16th-18th May 2019, Religious Exchange and Identities in Europe Byzantium, the Latin West and the Slavic World (original) (raw)
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by Ionut-Alexandru Tudorie, Daniel Benga, 2024
This volume addresses the way in which images of Eastern Christianity are constructed in the diaries and travel descriptions of Western voyagers to the Ottoman Empire, during the second half of the sixteenth century. The articles included in the present volume aim to cover a vast geographical area, including the city of Constantinople/Istanbul along with the Eastern regions under the Ottoman control, as well as Transylvania, Wallachia, and Moldavia. The studies present travelers coming from diverse backgrounds (Germany, Belgium, France, and Italy), different confessions (Catholics or Protestants), and various intellectual qualifications (scholars, theologians, Renaissance humanists). Taking into consideration the travelogues under scrutiny in this volume, one can draw a more sophisticated perspective of the other, not solely restricted to refutation and depreciation, but bringing forth acceptance and respect towards the other's religious practices and spiritual values.
History and Religion as Sources of Hellenic Identity in Late Byzantium and the Post-Byzantine Era
Genealogy, 2020
Recently, seminal publications highlighted the Romanitas of the Byzantines. However, it is not without importance that from the 12th century onwards the ethnonym Hellene (Ἓλλην) became progressively more popular. A number of influential intellectuals and political actors preferred the term Hellene to identify themselves, instead of the formal Roman (Ρωμαῖος) and the common Greek (Γραικός). While I do not intend to challenge the prevalence of the Romanitas during the long Byzantine era, I suggest that we should reevaluate the emerging importance of Hellenitas in the shaping of collective and individual identities after the 12th century. From the 13th to the 16th century, Byzantine scholars attempted to recreate a collective identity based on cultural and historical continuity and otherness. In this paper, I will seek to explore the ways Byzantine scholars of the Late Byzantine and Post Byzantine era, who lived in the territories of the Byzantine Empire and/or in Italy, perceived national identity, and to show that the shift towards Hellenitas started in the Greek-speaking East.
2017
This paper seeks to position the Byzantine paradigm within the broader discussion of identity, ethnicity and nationhood before Modernity. In about the last decade, there has been a revived interest in research into collective identity in Byzantine society, with a number of new publications providing various arguments about the ethno-cultural or national character of Byzantine Romanness as well as its relationship to Hellenic identity. Contrary to an evident tendency in research thus far to relate Byzantine, i.e. medieval Roman, identity to a dominant essence – be it ethnic Hellenism, Chalcedonian orthodoxy or Roman republicanism – the approach adopted here aims to divert attention to the various contents and the changing forms of Byzantine Romanness as well as to its function as a dominant mode of collective identification in the medieval Empire of Constantinople. The main thesis of the paper is that the development of Roman identity in the East after the turning point of the seventh century and up to the final sack of Constantinople by the Ottomans in 1453 needs to be examined as one of the most fascinating cases of transformation of a pre-modern social order's collective identity discourse, one which culminated in an extensive reconstruction of the narrative of the community's historical origins by the educated élite. Last but not least, the problematization of the function of Romanness as an ethnicity in the Byzantine case offers an interesting example for comparison in regards to the debated role of ethnicity as a factor of political loyalty in the pre-modern era.
Identity and confession in the Byzantine Empire at the beginning of the Middle Ages
The correct religious confession resides at the core of the Byzantine identity at the beginning of the Middle Ages, together with the pagan Greek-Roman tradition. Historians and chroniclers from this period use elements with a religious connotation in different proportions in their works, but even those who don’t speak openly about Christianity share a Christian identity. There is a tension between the classical tradition of writing history and the Christian doctrine, the historians avoiding Christian terminology because it didn’t exist in the works they used as a model. This tension disappears from the 7th century onwards, when the Christianization of the historical terminology becomes the norm.
From the last decades of the 17th century onwards, the Armenian communities of the Ottoman Empire became the target of a renewed and more successful work of Catholic apostolate. The supple and somehow ambiguous strategy of the former missionaries based mostly on cultivating good relations with the hierarchy of the Armenian Apostolic church and on tolerating the practice of communicatio in sacris, was replaced by a more intransigent attitude, which aimed at the construction of clear-cut confessional boundaries. My paper examines the problems arising within the Empire’s most important Armenian community, that of Constantinople, as a consequence of this new approach. In particular, I will take into consideration the intellectual and practical tools employed at the time to shape an “Armenian Catholic identity” (analyzing the different methods used by the European and Armenian missionaries) as well as the reaction of the Apostolic hierarchy and of the Ottoman authorities.
The Formation of Sectarian Identities in the Religious Interchange between the Balkans and Caucasus and their Role in Contemporary Religio-Political Processes The settlement and presence of Georgian monastic and non-Chalcedonian (Armenian and Syriac-speaking) communities in the early to high medieval Balkans is an acknowledged sphere of the religious interchange between the Balkans and the Caucasus (and Transcaucasia and northern Mesopotamia in general) which, however, is rarely explored in depth. The study of the religious interchange between the Balkans and Caucasus in the sphere of Christian and Islamic religious heterodoxy and its role in the formation of modern sectarian religious identities in the two regions is an even less explored area of research. To address this problem the paper will offer a discussion of two (respectively Christian and Islamic) heterodox movements which spread from the Caucasus (and Transcaucasia) to the Balkans, Paulicianism (in the early medieval period) and Hurufism (in the early Ottoman era). The analysis will be based on literary and archaeological evidence published and explored in the last twenty years and will dwell on the problems how did the Balkan wings of these two movements maintain their links and communion with the co-sectarians in the Caucasus and Transcaucasia to maintain their sectarian religious identity and what was the nature of the socio-religious pressures which occasioned the transformation of their religious identities in the early Ottoman period. Following on my recent work on current sectarian identity politics in the region between the Balkans and the eastern Pontic (as well as Caspian) areas, the paper will thus explore the general problem of sectarian identity formations in these regions (as part of the greater sphere of Balkan-Caucasian religious interchange) and its implications for contemporary identity claims, the politicization of sectarian identities and their possible future role in the religio-political processes in these peripheral zones (and meeting places) of the European-Mediterranean civilization and the Near East – one of the main aims of the conference.