Elaiussa Sebaste community.

Byzantine Christianity

Byzantine Christianity

Pythagoras, Byzantium and the Holiness of Beauty

This essay explores the place of icons in the theology and worship of the Orthodox churches, through an examination of the doctrinal conflicts that formed Byzantine Christianity. It proceeds to outline the history of some principles of Pythagorean aesthetics, and to posit an explanation of how their use survived in the transmission of some Byzantine and Russian icons.

Religious Identity as an Historical Narrative: Coptic Orthodox Immigrant Churches and the Representation of History

Abstract The Coptic Church has a very unique historical trajectory that includes an early separation from the Greco‐Roman Byzantine Christian world in the fifth century followed by a legacy of subordination in Egypt after the Arab Conquest. This paper looks at how the Coptic Church narrates this history particularly as it transcends the national boundaries of Egypt to serve migrant Copts in Western societies. The historical narrative of the Coptic Church celebrates its contributions to early Christianity; defends its stance in the Chalcedon Council in 451 CE; and celebrates a legacy of triumph and survival after the Arab conquest. Building on theories on collective memory, this paper shows how the present and the past shape one another in a very complex way. The paper is based on interviews with both lay and clerical members of Coptic immigrant communities in Canada and the United States and on textual analysis of books, bulletins and websites launched on and by the Church.

A concise history of gout and hyperuricemia and their treatment

First identified by the Egyptians in 2640 BC, podagra (acute gout occurring in the first metatarsophalangeal joint) was later recognized by Hippocrates in the fifth century BC, who referred to it as 'the unwalkable disease'. The term is derived from the Latin word gutta (or 'drop'), and referred to the prevailing medieval belief that an excess of one of the four 'humors' – which in equilibrium were thought to maintain health – would, under certain circumstances, 'drop' or flow into a joint, causing pain and inflammation. Throughout history, gout has been associated with rich foods and excessive alcohol consumption. Because it is clearly associated with a lifestyle that, at least in the past, could only be afforded by the affluent, gout has been referred to as the 'disease of kings'. Although there is evidence that colchicine, an alkaloid derived from the autumn crocus (Colchicum autumnale), was used as a powerful purgative in ancient Greece more than 2000 years ago, its first use as a selective and specific treatment for gout is attributed to the Byzantine Christian physician Alexander of Tralles in the sixth century AD. Uricosuric agents were first used at the end of the 19th century. In the modern era, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs are usually the drugs of choice for treating acute gout. Perhaps the most important historical advance in the treatment of hyperuricemia was the development of xanthine oxidase inhibitors, which are effective in reducing plasma and urinary urate levels and have been shown to reverse the development of tophaceous deposits.

The Struggle over Arabisation in Medieval Arabic Christian Hagiography

The process of Arabisation and Islamisation that began shortly after the Muslim conquests in greater Syro-Palestine was still in full swing well after the ‘Abbāsid revolution. One of the neglected sources for unravelling the nuances of the cultural transformations that were taking place is the Christian hagiography of the period. This article argues that the contrast between Byzantine and Arab Christian hagiography from the late eighth through the ninth century provides an important window in the process of Arabisation and Islamisation in the Early Islamic period. In particular when the Byzantine account of the Twenty Martyrs of Mar Saba is compared to the Arabic account of the Martydom of Rawḣ al-Qurayshī, an Arab Christian, many of the significant features of the process of cultural change come to the fore.

The Barbarian Plain: Saint Sergius between Rome and Iran (review)

