Byzantine Writings Research Articles

Gregory Palamas’ Reading of a Seventh-Century Pseudo-Athanasian Homily

"During the Palamite controversy of the fourteenth century, the works of the great Fathers of the Church were scoured by both sides of the controversy, which sought to ground their teaching in recognized authorities. Of these works, one of the most frequently cited by Palamites was a pseudonymous Homily on the Annunciation attributed to Saint Athanasius the Great and generally held to have its origin in the seventh century. This article analyzes the Homily’s range of use among the Palamite party before focusing on its most influential section, which discusses those things “perceived and named theologically around God” as contributing to “the totality and fullness of divinity.” It examines Gregory Palamas’ use of these terms in his own theological system and then considers how his system may serve to clarify a unique and theologically suspect etymological connection contained within the Homily, deriving οὐσία from ἰσία. Keywords: late Byzantine theology, essence and energies, unity and multiplicity, cataphasis and apophasis, pseudo-Athanasian corpus, Nachleben of late antique and Byzantine writings "

Holy, Holy, Holy: Hearing the Voices of Angels

AbstractWere Byzantine writings about the intermingling of human and angelic voices within ecclesiastical settings merely reflections of mystical theology, or were they actual observations about th...

Translating Ancient Alchemy: Fragments of Graeco-Egyptian Alchemy in Arabic Compendia

Translation played a vital role in the development and transfer of alchemy in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Since its origins in Graeco-Roman Egypt, alchemy was encapsulated in Greek texts which allegedly relied on Persian or Egyptian sources. Later, a variety of Greek and Byzantine writings were translated into Syriac and Arabic, and these translations were in turn fragmented and disseminated in later Arabic compendia. This paper will first review the main phases of this historical process of transmission of alchemy from one language and culture to another. Second, this process will be examined using two significant case studies: a close analysis of various quotations from Graeco-Egyptian authors (Pseudo-Democritus, Zosimus of Panopolis, and Synesius) as presented in two Arabic dialogues on alchemy, The Tome of Images and The Dialogue between Āras and the King Caesar. These sources demonstrate some of the concrete textual realities that underlie general patterns of translation and reception.

New Perspectives on Eastern Vikings/Rus in Arabic Sources

Arabic sources of the ninth and tenth centuries are valuable yet poorly studied material on the expansion of Scandinavians, called Rus by these writers, into Eastern Europe. While these sources have usually been introduced as auxiliary material for other witnesses, such as the Slavonic Primary Chronicle and Old Norse and Byzantine writings, there are ample grounds to examine their accounts as an independent body of information. A comparison of Arabic and non-Arabic accounts on the Rus reveals important geographical, social, and cultural differences in their descriptions, opening up a new perspective on this chapter of the Viking Age.

Die Argumentation des Patriarchen Gregorios II. Kyprios zur Widerlegung des Filioque-Ansatzes in der Schrift. De processione Spiritus sancti

Abstract Focussing on the thirteenth-century endings of Byzantine writings against the Latin innovation of the Filioque, the present study aims, on the basis of the work De processione Spiritus sancti (1283), to provide the reader with an insight into the nature of the Orthodox argumentation refuting the Filioque. The work was until now attributed to Gregorios Kyprios Patriarch of Konstantinople (1283–1289). However, it is not a product of his pen, but a compiled version of his earlier work, the “Antirrheticos against Bekkos”. Throughout the study the writer follows step by step Kyprios' reasoning and tries to control the validity and soundness of the arguments advanced, making at the same time specific references to the patristic and philosophical background of Kyprios' thinking. The study shows beyond any doubt that Kyprios is indebted to his predecessors, mostly to the Cappadocians and Dionysius Areopagites, and that he argues on the same line of reasoning with them in respect to the idea of the “Monarchy” of the Father, of the incommunicable of hypostatic properties, and of the possibility of beings to be in communion with God only through the divine energies. On the ground of these three fundamental ideas, a procession of the Spirit also from the Son is categorically rejected. Only the mission of the Spirit (what is implied here, are the gifts of the Spirit and not the Spirit itself) into the world through the Son is acceptable.

