The Occult Sciences in Byzantium

The Occult Sciences in Byzantium
Author: Paul Magdalino
Publisher: La Pomme d'or
Total Pages: 469
Release: 2006
Genre: History
ISBN: 9548446022

This volume represents the first attempt to examine occult sciences as a distinct category of Byzantine intellectual culture. It is concerned with both the reality and the image of the occult sciences in Byzantium, and seeks, above all, to represent them in their social and cultural context as a historical phenomenon. The eleven essays demonstrate that Byzantium was not marginal to the scientific culture of the Middle Ages, and that the occult sciences were not marginal to the learned culture of the medieval Byzantine world.

The Cambridge Intellectual History of Byzantium

The Cambridge Intellectual History of Byzantium
Author: Anthony Kaldellis
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 1438
Release: 2017-11-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 110821021X

This volume brings into being the field of Byzantine intellectual history. Shifting focus from the cultural, social, and economic study of Byzantium to the life and evolution of ideas in their context, it provides an authoritative history of intellectual endeavors from Late Antiquity to the fifteenth century. At its heart lie the transmission, transformation, and shifts of Hellenic, Christian, and Byzantine ideas and concepts as exemplified in diverse aspects of intellectual life, from philosophy, theology, and rhetoric to astrology, astronomy, and politics. Case studies introduce the major players in Byzantine intellectual life, and particular emphasis is placed on the reception of ancient thought and its significance for secular as well as religious modes of thinking and acting. New insights are offered regarding controversial, understudied, or promising topics of research, such as philosophy and medical thought in Byzantium, and intellectual exchanges with the Arab world.

A Companion to Byzantine Science

A Companion to Byzantine Science
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 674
Release: 2020-01-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004414614

Science in Byzantium has rarely been systematically explored. A first of its kind, this collection of essays highlights the disciplines, achievements, and contexts of Byzantine science across the eleven centuries of the Byzantine empire. After an introduction on science in Byzantium and the 21st century, and a study of Christianization and the teaching of science in Byzantium, it offers a comprehensive and up-to-date survey of the scientific disciplines cultivated in Byzantium, from the exact to the natural sciences, medicine, polemology, and the occult sciences. The volume showcases the diversity and vivacity of the varied scientific endeavours in the Byzantine world across its long history, and aims to bring the field into broader conversations within Byzantine studies, medieval studies, and history of science. Contributors are Fabio Acerbi, Anne-Laurence Caudano, Gonzalo Andreotti Cruz, Katerina Ierodiakonou, Herve Inglebert, Stavros Lazaris, Divna Manolova, Maria K. Papathanassiou, Inmaculada Pérez Martín, Thomas Salmon, Ioannis Telelis, Anne Tihon, Alain Touwaide, Arnaud Zucker.

Niketas Choniates

Niketas Choniates
Author: Alicia Simpson
Publisher: La Pomme d'or
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2009
Genre: Historians
ISBN: 9548446057

Byzantine Media Subjects

Byzantine Media Subjects
Author: Glenn A. Peers
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 325
Release: 2024-06-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1501775049

Byzantine Media Subjects invites readers into a world replete with images—icons, frescoes, and mosaics filling places of worship, politics, and community. Glenn Peers asks readers to think themselves into a world where representation reigned and humans followed, and indeed were formed. Interrogating the fundamental role of representation in the making of the Byzantine human, Peers argues that Byzantine culture was (already) posthuman. The Byzantine experience reveals the extent to which media like icons, manuscripts, music, animals, and mirrors fundamentally determine humans. In the Byzantine world, representation as such was deeply persuasive, even coercive; it had the power to affect human relationships, produce conflict, and form self-perception. Media studies has made its subject the modern world, but this book argues for media having made historical subjects. Here, it is shown that media long ago also made Byzantine humans, defining them, molding them, mediating their relationship to time, to nature, to God, and to themselves.