The Barbarian Plain: Saint Sergius between Rome and Iran. By Elizabeth Key Fowden. [The Transformation of the Classical Heritage, XXVIII. ] (Berkeley: University of California Press. 1999. Pp. xxii, 227. $55.00.) At last, long last, the book on St. Sergius, the military saint martyred around A.D. 300 in the Orient, has appeared, authored by the one most qualified to write on him. The authoress, Elizabeth Key Fowden, is a classicist who had written her Princeton doctoral dissertation on the Saint in 1995 and continued for a quinquennium researching this theme. The result of this patient and conscientious effort is this book under review, which will remain for a long time to come the standard work on St. Sergius. The book is remarkable for the completeness of its coverage of the Sergius saga, as the chapters begin with the passio, followed by those on the rise of the cult of the martyr on the frontier with Persia; the emergence of a city, actually named after him, Sergiopolis/Rusafa, not far from the Euphrates in Syria; the spread of his cult in Byzantine Oriens and Persian Mesopotamia; the involvement of the two world powers in it, Christian Byzantium and Zoroastrian Persia; and finally the attraction of the Saint to a third religion, Islam. In addition to her command of the two important relevant languages for the study of the Saint, namely, Greek and Syriac, and of the various disciplines involved, which go beyond hagiography and ecclesiastical history, the authoress has not remained an armchair historian but has lived in the Near East and visited the main center of the cult, Sergiopolis/Rusafa. She even pere-- grinated to distant South Arabia, to Tarim, where the Saint's memory is still green to the present day, and what is more, among Muslims who revere him as a nab!, a prophet in whose honor a mosque still stands. The analytic portions of the work are also matched by the synthetic in which the authoress treats large historical problems related to the Saint and his cult. It is impossible to go through all these important contributions in a short review such as this one, but one large problem she has handled very well is the involvement of rulers, so far removed from one another in almost everything, in this Saint, namely, the Byzantine Christian Emperor, Justinian, and the Persian Zoroastrian Shah, Chosroes Parvis, and the Muslim Arab Caliph, Hisham,which makes the Saint truly unique in the annals of ecclesiastical history. Of all ethnic groups, the Arabs were the ones most involved with St. Sergius. His city Sergiopolis, was located in the eastern limitrophe of Oriens, predominantly inhabited by the Arabs, and one group among them, the Ghassanids, the foederati of Byzantium in the sixth century, were guardians of the Saint-his shrine and the city. …

The Pagan Bulgars and Byzantine Christianity in the Eighth and Ninth Centuries

This paper examines how the Bulgars perceived Byzantine Christianity in the period before their conversion to Christianity in 864. It tries to establish a connection between literacy, population, kingship, and religion. The Bulgars’ attitude toward the ‘god of the Greeks’ is examined against the background of the impact of Christian versus Pagan in Bulgaria and the specific Bulgar usage of elements of Byzantine Greek literacy and ideology.

The Image of Byzantine Christians in the Swahili epic of Herakleios

The Image of Byzantine Christians in the Swahili epic of Herakleios

Abandonment of terminally ill patients in the Byzantine era. An ancient tradition?

Our research on the texts of the Byzantine historians and chroniclers revealed an apparently curious phenomenon, namely, the abandonment of terminally ill emperors by their physicians when the latter realised...

Biblical Prophets in Byzantine Palestine. Reassessing the Lives of the Prophets

The of the Prophets is a series of brief biographical sketches of the major and minor prophets of the Hebrew Bible. Generally held to be a Jewish document from the end of the period of the Second Temple, the Lives offers an abundance of geographical, genealogical and narrative detail which is not readily paralleled. This assessment of the work provides a survey of the textual state of the composition and its reception, followed by an examination of the literary structures which underlie the individual vitae. It is argued that the Lives is an evolved, heavily redacted document whose present form cannot predate the fourth century AD. Only within the context of early Byzantine Christian concerns - holy men, sacred sites and the veneration of the saints - does the of the Prophets become a comprehensible and vital text.

Russia Then and Now in the Pages of the American Historical Review and Elsewhere: A Few Centennial Notes

EVEN AFTER NARROWING THE SCOPE of editor's charge to explore contrast between definition and treatment of northern European history in AHR at its inception and in discipline of history today to Russian history, which I have done here, it is realizable only in part: there was, almost at inception of AHR in 1895, a definition, but for many years there was no treatment. The definition was provided in first number of Volume 2 (October 1896) by Archibald Cary Coolidge, Harvard history professor who is generally considered father of Russian and what we would now call East European East-Central European historical studies in United States.' Coolidge's Plea for Study of History of Northern which had been presented as a paper at December 1895 annual meeting of American Historical Association, laid out three reasons for studying northern, or more especially ... north-eastern, Europe, which he defined as history of Scandinavians and Slavs or, in state terms, of Russia, Sweden, and Poland: first, the importance of Russia in world today. Second, historical influence of Scandinavians and Slavs on Western countries, which he broke down into two categories, one passive, other active: Western expansion into Scandinavian and Slav territories, as in German Drang nach Osten eastward mission of Catholic church, and active interference by the north in European affairs, such as Sweden's arresting progress of German Catholicism under Gustav II Adolf and joining of Triple Alliance under Charles XI, Russia's participation in Seven Years' War and Alexander I's triumph over Napoleon. Coolidge's third reason: this part of world afforded an arena for comparative study of peculiar features, workings of great principles in European history. Coolidge had in mind nationalism: lack of unity that had long prevailed in Western Europe-no emperor and no pope-and a resulting earlier development there than in West of the feeling of nationality that arose from precocious conflicts among peoples of region and between them and outside powers; he was also thinking of religion: Russia affords best example of historical development of Byzantine Christianity, and Poland has been principal theater of conflict between Catholicism and Orthodoxy,

Roman defeat, Christian response, and the literary construction of the Jew

Olster explores Byzantine Christian reactions to the catastrophic Persian and Arab invasions, challenging long-held assumptions that divided religious from secular literature and exempted religion from contemporary social, political, and intellectual discourse.

