Early Byzantium Research Articles

The other mother: ancient and early Byzantine approaches to wet-nursing and mothering

Abstract In premodernity, a time when human milk was the only safe means of infant nutrition, and in societies, such as those of classical antiquity and early Byzantium, where breastfeeding was considered servile work, wet-nursing was both a necessary and widespread occupation. Despite the social demand for the profession, public discourses around wet nurses were mostly negative, while their work was treated with both admiration and scorn. In an attempt to understand ancient and early Byzantine approaches to the wet nurse, this article takes a matricentric perspective. It investigates various discourses (rhetorical, moralist, philosophical, theological, hagiographical, medical and contractual) which establish the wet nurse as an essential part of the institution of motherhood, as a social and moral category whose work, way of life and behaviour are constantly defined, controlled and regulated. These discourses nevertheless tell us much more about the anxieties and preoccupations of the societies that produced them and much less about actual contemporary wet nurses. The choice of an investigation encompassing antiquity up to early Byzantium, an extension rarely seen in existing studies, further illuminates the mechanics and dynamics of the ideologies around the wet nurse, as these are preserved or evolve in time.

Neoplatonic and Gnostic Resonances in the Martyrdom of Cyprian of Athenais Eudocia

Aelia Eudocia Augusta (formerly Athenais), wife of the emperor Theodosius II, lives at the borderline between the ancient and the Christian world and writes one of the most distinctive poetic texts of Byzantine literature. In the Martyrdom of Cyprian, written in Homeric language, the Saint's past, when he was a magician and initiated into a multitude of Greek mysteries, is presented in an original and remarkable way. Within this text, the resonance of philosophical ideas originating from Neoplatonism and Gnosticism is of particular interest. This article attempts to highlight these resonances in order to open a research dialogue regarding the complex network of ideas and the coexistence of different worldviews in early Byzantium.

Фиск Юстиниана: к постановке вопроса

In the historiography of the Early Byzantium, the concept of “an Emperor’s fiscus” mismatches with the late ancient original. The fiscus was not a synonym for the state treasury, but it was simultaneously the funds for public purposes and private and personal resources. Emperors supported this ambiguous legal nature of fiscus, implying some specific targets of their policy. The balance varying between them between public and non-public constituents in the fiscus is called fiscal policy in its own sense. Emperor Justinian I carried out the same policy apropos the fiscus. As with some of his predecessors, he sustained the originally formed dual nature of the fiscus, consistently striving for the separation of private from public. Justinian admitted a little identification of the public function of fiscus and the state (public) treasure, but only on the level of abstract concepts. Thereby, the Emperor did demonstrate the separation of his personal and private property from the state. At the same time, the emperor’s personal property, as well as the fiscus as a whole, was a part of the nationwide resources from the point of view of Justinian I. Thus, the fiscal policy of Justinian was a continuation of the fiscal policy of Zenon and Anastasius I, but it also had a few features. They were expressed, in particular, in the use of an unusual term for Roman legislation, the “fiscus”, in a Greek way.

Daniel Caner. The Rich and the Pure: Philanthropy and the Making of Christian Society in Early Byzantium.

In his Ecclesiastical History, Eusebius recounted how in 250 Christians in Alexandria courageously cared for the victims of an epidemic. Without thinking of their safety, they embraced their loved ones as death approached. Their pagan neighbors, on the other hand, abandoned their family members in fear and left them to die alone in the streets. These Alexandrian Christians were practicing philanthropia, the virtue the apostle Paul called agape (love, charity), but they did not extend this philanthropy to pagans. In the next hundred years, however, Christians began to assist all men and women regardless of their religious beliefs. Scholars studying Christian philanthropy in the Early Byzantine period (323 to 642) attribute this expanding scope of Christian charity to Constantine’s conversion and the subsequent Christianization of the Roman state. In The Rich and the Pure: Philanthropy and the Making of Christian Society in Early Byzantium, Daniel Caner has undertaken a far more thorough analysis of this shift in Christian philanthropy. By examining various terms that Christian writers chose to emphasize different aspects of Paul’s agape, Caner traces out more precisely how these shifts occurred.

