Joseph Bryennios and eschatological theology in Late Byzantium (original) (raw)
Hagit Amirav, Cornelis Hoogerwerf and István Perczel (eds), Christian Historiography Between Empires (4th-8th Centuries) /Late Antique History and Religion 23; Beyond the Fathers 3/, 2021
This study presents the thesis that Christian hagiography was conceived of as a historiographic genre by the founder of the Christian historiographic tradition, Eusebius of Caesarea. It argues for the importance of the Neoplatonist Porphyry's attack on the Christian world-view both by advocating an eternally revolving unchanging world order and by accusing Christianity to be a subversive innovation. As a response, Christian intellectuals have elaborated a philosophical defense of the creationist and redemptionist world view conceiving of a linear and vectorial time, which goes from creation through the redeeming Incarnation toward the Second Coming of Christ. It was within this framework that Eusebius founded new historiographical genres, namely Chronography, Ecclesiastical History, and Hagiography. The article briefly analyses the characteristics of these new genres, with special emphasis on the seemingly contradictory role of founding the narrative on good documentation, on the one hand, and giving an important role to the miraculous, on the other. The second part of the study treats three case studies of hagiography as historiography: Eusebius' and other authors' treatment of Constantine's vision before the battle at the Milvian Bridge in 312, Cyril of Scythopolis' treatment of the Samaritan war of 529-30, and Eustratius of Constantinople's treatment of the circumstances of the appointment of Patriarch Eutychius of Constantinople in 552. The article is also an exercise in reading hagiographical sources critically for our own historiographic endeavours.