Early Christianity in Transjordan

Considerable archaeological field work is currently being conducted in the area of the Decapolis, including the author’s involvement in the excavations of Abila. This article reviews the few references to northern Transjordan in the New Testament and the references in early Christian literature which suggest that Jewish Christianity flourished in Transjordan in the early Christian centuries. Archaeological evidence indicates a rich floruit of Byzantine Christianity in Transjordan. A study of literary allusions relating to this area and the current archaeological work promise new light on this little-known phase of early Christianity.

Cherson and the conversion of Rus’: an anti-revisionist view

The story of the conversion to Byzantine Christianity of Prince Vladimir of Kiev and of many of his subjects has, in the accounts of most modern historians, conformed more or less to the following pattern. In the summer of 987 the rebellious general Bardas Phocas, master of most of Asia Minor, proclaimed himself emperor, and marched on Constantinople. The legitimate emperor, Basil II, was in a desperate position. Some time during that same summer he sent an embassy to Kiev with an urgent request for help. By the terms of a treaty they had concluded with the Empire in 971, the Russians were bound to give the Byzantines military assistance in case of need. Vladimir sent him a contingent of six thousand Varangian soldiers. This expeditionary force, which arrived on Byzantine territory in the spring of 988, saved Basil II, who defeated his rival in the battles of Chrysopolis and Abydos. The second of these battles was fought on 13 April, 989.

Sh. Al-Amin B. Ali Mazrui and Islamic Modernizm in East Africa, 1875–1947

Throughout its history, Islam was influenced by the nature and extent of its contacts with other religions. It began as a relatively simple set of beliefs and practices fully circumscribed by Quranic injunctions and the example (sunna) of the Prophet Muhammad. But because it was cast into an adversary position with Byzantine Christianity, many of its institutions were developed from early times on in response to the intellectual confrontation thus generated. Consequently, by the tenth century Islam had evolved a highly refined theological foundation.

Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes

For over a thousand years, Eastern Christendom had as its center the second capital of the Roman Empire-Constantinople, the New Rome,or Byzantium. The geographical division between the Eastern and Western Churches was only one manifestation of deeper rifts, characterized by a long history of conflicts, suspicions, and misunderstandings. Although the art, monasticism, and spirituality of Byzantium have come to be recognized as inspirational and influential in the shaping of Eastern European civilization, and of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance as well, the West has been in the main ignorant of the historical evolution and the doctrinal significance of Byzantine theology.Here, for the first time in English, is presented a synthesis of Byzantine Christian thought. The reader is guided through its complexities to an understanding of Byzantium: its view of man and his destiny of deification; its ability to transcend the Western captivity; its survival under quite adverse historical circumstances. In the end, he may well find himself receptive to the basic positions of Byzantine thought, which have attained, in this time of need for the reintegration of Christianity itself, a surprising, contemporary relevance.

Old Muscovite Amnesties: Theory and Practice

AbstractThe modern Russian term for amnesty is amnistiia. Like its English counterpart, it comes from a Greek word meaning "oblivion": a sovereign who grants an amnesty officially "forgets" certain crimes or political offenses committed by his subjects.1 The word amnistiia does not appear in Russian documents of the pre-Petrine era, and some purists even claim that the Muscovites knew no concept of amnesty.2 Yet most of the practices we shall be discussing here-practices which began shortly after Byzantine Christianity came to Rus'-easily fall within modern definitions of amnesty.3 The topic turns out to be so vast that in this short paper we can deal with only a handful of Old Russia's historically-significant "amnesties." We shall briefly examine the circumstances which produced them, the consequences which followed their promulgation, and the tension between lofty principles and practical objectives which accompanied some of the most important amnesties.