Theology of Greek-Byzantine Church Fathers as a Specific Way of Philosophical Thinking in an Epistemological Context

The article presents the theological ideas and mystical–religious teachings of the Greek-Byzantine Church Fathers, which, at the same time, are philosophical because Byzantine theologians also reflected on human and their life, on the relationship between man and God, on the possibilities of God-cognition and obtaining higher sacred knowledge. Based on the analysis of the anthropological and epistemological ideas of the Greek Church Fathers, we highlight that philosophizing was always at the heart of Byzantine theology. Therefore, the Byzantine tradition of the Church Fathers is considered a unique type of philosophy of religion, which originated in the historical formation of the Christian faith in the era of the Triadic and Christological theological debates of the 4th to 7th centuries. This article reflects the teachings of three of the brightest thinkers-theologians of Byzantium—John Climacus, Maximus the Confessor, and Symeon the New Theologian. Their teachings are the foundation and main source of the mystical–religious tradition of Byzantine theology and philosophy. John Climacus’s conception of human self-improvement and self-cognition on the path of theosis is revealed as one of the first philosophical and moral systems of early Byzantium and the source of subsequent Christian concepts of Eastern Christianity. Maximus the Confessor’s conception of the logoi—or energies—of God is presented as a system of symbols with profound philosophical and anthropological meaning. The human being in St. Maximus’s doctrine is the main and self-sufficient symbol of the universe, connecting the two worlds—the Divine and the earthly ones. The doctrine of Symeon the New Theologian on uncreated light is revealed as a personal comprehension of God in the perception of Divine Light. The transforming power of the Light is demonstrated, which changes the nature of a human being and raises an individual to the height of spiritual unity with God. Finally, conclusions are made about the beginning and formation of the philosophy of religion as a special type of philosophical–religious thinking found already in the period of early Christianity.

The Rich and the Pure: Philanthropy and the Making of Christian Society in Early Byzantium

“Give to everyone who begs from you,” Jesus advised his followers. Most of us do not and rush on by, concerned for our safety, for what the beggar will buy with our gift of alms, for who will benefit from our gift. Fewer stop and give something: if not cash, then a snack or beverage, and their precious time. A century since Marcel Mauss published his famous essay, we all feel quite well informed about “the gift.” In this richly detailed study, Caner's achievement is to show how different gift-giving was in the late antique Roman Empire, “the first truly affluent, complex Christian society.” Philanthropy was no longer the ancient “love of humanity,” the imperative to be generous to people, when you thought, or even knew, that they did not deserve it. Yet philanthropy was moreover not, or not only, a series of precisely calibrated acts of reciprocal giving.Caner's focus is on the religious gift. He identifies five distinct categories of religious gift-giving, which others have too easily conflated. The newest of these was the blessing (eulogia), which emerged only in the sixth century, in the thousands of sermons, saintly lives, and letters that Caner consulted. It has been identified similarly in other ascetic cultures, for example in Hinduism and Jainism, as the pure or free gift whose existence Mauss denied. The blessing is a gift of divine benevolence, grace delivered through a human mediator. It is not synonymous with the gift of alms (eleēmosynē), a very human act of mercy from one individual to another. These are in turn distinct from charity (agapē), “self-sacrificial gifts derived from essential resources”; two forms of offering—liturgical offerings (prosphorai), such as the communion bread, on the one hand, and fruit-bearing offerings (karpophoriai), along with agricultural and other gifts to support religious professionals. “Each category,” which has an equivalent in contemporary Syriac and Coptic writings, “was associated with a distinct set of goals, responsibilities, relationships, and material resources.”The late antique city was as busy with organized gangs of professional beggars as any modern downtown, but early Christians could not simply turn away. They were hectored into caring by golden-mouthed preachers like John, bishop of New Rome. Chrysostom insisted that almsgiving should be direct and personal, a source of discomfort for those who offered comfort. The rich might also, as ever, engage in ostentatious acts of giving, the exchange of worldly goods to redeem them from their sins, including the pride associated with ostentatious giving. Transactional gift-giving could end up with everyone insulted: generosity could be refused, donors repudiated, gifts returned. That much seems familiar at a time when museums and universities have felt compelled to remove the names of disgraced donors from their buildings and galleries. Caner's rich analysis, because it is so firmly rooted in early Byzantium, offers reasons, and some new tools, to think again and hard about the complexities of philanthropy.

