Symeon Stylites the Younger and Late Antique Antioch

Symeon Stylites the Younger and Late Antique Antioch
Author: Lucy Parker
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2022-06-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 0192688790

Symeon Stylites the Younger and Late Antique Antioch: From Hagiography to History is a study of the authority of the holy man and its limits in times of crisis. Lucy Parker investigates the tensions that emerged when increasingly ambitious claims about the powers of holy men came into conflict with undeniable evidence of their failures, and explores how holy men and their supporters responded to this. The work takes as its central figure Symeon Stylites the Younger (c.521-592), who, from his vantage point on a column on a mountain close to Antioch, witnessed a period of exceptional turbulence in the local area, which, in the sixth century, experienced plague, earthquakes, and Persian invasion. Through an examination of Symeon's own writings, as well as his hagiographic biography, it reveals that the stylite was a divisive figure who played upon social tensions and upon culturally sensitive areas such as paganism to carve out a role for himself as prophet and spiritual authority in the face of considerable opposition. It sets Symeon's life and cult in the context of Antioch and eastern Roman society, offering a new perspective on the state of the empire in the period before the rise of Islam. It argues that hagiography is an exceptionally rich source for the historian, offering insights into debates and tensions which reached to the heart of Christianity.

Symeon Stylites the Younger and Late Antique Antioch

Symeon Stylites the Younger and Late Antique Antioch
Author: Lucy Parker
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2022-07-07
Genre: Antioch (Turkey)
ISBN: 019286517X

Symeon Stylites the Younger and Late Antique Antioch: From Hagiography to History is a study of the authority of the holy man and its limits in times of crisis. Lucy Parker investigates the tensions that emerged when increasingly ambitious claims about the powers of holy men came into conflict with undeniable evidence of their failures, and explores how holy men and their supporters responded to this. The work takes as its central figure Symeon Stylites the Younger (c.521-592), who, from his vantage point on a column on a mountain close to Antioch, witnessed a period of exceptional turbulence in the local area, which, in the sixth century, experienced plague, earthquakes, and Persian invasion. Through an examination of Symeon's own writings, as well as his hagiographic biography, it reveals that the stylite was a divisive figure who played upon social tensions and upon culturally sensitive areas such as paganism to carve out a role for himself as prophet and spiritual authority in the face of considerable opposition. It sets Symeon's life and cult in the context of Antioch and eastern Roman society, offering a new perspective on the state of the empire in the period before the rise of Islam. It argues that hagiography is an exceptionally rich source for the historian, offering insights into debates and tensions which reached to the heart of Christianity.

Symeon Stylites the Younger and Late Antique Antioch

Symeon Stylites the Younger and Late Antique Antioch
Author: Lucy Parker
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2022
Genre: Antioch (Turkey)
ISBN: 9780191955662

Symeon Stylites the Younger and Late Antique Antioch explores the authority of a holy man and its limitations in times of crisis, with a particular focus on the little-studied Antiochene stylite Symeon the Younger. Symeon the Younger (c.521-92) lived through a period of repeated disasters in the region of Antioch, including earthquakes, plagues, and Persian invasions. The book explores how Symeon and his supporters reacted to these crises, which posed a powerful challenge to the claims of holy men to be able to protect their supplicants. It argues that crisis laid bare theological and emotional tensions that had always existed around the role of a holy man as intercessor between God and his supplicants. It considers various texts associated with the stylite, including his sermon collection, his hagiographic Life, and the Life of his mother, Martha, setting these in the broader context of society and culture in the late Roman empire and of developments in hagiography over time. The sermon collection and the Life of Symeon show that the stylite was a divisive figure who played on social tensions and scapegoated the wealthy notables of Antioch for disaster. The Life of Martha reflects a reorientation of priorities for the cult, offering an original vision of holiness based on participation in liturgy and the sacraments. The tensions evinced in these texts are reflected in other hagiographies from the period, offering a new perspective on the state of the Roman empire in the sixth and seventh centuries.

A History of the Later Roman Empire, AD 284-700

A History of the Later Roman Empire, AD 284-700
Author: Stephen Mitchell
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 630
Release: 2023-07-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1119768551

A sweeping historical account of the Later Roman Empire incorporating the latest scholarly research In the newly revised 3rd edition of A History of the Later Roman Empire, 284-700, distinguished historians Geoffrey Greatrex and Stephen Mitchell deliver a thoroughly up-to-date discussion of the Later Roman Empire. It includes tables of information, numerous illustrations, maps, and chronological overviews. As the only single volume covering Late Antiquity and the early Islamic period, the book is designed as a comprehensive historical handbook covering the entire span between the Roman Empire to the Islamic conquests. The third edition is a significant expansion of the second edition—published in 2015—and includes two new chapters covering the seventh century. The rest of the work has been updated and revised, providing readers with a sweeping historical survey of the struggles, triumphs, and disasters of the Roman Empire, from the accession of the emperor Diocletian in AD 284 to the closing years of the seventh century. It also offers: A thorough description of the massive political and military transformations in Rome’s western and eastern empires Comprehensive explorations of the latest research on the Later Roman Empire Practical discussions of the tumultuous period ushered in by the Arab conquests Extensive updates, revisions, and corrections of the second edition Perfect for undergraduate and postgraduate students of ancient, medieval, early European, and Near Eastern history, A History of the Later Roman Empire, 284-700 will also benefit lay readers with an interest in the relevant historical period and students taking a survey course involving the late Roman Empire.