The Christos Paschon and The Byzantine Theater

The Christos Paschon and The Byzantine Theater Sandro Sticca It is possible to provide a critical analysis of the Christos Paschon solely on aesthetic grounds, considering the play as a work of dramatic art; however, it is desirable that a formalized discussion of its imaginative range, intellectual and liturgical content be undertaken against the background of the origins and development of the Byzantine theater, especially since, over the years, that problem has hardly been cleared, or resolved. The lack of a substantial dramatic corpus has complicated the process of interpretation and has prevented scholars studying the religious drama of Byzantium from reaching definite conclu­ sions, limiting their inquiries to conflicting and disharmonious statements, to extreme critical polarizations, and often to mis­ leading deductions that are contradicted by the meager evidence available. Because of the paucity of extant dramatic specimens, scholars have been unable to reconstruct fully the historical and literary dimensions of the Byzantine Christian drama; indeed the Christos Paschon, a long cento of verses from the Greek tragic poets and particularly from Euripides, variously dated from the fourth to the eleventh centuries, constitutes the onlyextant attempt to put together in dramatic form the passion, death, and resurrection of Christ. For this reason, the majority of èarlier studies on the religious drama in Byzantium have con­ cerned themselves either with the nature of the dramatic form or with arguments and speculations concerning the primacy of the Western or Eastern Church in the creation of a Christian drama. One of the earliest pronouncements on the Byzantine Chris­ tian theater was made in 1756 by Voltaire in his Essai sur les moeurs et Vesprit des nations. Commenting on the origins and 13 14 Sandro Sticca growth of religious dramatic representations in Italy and France, Voltaire wrote: Ces spectacles étaient originaires de Constantinople. Le poëte saint Grégoire de Nazianze les avait introduits pour les opposer aux ouvrages dramatiques des anciens Grecs et des anciens Romains: et comme les choeurs des tragédies grecques étaient des hymnes religieuses, et leur théâtre une chose sacrée, Grégoire de Nazianze et ses successeurs firent des tragédies saintes.l Even after two centuries, Voltaire’s assumptions are still echoed in certain critical quarters. Heinz Kindermann, for instance, in his Theatergeschichte Europas declares that Das Gesamtbild des byzantinischen Theatres aber, soweit wir es heute schon überschauen, offenbart seine—bisher vielfach noch unbekannt gebliebene oder unterschätze— Mittlerfunk­ tion zwischen antikem und mittelalterlichem Theater des Abendlandes.2 Voltaire’s and Kindermann’s observations on the nature of the relationship between the Western and Eastern religious drama on the one hand and the classical Greek theater on the other stem fundamentally from their consideration of the closest con­ junction, in the classical Greek drama, between dramatic action and liturgical rite; and from the realization that in both worlds, the Greek and the Christian, the tragic intuition focuses on a final assertion of a divine order within the universe to which man must conform. They are not the delineation of a theory based on the study of dramatic texts or an investigation, at the comparative level, of the international character of the Christian religious drama and its dissemination. At their best, Voltaire’s and Kindermann’s observations remain, like those of many sub­ sequent writers on the subject, tentative exploratory specula­ tion. Voltaire’s ideas on Christian drama were not subjected to contemporary clarification or imaginative exploration; and one perceives the desolate state of later theatrical historiography when one considers that, as late as 1809, August Wilhelm von Schlegel could affirm without fear of contradition that there was no drama to be found in all Europe during the Middle Ages.3 It was only in the nineteenth century, when scholars began to explore in a systematic and critical fashion the development of the Western medieval religious drama, that discussions also began on the growth of the medieval liturgical dramatic form in The Christos Paschon 15 Byzantium. In his book on the Origines latines du théâtre moderne (1849), one of the earliest and most comprehensive studies of the Western religious drama, E. Du Méril, sensitively applying to literary criticism the norms of historical methodolo­ gy...

A Dark-Age crisis: aspects of the Iconoclastic controversy

Generally, the study of the Iconoclast controversy has tended to become a study of the origin of Iconoclast ideas, and this study has, in turn, been incapsulated in a search for a local, provincial setting for such ideas. A consideration of the attitude of the early church to images and the discovery of an Iconoclast movement in the totally Christian environment of seventh-century Armenia have led almost all scholars to regard Iconoclasm as endogenic: it was a crisis within Byzantine Christianity itself. Altogether, the Iconoclast controversy is in the grip of a crisis of over-explanation. Indeed, the only two men in the Dark Ages whom we know to have been deeply interested in art–the Emperor Theophilus-and Bishop Theodulf of Orleans–were Iconoclast or at least, anti-Iconodule. It became brutally plain for the first time that either the bishop or the holy man must be the moral arbiter of Byzantium.