The Rich and the Pure: Philanthropy and the Making of Christian Society in Early Byzantium. By Daniel Caner. Transformation of the Classical Heritage LXII. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2021. xix + 410 pp. $34.95, cloth; $34.95, eBook.

The Rich and the Pure: Philanthropy and the Making of Christian Society in Early Byzantium. By Daniel Caner. Transformation of the Classical Heritage LXII. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2021. xix + 410 pp. 34.95, eBook. - Volume 91 Issue 3

The Rich and the Pure: Philanthropy and the Making of Christian Society in Early Byzantium by Daniel Caner

The Rich and the Pure: Philanthropy and the Making of Christian Society in Early Byzantium by Daniel Caner

Premodern ‘Galaktology’: Reading Milk in Ancient and Early Byzantine Medical Treatises

Extant medical treatises from Greco-Roman antiquity and early Byzantium (second–seventh century CE) repeatedly foreground human milk as a therapeutic and a nutritional agathon (good), but also as a potential cause of malfunctioning and disease. Through a discussion of the juxtaposition of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ milk in the examined treatises, along with an investigation of the milk terminology and rhetoric employed, this article shows that milk’s usefulness was primarily defined not according to its effects on the human body, but in terms of the producer’s moral worth: the lactating woman’s (i.e. biological mother’s or wet nurse’s) ability to meet certain moral standards.

New Books across the Disciplines

New Books across the Disciplines

Review: The Rich and the Pure: Philanthropy and the Making of Christian Society in Early Byzantium, by Daniel Caner

Review: <i>The Rich and the Pure: Philanthropy and the Making of Christian Society in Early Byzantium</i>, by Daniel Caner

The Rich and the Pure: Philanthropy and the Making of Christian Society in Early Byzantium by Daniel Caner

Reviewed by: The Rich and the Pure: Philanthropy and the Making of Christian Society in Early Byzantium by Daniel Caner Becky Walker Daniel Caner The Rich and the Pure: Philanthropy and the Making of Christian Society in Early Byzantium Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2021 Pp. xix + 410. $34.95. Daniel Caner, in The Rich and the Pure: Philanthropy and the Making of Christian Society in Early Byzantium, distinguishes among five religious gift categories that developed in the Eastern Roman Empire between the fourth and seventh [End Page 309] centuries c.e.: alms (eleēmosynē), charity (agapē), material blessings (eulogiai), fruitbearings (karpophoriai), and liturgical offerings (prosphorai). Caner argues that these categories developed partly as an effort to fulfill Jesus’s command to “give to all who ask of you” (Mt 5.42; Luke 6.30), what became known as universal philanthropy. Caner further argues that professional religious people, particularly monks, used these last three categories (blessings, fruitbearings, and offerings) to justify their accumulation of sacred wealth in light of expectations of holy men and women (as “the perfect” of Mt 19.21) to renounce all worldly wealth. In addition to answering the important questions of how Christian leaders sought to fulfill Jesus’s command to extend universal philanthropy and how holy men sought to explain their newly attained wealth from state subsidies and lay gifts, Caner also answers the question of what types of relationships each of these gifts sought to create and maintain. After a brief Prologue, in which Caner explains his inspiration for the book, and Introduction, in which he underlines the complementary relationship between philanthropy (philanthrMpia) and asceticism (aktēmosynē) in the minds of early Byzantine Christians, Chapter One describes the wealth and giving practices within early Byzantium. Caner explains how imperial gifts influenced the giving practices of bishops, who might use gifts in an effort to win the support of other church authorities, including abbots, for allegiance to a particular doctrinal position. This chapter also clarifies how monasteries sought to reconcile their newfound wealth with their adoption of voluntary poverty by forbidding private possession of land and assets, but not communal ownership. Chapter Two describes how early Byzantine bishops and monks responded to Jesus’s command “to give to all who ask of you.” Bishops accomplished this feat by prioritizing the ptōchoi (the formerly wealthy who had fallen into poverty) over the penōtes (those born into poverty); monks fulfilled the command by providing separate accommodations at monasteries to holy people, laypeople, and poor people. Chapter Three discusses how John Chrysostom advocated direct almsgiving as a way for laypeople to acquire the virtues of humility and compassion, and abbots in the fifth century sought to inculcate these same virtues in their monks through diakonia (acts of service) toward strangers and fellow monks. The fifth century also saw monks begin to replace bishops as patrons of and mediators for the poor. Following this introductory material, Caner sets out to prove his thesis in Chapters Four to Seven. In Chapter Four, he provides a helpful distinction between alms/almsgiving and charity. While both almsgiving and charity are caritative practices, alms were given from one’s surplus wealth while charity came from one’s essential wealth. Furthermore, almsgiving typically involved material resources and became a method for laypeople to atone for their post-baptismal sins while charity particularly came to govern master-disciple relationships in monasticism and often involved the master’s willingness to assume part or all responsibility for his disciple’s sins. In Chapters Five to Seven, Caner distinguishes between blessings, fruitbearing/firstfruits, and liturgical offerings. Typically involving items of small monetary value such as dirt, oil, bread, fruits, and small amounts of cash, blessings originated from God’s abundance and thus, were thought to be untainted wealth. [End Page 310] They are the closest thing to a disinterested gift, incurring no obligations on the recipient to reciprocate. Fruitbearings/firstfruits offerings were either tithes or the best part of a person’s harvest offered to holy people as gratitude for their intercessory prayers. Liturgical offerings were typically given by laypeople for the purpose of remembrance after their own or a loved one’s death. They...