Senses and sensibility in Byzantium

Byzantine art tends to be considered in almost exclusively visual terms. However, Byzantine writings about works of art appeal to all the senses and aim to involve the listener (who may also be looking at the object described) in an emotional engagement with the image and with the scene it depicts. This paper explores some of the ways in which the five physical senses were engaged in the overall sensory experience of worship in a Byzantine church, notably Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, discussing how the senses seem to have played spiritual as much as physical roles in the church. The Byzantines do not appear to have perceived the interaction between the senses as synaesethic, but rather as an interlinking and an interplay. This emphasis on the sensory nature of images suggests a corporeal dimension to religious experience, offering the human body an intrinsic role in the worship of the divine.

SENSES AND SENSIBILITY IN BYZANTIUM

Byzantine art tends to be considered in almost exclusively visual terms. However, Byzantine writings about works of art appeal to all the senses and aim to involve the listener (who may also be looking at the object described) in an emotional engagement with the image and with the scene it depicts. This paper explores some of the ways in which the five physical senses were engaged in the overall sensory experience of worship in a Byzantine church, notably Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, discussing how the senses seem to have played spiritual as much as physical roles in the church. The Byzantines do not appear to have perceived the interaction between the senses as synaesethic, but rather as an interlinking and an interplay. This emphasis on the sensory nature of images suggests a corporeal dimension to religious experience, offering the human body an intrinsic role in the worship of the divine.

On Greek rho

In Byzantine writings, the Greek letter rho, which represents the /r/ phoneme, regularly has an aspiration mark in word-initial position and when geminated. Because of closely parallel phenomena in such widely different languages as Brazilian Portuguese and Västergötland Swedish it is suggested as an explanation that the Greek /r/ phoneme had two allophones, a front (apical) one and a back (uvular or velar) one, the latter occurring when the phoneme is word-initial or long.

H. CONDYLIS-BASSOUKOS, Stéphanitès kai Ichnélatès, traduction grecque (XIe siècle) du livre Kalīla wa-Dimna d'Ibn al-Muqaffa‘ (VIIIe siècle). Étude lexicologique et littéraire

Abstract Graeco-Arabic studies, or the study of the translations of classical Greek works into Arabic during the early ‘Abbāsid caliphate of the Arabs (ca. 750–1000), is a field that is well known; it has been cultivated, with significant results for the study of medieval Islamic civilization, for more than a century and a half now. What is less well known is the opposite trend of translations from Arabic into (Byzantine) Greek, which began after the Photian renaissance — as a direct result, I have claimed, of the Graeco-Arabic translation movement — and is of comparable significance for the study of Byzantine civilization. For reasons that it might be interesting to investigate at some point, Byzantinists have shied away from Arabo-Greek studies, to the great detriment of a deepened study of Byzantine writings, especially the scientific literature. The book by Dr. Hélène Condylis under review here, a study of the Greek translation of the famous Arabic book of fables Kalīla wa-Dimna (originally of Indian provenance), finally breaks open this unduly neglected area and makes a most impressive first contribution to Arabo-Greek studies that will, in years to come, be considered as pioneering.

"Pray Not to Fall into Temptation and Be on Your Guard": Pagan Statues in Christian Constantinople

This article discusses Byzantine attitudes to classical art as seen through Byzantine writings about statues. It takes issue with ideas about Byzantine "superstition," "credulity" and intentionalism in art, and the belief that the Byzantines found classical statues threatening and dangerous. Rather, it suggests that we should try to understand Byzantine texts in Byzantine terms (insofar as that might be possible). It argues that classical statues in Byzantium were, like Christian images, an essential source of power that could be employed to their own advantage by those with the knowledge of the correct procedures.