Mary’s parents in homilies before and after James Kokkinobaphos, Wonderful things, Byzantium through its art ( 42nd Symposium of Byzantine Studies, King’s College, London and Courtauld Institute, March 2009), Ashgate 2013 (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Virgin Mary in Byzantium, c. 400 - 1000. Hymns, Homilies and Hagiography
2021
The Virgin Mary assumed a position of central importance in Byzantium. This book 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 all-holy figure. 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. Dr Cunningham's authoritative study makes a major contribution to the history of Christianity.
Mirabilia Ars, nº 2 (2015 /1), Institut d'Estudis Medievals, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 2015, p. 200-226, 2015
As a result of the fact that the New Testament mentions little episodes and provides very few details of the real life of the Virgin Mary, several pious apocryphal legends emerged during the first centuries between the eastern Christian communities, which tried by all means to solve this hermetic silence surrounding the birth, childhood, youth, adulthood and death of the Mother of Jesus. These apocryphal accounts were then assumed and interpreted by numerous Church Fathers, theologians and sacral orators. These reflections of such prestigious thinkers structured a solid corpus of doctrine from which several devotions and Marian liturgical feasts of great importance would arise shortly after. The supernatural birth of Mary, after her miraculous conception in the womb of her elderly and sterile mother Anne, is a primary milestone in her “imaginary” life. As natural fruit of these heterogeneous literary and theological sources, the European medieval art and, in a very special way, the Byzantine one, addressed with remarkable enthusiasm the iconographic theme of The Nativity of the Virgin Mary, especially since the 10th-11th centuries, as one of the most significant episodes in the life of the Theotókos. On this basis, our paper proposes a triple complementary objective. First and foremost, it will highlight the content of the apocryphal sources and some thoughts or patristic exegesis on the subject, with particular emphasis in the homilies of St. John Damascene. Secondly, it will look at some Byzantine paintings on The Nativity of Mary, to determine to what extent the apocryphal accounts and the exegetical or doctrinal reflections on this Marian event are reflected in the characters, situations, attitudes, accessories and scenic items represented in these paintings. Finally, it will suggest some author’s interpretations which seem plausible on the possible symbolic meanings underlying in this relevant, dogmatic core and in its corresponding iconographic theme. Resumen: Como consecuencia de que el Nuevo Testamento menciona escasos episodios y brinda muy pocos detalles de la vida real de la Virgen María, entre las comunidades cristianas orientales surgieron durante los primeros siglos varias leyendas piadosas apócrifas, que trataron por todos los medios de suplir ese hermético silencio en torno al nacimiento, infancia, juventud, adultez y muerte de la Madre de Jesús. Esos relatos apócrifos fueron luego asumidos e interpretados por numerosos Padres de la Iglesia, teólogos y oradores sacros. Esas reflexiones de tan prestigiosos pensadores constituyeron un sólido cuerpo doctrinario del que se derivarían poco después varias devociones y fiestas litúrgicas marianas de extraordinaria importancia. Hito primordial en esa “imaginaria” vida de María es su sobrenatural nacimiento, tras su milagrosa concepción en el seno de su anciana y estéril madre Ana. Como fruto natural de esas heterogéneas fuentes literarias y teológicas, el arte medieval europeo y, de modo muy especial, el bizantino, abordaron con notable entusiasmo el tema iconográfico de la Natividad de la Virgen María a partir, sobre todo, de los siglos X-XI, como uno de los episodios más significativos de la vida de la Theotokos. Sobre esta base, en nuestra Ponencia nos proponemos un triple objetivo complementario. Pondremos, ante todo, en luz el contenido de las fuentes apócrifas y algunas consideraciones o exégesis patrísticas sobre el tema, con especial énfasis en las homilías de San Juan Damasceno. En segundo lugar, analizaremos algunas obras pictóricas bizantinas sobre la Natividad de María, para determinar hasta qué punto los relatos apócrifos y las reflexiones exegéticas o doctrinales sobre este acontecimiento mariano se reflejan en los personajes, situaciones, actitudes, accesorios y elementos escenográficos escenografía representados en esas pinturas. Por último, sugeriremos ciertas interpretaciones personales que juzgamos plausibles sobre los posibles significados simbólicos subyacentes en este relevante núcleo dogmático y en su correspondiente tema iconográfico.