The Rich and the Pure: Philanthropy and the Making of Christian Society in Early Byzantium by Daniel Caner

<i>The Rich and the Pure: Philanthropy and the Making of Christian Society in Early Byzantium</i> by Daniel Caner

Canonical Supervision of Rural Communities in Early Byzantium

The author attempts in this study to analyse the canonical texts of the Orthodox Church in order to identify certain canonical institutions used by the Church for its pastorship and mission in rural communities and how rural parishes were canonically supervised. To Christianise villages, the Byzantine Church manifested a certain canonical creativity, creating the institution of chorepiscopate responsible for rural ecclesial life and the care for the poor in rural communities. The author emphasizes the full episcopal status of the chorbishops. At the end of the fourth century, the canonical texts limit the canonical privileges of chorbishops even for their rural jurisdiction, prohibiting not just the ordination for the village but the right to ordain priests and deacons for rural communities. Simultaneously with the development of the office of chorbishops, the rank of periodeutai also appeared. These priests resided in the city and were sent by the urban bishop to visit the rural communities as well. They were supervisors of rural communities under the authority of the urban bishop and they can be considered an important link between urban and rural communities, but as well an instrument of exercising episcopal power and control in rural parishes that were previous dominated by the figure of chorbishops.

The Rich and the Pure: Philanthropy and the Making of Christian Society in Early Byzantium by Daniel Caner (review)

The Rich and the Pure: Philanthropy and the Making of Christian Society in Early Byzantium by Daniel Caner (review)

«Orthodox Greek Emperors have had this many times»: Byzantine Example in legislative acts, panegyric and historical-political writings in Russia, late 17th – first quarter of the 18th century

The article examines the use of examples from Byzantine history to explain current and historical events in Russia at the end of the 17th – first quarter of the 18th century. The usage of historical examples to clarify the meaning of events is one of the most common explanatory strategies. The source base of the research is mainly composed of panegyric literature, legislative acts, preparatory legislative documents, works of a historical and political nature. The history of Byzantium was well known in Russia at the end of the 17th century, however, the frequency of examples from Byzantine history was much inferior to the biblical and ancient ones. The article shows that in the studied chronological period, Byzantium was known to Russian authors mainly under the name «Greek Tsardom», the history of which dates back to the era of Emperor Constantine the Great. The name of this emperor and other emperors of early Byzantium (late Rome) were often mentioned as an example in the texts of the late 17th – first quarter of the 18th century. The article analyzes the use of facts from Byzantine history to clarify legislative acts, build historical analogies for Russian tsars, primarily Peter I. The role of the Byzantine example in the situation of Peter’s acceptance of the imperial title is also shown, as well as the application of the fall of Byzantium as political notation.

