The Reception of the Virgin in Byzantium

The Reception of the Virgin in Byzantium PDF Author: Thomas Arentzen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108476287
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 381

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Book Description
Images and texts tell various stories about the Virgin Mary in Byzantium, reflecting an important cult with strong doctrinal foundations.

The Reception of the Virgin in Byzantium

The Reception of the Virgin in Byzantium PDF Author: Thomas Arentzen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108476287
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 381

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Book Description
Images and texts tell various stories about the Virgin Mary in Byzantium, reflecting an important cult with strong doctrinal foundations.

The Virgin Mary in Byzantium, c.400–1000

The Virgin Mary in Byzantium, c.400–1000 PDF Author: Mary B. Cunningham
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009327232
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
The Virgin Mary assumed a position of central importance in Byzantium. This major and authoritative study examines her portrayal in liturgical texts during the first six centuries of Byzantine history. Focusing on three main literary genres that celebrated this holy figure, it highlights the ways in which writers adapted their messages for different audiences. Mary is portrayed variously as defender of the imperial city, Constantinople, virginal Mother of God, and ascetic disciple of Christ. Preachers, hymnographers, and hagiographers used rhetoric to enhance Mary's powerful status in Eastern Christian society, depicting her as virgin and mother, warrior and ascetic, human and semi-divine being. Their paradoxical statements were based on the fundamental mystery that Mary embodied: she was the mother of Christ, the Word of God, who provided him with the human nature that he assumed in his incarnation. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

The Cult of the Mother of God in Byzantium

The Cult of the Mother of God in Byzantium PDF Author: Leslie Brubaker
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 9780754662662
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
This volume, on the cult of the Theotokos (Virgin Mary) in Byzantium, focuses on textual and historical aspects of the subject, thus complementing previous work which has centered more on the cult of images of the Mother of God. This international cast of scholars, consider the development and transformation of the cult from approximately the fourth through the twelfth centuries. The aim of this volume is to build on recent work on the cult of the Virgin Mary in Byzantium and to explore new areas of study. The rationale is critical and historical, using literary, artistic, and archaeological sources to evaluate her role in the development of the Byzantine understanding of the ways in which God interacts with creation by means of icons, relics and the Theotokos.

Icons and Power

Icons and Power PDF Author: Bissera V. Pentcheva
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 9780271048161
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
Pentcheva demonstrates that a fundamental shift in the Byzantine cult from relics to icons, took place during the late tenth century. Centered upon fundamental questions of art, religion, and politics, Icons and Power makes a vital contribution to the entire field of medieval studies.

Liturgy and the Emotions in Byzantium

Liturgy and the Emotions in Byzantium PDF Author: Andrew Mellas
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108487599
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
Emotions in Byzantium came to life through hymnody, which invited the faithful to step into a liturgical world of compunction.

The Virgin in Song

The Virgin in Song PDF Author: Thomas Arentzen
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812293916
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
According to legend, the Virgin appeared one Christmas Eve to an artless young man standing in one of Constantinople's most famous Marian shrines. She offered him a scroll of papyrus with the injunction that he swallow it, and following the Virgin's command, he did so. Immediately his voice turned sweet and gentle as he spontaneously intoned his hymn "The Virgin today gives birth." So was born the career of Romanos the Melodist (ca. 485-560), one of the greatest liturgical poets of Byzantium, author of at least sixty long hymns, or kontakia, that were chanted during the night vigils preceding major feasts and festivals. In The Virgin in Song, Thomas Arentzen explores the characterization of Mary in these kontakia and the ways in which the kontakia echoed the cult of the Virgin. He focuses on three key moments in her story as marked in the liturgical calendar: her encounter with Gabriel at the Annunciation, her child's birth at Christmas, and the death of her son on Good Friday. Consistently, Arentzen contends, Romanos counters expectations by shifting emphasis away from Christ himself to focus on Mary—as the subject of the erotic gaze, as a breastfeeding figure of abundance and fertility, and finally as an authoritatively vocal woman who conveys the secrets of her son and the joys of the resurrection. Through his hymns, Romanos inspired an affective relationship between Mary and his audience, bringing the human and the holy into dialogue. By plumbing her emotional depths, the poet traces her process of understanding as she apprehends the mysteries that she embodies. By giving her a powerful voice, he grants subjectivity to a maiden who becomes a mediator. Romanos shaped a figure, Arentzen argues, who related intimately to her flock in a formative period of Christian orthodoxy.

Reading in the Byzantine Empire and Beyond

Reading in the Byzantine Empire and Beyond PDF Author: Clare Teresa M. Shawcross
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108418414
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 745

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Book Description
The first comprehensive introduction in English to books, readers and reading in Byzantium and the wider medieval world surrounding it.

Miracle Tales from Byzantium

Miracle Tales from Byzantium PDF Author:
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674059034
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 473

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Book Description
Miracles occupied a unique place in medieval and Byzantine life and thought. This volume makes available three collections of miracle tales never before translated into English. They deepen our understanding of attitudes toward miracles and display the remarkable range of registers in which Greek could be written during the Byzantine period.

Presbeia Theotokou

Presbeia Theotokou PDF Author: Leena Mari Peltomaa
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Art, Byzantine
Languages : de
Pages : 276

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Book Description
The present book is dedicated to one main aspect of the Marian cult: it investigates the historical process that made Mary, mother of Jesus, the most prominent intercessor across the Byzantine Empire at the end of Iconoclasm (843). The study touches religious and social issues, it refers only to contemporary ideas and sources and distinguishes itself consciously from later mariological concepts.

The Reception of Greek Ethics in Late Antiquity and Byzantium

The Reception of Greek Ethics in Late Antiquity and Byzantium PDF Author: Sophia Xenophontos
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108833691
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
This volume provides the first authoritative study of the creative appropriation of Greek ethics by late antique and Byzantine authors.