15 research outputs found

    Book review:΄ Greg, PETERS, Peter of Damascus. Byzantine Monk and Spiritual Theologian (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Studies and Texts 175, 2011)

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    Βιβλιοκρισία:Greg, PETERS, Peter of Damascus.  Byzantine Monk and Spiritual Theologian (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Studies and Texts 175, 2011), 182 p. + Appendices and Bibliography.Βιβλιοκρισία:Greg, PETERS, Peter of Damascus.  Byzantine Monk and Spiritual Theologian (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Studies and Texts 175, 2011), 182 p. + Appendices and Bibliography

    Book review:΄ Greg, PETERS, Peter of Damascus. Byzantine Monk and Spiritual Theologian (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Studies and Texts 175, 2011)

    Get PDF
    Βιβλιοκρισία:Greg, PETERS, Peter of Damascus.  Byzantine Monk and Spiritual Theologian (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Studies and Texts 175, 2011), 182 p. + Appendices and Bibliography.Βιβλιοκρισία:Greg, PETERS, Peter of Damascus.  Byzantine Monk and Spiritual Theologian (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Studies and Texts 175, 2011), 182 p. + Appendices and Bibliography

    Purely persecutions? An examination of Muslims and the Christian Dhimmi in the Near East

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    This thesis examines martyrologies set in the Near East between the seventh and ninth centuries, with a view to establishing the extent of their value as historical resources. The texts are placed in the context of the development of martyrological writing as a sub-genre of Christian hagiography, since they emerge from a rich tradition of early Christian writing which itself draws on Jewish sources. The similarities and differences between the situations of Christians under Islam and under Sasanid rule are also considered, since the Sasanid period is so rich in the range and variety of martyrological writings it produced. Texts from the caliphate period are looked at individually with a view to drawing out any salient historical details contained within them – likely hard facts as opposed to topoi. But history also includes the history of ideas. Therefore attention is paid to what can be gleaned from the shape of martyrological writing as a genre at that particular time. Although the main focus of study is the Near East and compositions mostly associated with the monastery of Mar Saba, reference is made to martyrological writings generated by the explosive mid-ninth century episode of the martyrs of Córdoba. Although it occurred outside the ‘Abbāsid caliphate, it is not unconnected with Mar Saba. The thesis suggests that it is significant that the period in question produced relatively few martyrologies in comparison with the Sasanid period. Moreover, some of the Caliphate texts say little about the encounter between Christianity and Islam. However, those that refer to it indicate that Islam posed a more serious theological challenge to Christianity than anything else it had hitherto encountered in the world of late antiquity, whether paganism or Zoroastianism

    Between Constantinople, the Papacy, and the Caliphate

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    This volume examines the Melkite church from the Arab invasion of Syria in 634 until 969. The Melkite Patriarchates were established in Antioch, Jerusalem and Alexandria and, following the Arab campaigns in Syria and Egypt, they all came under the new Muslim state. Over the next decades the Melkite church underwent a process of gradual marginalization, moving from the privileged position of the state confession to becoming one of the religious minorities of the Caliphate. This transition took place in the context of theological and political interactions with the Byzantine Empire, the Patriarchate of Constantinople, the Papacy and, over time, with the reborn Roman Empire in the West. Exploring the various processes within the Melkite church this volume also examines Caliphate–Byzantine interactions, the cultural and religious influences of Constantinople, the synthesis of Greek, Arab and Syriac elements, the process of Arabization of communities, and Melkite relations with distant Rome

    Monasticism and Christian pilgrimage in early Islamic Palestine c.614-c.950

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    Recent studies of early Islamic Palestine have stressed the minimal impact of the Arab conquest on the Christian communities of the region. None, however, have sought to trace the trajectories of these communities beyond the eighth century. This thesis provides the first long-term study of the impact of the Arab conquest on monasticism and pilgrimage between 614 and 950. The study explores the changes to the physical landscape of monasteries and Christian cult sites, in terms of site abandonment and continuity, and situates these processes in the broader political and economic context of the Palestinian region between the seventh and tenth centuries. This thesis offers a systematic critique of current theories which view Palestinian monasticism and Christian pilgrimage as social entities dependent upon patronage from Byzantium and the early medieval west. Rather, it stresses the need for a more nuanced recognition of monastic communities and Christian cult sites as places closely interlinked with localised developments and the high degree of variation between communities in terms of patron economies and social transactions. This study demonstrates that these variances often provide the key to understanding the highly varied response of Palestinian monastic communities and Christian cult sites to early Muslim rule

    La Passion de S. Pierre de Capitolias († 13 janvier 715)

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    The Word Is An Angel Of The Mind: Angelic And Temple Imagery In The Theology Of John Mansur, The Damascene.