Theodoros Prodromos: Miscellaneous Poems

Theodoros Prodromos: Miscellaneous Poems
Author: Nikos Zagklas
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2023-05-25
Genre:
ISBN: 0192886924

In twelfth-century Byzantium, poetry played a key part in various contexts of textual production and consumption. One of the leading poets of this period was Theodoros Prodromos, whose surviving corpus comprises approximately 17,000 verses. Even though most of his poetry has been presented in modern critical editions, a group of his works has been overlooked by modern philologists and literary scholars alike. The selected corpus--conventionally designated as Miscellaneous Poems--consists of texts on various themes and in a wide range of genres, ranging from cycles of religious and secular epigrams to riddles, ethopoiiai, and works of a self-referential and essayistic nature. This book includes the first critical edition and study of these poems, accompanied by English translations and commentaries. Their study contributes to a more nuanced picture of Prodromos' intellectual profile, expanding his image as the 'poet laureate' of the Komnenian court and providing entirely new insights into his activity in the different settings of Constantinopolitan intellectual life. The book also sheds new light on the complex relationship between patronage and other aspects of literary activity and the circulation of the same text in different performative contexts.

Emperor John II Komnenos

Emperor John II Komnenos
Author: Maximilian C. G. Lau
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2024-02-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 0198888678

John II Komnenos was born into an empire on the brink of destruction, with his father Alexios barely preserving the empire in the face of civil wars and invasions. A hostage to crusaders as a child, married to a Hungarian princess as a teenager to win his father an alliance, and leading his own campaigns when his father died, it was left to John to try and rebuild the empire all but lost in the eleventh century. This book, the first English language study on John and his era, re-evaluates an emperor traditionally overlooked in favour of his father, hero of the Alexiad written by John's sister Anna, and of his son Manuel, acclaimed for reigning at the height of Komnenian power. John's reign is one of contradictions, as his capital of New Rome/Constantinople was to fall to the armies of the Fourth Crusade just over sixty years after he died, and yet his descendants led vibrant successor states based in the lands that John reconquered. His reign lacks a dominant textual source, and so this history is related as much through personal letters, court literature, archaeology, and foreign accounts as through traditional historical narratives. This study includes extensive study of the landscapes, castles, and cities John built and campaigned through, and provides a guide to the world in which John lived. It covers the empire's neighbours and rivals, the turning points of ecclesiastical history, the shaping of the crusader movement, and the workings of Byzantine government and administration.

John Zonaras' Epitome of Histories

John Zonaras' Epitome of Histories
Author: Theofili Kampianaki
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 215
Release: 2022-08-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 0192688588

The twelfth-century chronicle of John Zonaras, which begins with the biblical Creation and ends in 1118, is one of the longest historical accounts written in Greek that has come down to us. It was also one of the most popular historical works of the Greek-speaking world during the Middle Ages, with a remarkably large number of manuscripts preserving the entire text or parts of it. John Zonaras' Epitome of Histories: A Compendium of Jewish-Roman History and Its Reception analyses Zonaras' chronicle as both a literary composition and a historical account. It concentrates on its composition, sources, and political, ideological, and literary background. It also includes discussions that go beyond the text, such as on the intellectual networks surrounding Zonaras, and the anticipated audience and the reception of the chronicle. By examining such issues, Theofili Kampianaki aims to present Zonaras' chronicle as a product which emerged from a milieu characterized by the increased contacts with Western people and the Komnenian style of rulership in the imperial bureaucracy, and as a work which seamlessly merges the traditions of chronicle writing and classicizing historiography.

Inventing Slavonic

Inventing Slavonic
Author: Mirela Ivanova
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2024-01-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 0198891563

Few alphabets in the world are actively celebrated, and none more so than the Slavonic. Annually across Eastern Europe, the alphabet and its inventors, Cyril and Methodios, are celebrated with parades, concerts, liturgical services, and public addresses by presidents, ministers, and mayors. Inventing Slavonic: Cultures of Writing Between Rome and Constantinople offers a new reading of the invention of the Slavonic alphabet and its implications. Its premise is simple: namely, that the alphabet was not invented once, but that it continued to be contested and redefined in the century after its creation. However, Inventing Slavonic goes against the grain of modern scholarship and popular common sense, where a stable and fossilized story about Cyril, his brother and companion Methodios, and the alphabet still persists. Mirela Ivanova shows that this well-known story is, in fact, a Frankenstein's monster, bolted together from texts which originally attributed quite different and often conflicting meanings to the elements which make up this supposedly unified narrative. In this narrative's place, the book offers a series of new readings of our earliest sources for the alphabet's appearance. In doing so, it constructs a new social history of the early script's fragility, and the ways in which its existence was conditioned by changes in socio-political life between Rome and Constantinople.