The Life of the Virgin Mary (John Geometres and Ps.-Maximos the Confessor)
2019
The middle Byzantine Lives of the Virgin Mary have recently attracted considerable scholarly attention, partly due to the mistaken attribution of one of these Lives to St Maximos the Confessor. This article is a preliminary study for an edition and translation of John Geometres, The Life of the Virgin Mary, which I am working on with Christos Simelidis for publication in the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library series.
Speculum, 2002
In this second volume of the Dumbarton Oaks series Byzantine Saints' Lives in Translation, as in the first, Holy Women of Byzantium: Ten Saints' Lives in English Translation, Alice-Mary Talbot capitalizes on the benefits of a unifying theme to produce a wonderfully useful volume. The eight saints' lives in this volume are divided evenly between the first period of iconoclasm (726-87), inaugurated by the Byzantine emperor Leo III, and the second (815-43), inaugurated by Leo V the Armenian. The contents of the two parts are very disparate in length and nature, however. Four brief notices from the Synaxarion of Constantinople (24 pages) represent the four saints of the first period: Theodosia of Constantinople (synaxarion for 18 July, Bibliotheca hagiographica Graeca [BHG] 1774e); Stephen the Younger (28 November); Anthousa of Mantineon (27 July, BHG Auctarium 2029h); and Anthousa, daughter of the Byzantine emperor Constantine V (12 April). By contrast, the second period is represented by extensive documents of diverse character: the life of Patriarch Nikephoros I by the repentant Ignatios, deacon and skeuophylax of the Church of St. Sophia in Constantinople (BHG 1335, 102 pages); the anonymous life of Sts. David, Symeon, and George of Lesbos, in fact a composite of multiple sources about historically unrelated figures (BHG 2163, 102 pages); the life of Ioannikios by the monk Peter (BHG 936, 97 pages); and the life with encomium of Empress Theodora (BHG 1731, 22 pages). The editor attributes this imbalance to the paucity of hagiographical sources about the first period, the fact that no accounts were actually written in the first period, and the fact that a new edition of the Vita of St. Stephen the Younger, the major extensive hagiographical text pertaining to the first period of iconoclasm, is currently in press. The four short pieces from the Constantinopolitan synaxarion representing the first period of iconoclasm capture the retrospective assessment of the controversy that prevailed in the capital in the tenth century. They introduce the reader to the iconodule traditions that sustained the opposition to iconoclasm in the documents from the second period, while their editors' introductions place those later documents in perspective. The historical material provided in the introductions and notes are rich in reference to current research, bringing out the role that women played in resistance to iconoclasm and providing critical perspective on such issues as double monasteries and the persistent tensions between monastic leaders and the ecclesiastical hierarchy. The four pieces representing the second period of iconoclasm offer very different contributions to this volume. Elizabeth Fisher's introduction to the Vita of Patriarch Nikephoros I (758-828) is a little gem of historiography, accounting for the bitter hostility evidenced in the Vita between Nikephoros and the ecclesiastical hierarchy, on the one hand, and, on the other, the Stoudite monks, who ought to have been his allies in their common opposition to iconoclasm. Fisher steers us through a labyrinth of political issues, including the elevation of Nikephoros, a layman, through a series of rapid ordinations to the patriarchate at the behest of Emperor Nikephoros I and over the objections of the Constantinopolitan Stoudios monastery; revocation of the earlier excommunication of a loyal courtier who had divorced and remarried contrary to canon law, again over the objections of the Stoudite monks; the emperor's exile of the Stoudite leader, Theodore, in the fourth year of Nikephoros's patriarchate; and Nikephoros's opposition to double monasteries. On the literary side, Fisher relates the remarkable overview of the Byzantine curriculum in higher education and the Socratic dialogue between the patriarch and the iconoclast emperor Leo V, both embedded in the Vita, to the ornate and archaic literary style of this work, preparing the reader for the Homeric allusions and vocabulary scattered through the text.