Money in “Historia monachorum in Aegypto”

The text discusses the accounts of money in Historia monachorum in Aegypto. There are not many of them and, in addition, they are quite succinct. The first illustrates the face of early Byzantine fiscalism, the difficulty of paying taxes, and the resulting sanctions for the insolvent debtor and his family members. The next, equally laconic, shows the nature of the business of a merchant trading his goods from Thebaid to Alexandria. The remaining analyzed information is comprised of isolated and very brief references to the issue of money in other spheres of everyday life. Historia monachorum, an important text for studying the early history of Egyptian monasticism, unfortunately, does not constitute a valuable source of information about money and the history of the economy of early Byzantium.

Intersecting Inequalities: The Representation of Religious, Gender, and Sexual Identities in the Life of Pelagia

Abstract Repentant harlots who became trans saints presented Byzantine hagiographers with a challenge. Thought to exhibit a lack of self-control and the excessive sexuality, associated with women, and sex workers in particular, – a subject of great concern for monastic authors – how could members of this stigmatized group achieve the standards of Christian piety, let alone saintly behavior? In portraying its fictional protagonist as an exemplum of masculine virtues in the context of nascent Palestinian monasticism, the anonymous Life of Pelagia highlights the non-binariness of social identities in early Byzantium, unsettling fixed gender categorization. Conceiving of a trans figure of an ascetic subverting conventional binaries, the Life creates a model for incorporating non-conforming masculinities of Byzantine society within the normative hagiographic genre.

On Frankincense-scented Soaps, Peelings and Cleansers or on Cosmetics and Commotics in Antiquity and Early Byzantium

Cosmetology (τέχνη κοσμητική), i.e. a resource of means aimed at maintaining natural beauty of a human, was not frowned upon by the pagans nor by the Christians. What they disapproved of was commotic (κομμωτικὴ τέχνη), defined (by Galen, Clement of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa and Theodoret of Cyrus ) as an art of changing the outward appearance to the detriment of nature and one’s health. The present study has been designed to discuss select information, extant in Book VIII of Iatricorum libri by Aëtius of Amida, on what preparations were at disposal of the people of the Mediterranean who cared for their physical cleanliness (as well as health), regardless of their religious proclivities. It is focused on a number of prescriptions for face and body cleansers, though the analysed inventory has been limited to the ones including frankincense. The research material has turned out to be ample enough to draw conclusions on the ingredients used in such agents, their effectiveness, the form of the preparations, their application mode as well as on the addressees of the recipes. It has been also suggested that the formulas were compiled from the body of medical knowledge akin to what was collected by Titus Statilius Crito in his work On cosmetics.

Magical Amulets, Magical Thinking, and Semiotics in Early Byzantium

Abstract The term ‘magic’ is problematic. Magic studies have rapidly developed in recent decades and have suggested various ways of understanding the term, especially regarding objects from the medieval Roman Empire, Byzantium. Two early Byzantine amulets (as case studies) display conventional semiotic structures, which include persuasive analogy, speech-acts, and show-acts. Persuasive analogy, speech-acts, and show-acts – and how they organize information – operate also in religious, medical, and philosophical examples. Accordingly, art, archaeology, and texts of ritual power exemplify intersecting communities of thought and various types of social practices. Magic studies is interdisciplinary, and it encourages critique of modern assumptions regarding authority and of our intellectual colonization of times past. This essay is broad with several object examples across media, written as a conference presentation. Another approach to these semiotic structures on magical amulets – with examination of fewer objects and wider attention to the historiography of magic studies – will appear in the forthcoming Oxford Handbook on Byzantine Art and Architecture, ed. Ellen Schwartz.