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    This dissertation looks at the scriptural images of angel and temple, as they occur in key works by John Damascene: on the Heresies, chapter 100 On the Ishmaelites; Three Treatises on the Divine Images, and on the Orthodox Faith. Angelic and temple imagery forms an important core which holds together liturgy, ascesis, and theophany. These types of images constitute a consistent mode for understanding theology and anthropology. As part of revelation, they are important in the early Islamic context. Angel and temple imagery were used by John Damascene to push back against Islamic revelation claims and Islamic challenges to the centrality of these images from an older, more developed and ascetic way of dealing with the imagery of Jewish and Christian revelation. As such, John Damascene must argue in a way which reinforces both the biblical images and the sense of the hermeneutic propriety of worshipping Christ through images and other sacramental means. Christ himself as divine, and God expressed in his Will creating and provident, is defended by the claim for the Image within the Trinity. In the context of both Islamic and Iconoclastic claims to a better understanding of Divine Law, either through Quran or Old Testament, John Damascene consistently tries to show Christian belief and practice as adhering to the Law as properly understood in Christ. In doing so, he ends up more powerfully affirming matter, sense (especially vision), and the body. As regards the body, John Damascene consistently moves in the direction of asserting something bodily about God, definitely proclaiming angels as in some sense bodily and focusing on the theological import of Christ\u27s incarnate enthronement and theophany. For John Damascene, both angel and temple work in tandem as icons, meeting places, and accompaniment of theophany for the Christian. These images help to emphasize human refinement and purification through ascesis and virtue, understood as movement to greater vision and participation in the place of God\u27s appearance and human exaltation, in Christ

    Ni Romain, ni Arabe, Moundar bar Hareth, roi des Tayyés : quand l'Arabie était chrétienne

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    Ce mémoire porte sur celui que nous avons cru être le dernier roi des Arabes chrétiens du territoire romain, Moundar bar Hareth. En cours de route, nous avons redécouvert le dernier roi des Tayyés romains, un peuple oublié, dont l’histoire est essentielle pour bien comprendre les débuts de l’islam. À partir des œuvres des chroniqueurs syriaques, plus particulièrement de l’histoire de Jean d’Amida, nous avons remonté la piste afin de comprendre l’importance du dernier monarque de la famille de Gabala. Via cet examen des sources, nous analyserons également le corpus grec et arabe pour saisir les aléas de ce peuple d’Arabie, entraînant au passage, la redécouverte d’une polémique intra-chrétienne très ancienne, l’ismaélisme. L’ensemble de cette recherche se veut une étude originale et novatrice des événements entourant la fin de l’alliance traditionnelle entre les Romains et les Tayyés, une histoire singulière pavée de trahisons et d’une crise religieuse insoupçonnée. Ni Romain, ni Arabe, Moundar bar Hareth est figure incontournable du 6e siècle de notre ère. Le présent travail se propose d’analyser le règne du grand roi, plus particulièrement de son aspect religieux, et se divise en quatre parties, les deux premières portant sur les appellations anciennes et la redécouverte du peuple Tayyé. Les deux dernières parties seront consacrées à l’analyse de la carrière de Moundar, l’homme militaire, politique et religieux, en tenant compte de l’histoire des Tayyés de Saracèn

    Remembering and Forgetting the Ancient City

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    The Greco-Roman world is identified in the modern mind by its cities. This includes both specific places such as Athens and Rome, but also an instantly recognizable style of urbanism wrought in marble and lived in by teeming tunic-clad crowds. Selective and misleading this vision may be, but it speaks to the continuing importance these ancient cities have had in the centuries that followed and the extent to which they define the period in subsequent memory. Although there is much that is mysterious about them, the cities of the Roman Mediterranean are, for the most part, historically known. That the names and pasts of these cities remain known to us is the product of an extraordinary process of remembering and forgetting stretching back to antiquity that took place throughout the former Roman world. This volume tackles this subject of the survival and transformation of the ancient city through memory, drawing upon the methodological and theoretical lenses of memory studies and resilience theory to view the way the Greco-Roman city lived and vanished for the generations that separate the present from antiquity.This book analyzes the different ways in which urban communities of the post-Antique world have tried to understand and relate to the ancient city on their own terms, examining it as a process of forgetting as well as remembering. Many aspects of the ancient city were let go as time passed, but those elements that survived, that were actively remembered, have shaped the many understandings of what it was. In order to do so, this volume assembles specialists in multiple fields to bring their perspectives to bear on the subject through eleven case studies that range from late Antiquity to the mid-twentieth century, and from the Iberian Peninsula to Iran. Through the examination of archaeological remains, changing urban layouts and chronicles, travel guides and pamphlets, they track how the ancient city was made useful or consigned to oblivion
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