Prognostication in the Medieval World

Prognostication in the Medieval World
Author: Matthias Heiduk
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 1039
Release: 2020-11-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 3110499770

Two opposing views of the future in the Middle Ages dominate recent historical scholarship. According to one opinion, medieval societies were expecting the near end of the world and therefore had no concept of the future. According to the other opinion, the expectation of the near end created a drive to change the world for the better and thus for innovation. Close inspection of the history of prognostication reveals the continuous attempts and multifold methods to recognize and interpret God’s will, the prodigies of nature, and the patterns of time. That proves, on the one hand, the constant human uncertainty facing the contingencies of the future. On the other hand, it demonstrates the firm believe during the Middle Ages in a future which could be shaped and even manipulated. The handbook provides the first overview of current historical research on medieval prognostication. It considers the entangled influences and transmissions between Christian, Jewish, Islamic, and non-monotheistic societies during the period from a wide range of perspectives. An international team of 63 renowned authors from about a dozen different academic disciplines contributed to this comprehensive overview.

The Efficacy of the Exorcistic Prayers in the Athonite Manuscript of Xiropotamou 98, (2260) 16

The Efficacy of the Exorcistic Prayers in the Athonite Manuscript of Xiropotamou 98, (2260) 16
Author: Jesmond Micallef
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 379
Release: 2023-01-06
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1527591921

The Covid-19 pandemic in the year 2020 exposed a fragility of human consciousness, at all latitudes. In the face of unforeseen threats, we are unable to react, or we become slaves to irrational instincts, which can lead to hysterical and obsessive behaviours, precisely those described by the diabolical possessions against which the Church has been fighting for two thousand years, since Christ entrusted her with power to defeat the devil. Moreover, the activity of exorcism is described in the Gospels as the main manifestation of the divine power of the Lord Jesus, which released from him for the salvation of men. This book presents, for the first time, an edition of the Xiropotamou manuscript 98 preserved at the Library of the Xiropotamou monastery of Mount Athos in Greece. It cushions the liturgical exorcistic prayer of the manuscript between a biblical study of this ancient activity of the Church and an overview of the Rite of Exorcism in Orthodox usage in Early, Middle, and Late Byzantium.

Islamicate Occult Sciences in Theory and Practice

Islamicate Occult Sciences in Theory and Practice
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 721
Release: 2020-11-16
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9004426973

Islamicate Occult Sciences in Theory and Practice brings together the latest research on Islamic occult sciences from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, namely intellectual history, manuscript studies and material culture. Its aim is not only to showcase the range of pioneering work that is currently being done in these areas, but also to provide a model for closer interaction amongst the disciplines constituting this burgeoning field of study. Furthermore, the book provides the rare opportunity to bridge the gap on an institutional level by bringing the academic and curatorial spheres into dialogue. Contributors include: Charles Burnett, Jean-Charles Coulon, Maryam Ekhtiar, Noah Gardiner, Christiane Gruber, Bink Hallum, Francesca Leoni, Matthew Melvin-Koushki, Michael Noble, Rachel Parikh, Liana Saif, Maria Subtelny, Farouk Yahya, and Travis Zadeh.

Byzantine Culture in Translation

Byzantine Culture in Translation
Author: Amelia Robertson Brown
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2017-07-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004349073

This collection on Byzantine culture in translation, edited by Amelia Brown and Bronwen Neil, examines the practices and theories of translation inside the Byzantine empire and beyond its horizons to the east, north and west. The time span is from Late Antiquity to the present day. Translations studied include hagiography, history, philosophy, poetry, architecture and science, between Greek, Latin, Arabic and other languages. These chapters build upon presentations given at the 18th Biennial Conference of the Australian Association for Byzantine Studies, convened by the editors at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia on 28-30 November 2014. Contributors include: Eva Anagnostou-Laoutides, Amelia Brown, Penelope Buckley, John Burke, Michael Champion, John Duffy, Yvette Hunt, Maria Mavroudi, Ann Moffatt, Bronwen Neil, Roger Scott, Michael Edward Stewart, Rene Van Meeuwen, Alfred Vincent, and Nigel Westbrook.